(CNN)  -- Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, facing an international arrest warrant, is paying the price for pandering to the West, al Qaeda's second-in-command said in an audio statement released Tuesday. Ayman al-Zawahiri, seen here in 2007, said Tuesday the Sudanese president pandered to the West. "I am not defending Omar al-Bashir or his regime, nor am I defending what it has done in Darfur and elsewhere," Ayman al-Zawahiri said in the statement released by al Qaeda's production company, as-Sahab Media. But, he said, "the issue isn't one of Darfur and solving its problems; the issue is one of making excuses for more foreign interference in the Muslims' countries in the framework of the contemporary Zionist Crusade."
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Ayman al-Zawahiri says he is not defending Sudanese regime, actions in Darfur
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President Omar Hassan al-Bashir accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity
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Al-Zawahiri says Sudan expelled Osama bin Laden, other mujahedeen
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He further asks why U.N. cares so much about Darfur, so little about Gaza
Why hasn't the United Nations and the international community intervened to lift the siege from @placeholder, while it pretends to cry over the people of Darfur being deprived of relief and aid?"