Moreover, we warn the Americans of any injustice to be made to the corpse of Sheikh Osama, God's mercy be upon him or that he will be mistreated in any despicable manner and this warning includes the mistreatment of any member of the sheikh's honorable family whether they are dead or alive and that the bodies must be handed over to the families because any inappropriate treatment will open the doors of double evil and you will only be blaming yourselves for your own deeds. We call upon all Muslims to do their duty in enforcing this right.”
The group also reminds America that while it killed bin Laden, it didn't kill al Qaeda:
Even when the Americans managed to kill Osama, they managed to do ONLY that by disgrace and betrayal. Men and heroes only should be confronted in the battlefields but at the end, that’s God’s fate. Still we ask, will the Americans be able thru their media outlets, their agents, their instruments, soldiers, intelligence services and their might be able to kill what Sheikh Osama lived for and was killed for? How far! How impossible! Sheikh Osama didn’t build an organization that will vanish with his death or fades away with his departure.
On a related note, Pakistan officials say their intelligence shows Bin Laden split with al-Zawahri six years ago, and al-Zawahri has the bigger following. The Wall St. Journal describes the official as saying bin Laden had been marginalized:
bin Laden had been sidelined because he no longer had the funds to support al Qaeda operations and that his popularity in the network was slipping
The U.S. says it has no such information and is skeptical. The U.S. seems to continually revert to a pyramid type structure when describing al Qaida, with one person at the top. It seems more likely that for many years since 9/11, Al Qaida has been a bunch of loosely affiliated, geographically diverse and independent groups. While they share a belief system, their aspirational targets likely are different. It sounds like we're about to spend a ton of money going after al-Zawahri, which in the long run, won't have any more impact in eliminating al Qaida than did killing Osama.
Update: Britain seems to think the lead replacement for bin Laden is cleric Anwar al Awlaki.