A videotape in which a voice
said to be that of Osama Bin Laden is heard talking about the 11
September hijackers has been broadcast on the Arabic satellite
television channel al-Jazeera.
The whereabouts of Bin Laden, accused of masterminding the suicide plane
attacks on New York and Washington last September in which 3,000 people
died, are unknown. Some have claimed he died in US air strikes on the
mountainous Tora Bora region of eastern Afghanistan, others say he has
fled into hiding in Pakistan.
The BBC's Jim Muir says the video adds up to the most comprehensive,
illustrated admission by al-Qaeda that it and its leader were indeed the
perpetrators of the attack which they glorify so vividly. Timed to
coincide with the anniversary, it is clearly meant to send the message
that they're still in business, our correspondent says.
The identity of the speaker in the video - who does not appear on camera
- cannot be independently confirmed, and it is unclear when the tape was
recorded.
Osama Bin Laden: Dead or
alive?
Correspondents say they
think it sounds very similar to previous tapes of the al-Qaeda terror
network leader.
"When you talk about the
New York and Washington raids, you talk about those men who changed
the course of history and cleansed the chapters of the nation from
the filth of the treasonous rulers and their followers," the voice
says in Arabic as the tape shows head shots of the 19 hijackers.
The hijackers were "great men [who] entrenched faith in the hearts
of the believers, demonstrated loyalty [to God] and dissociation
[from infidels] and torpedoed decades of scheming by the crusaders
and their agent rulers in the region," it adds.
The speaker then names four
men - Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Hani Hanjour and Ziad Jarrah - as
the leaders of the 11 September attacks, prays for their souls and
praises them.
'Training' The tape also
shows four young men said to have been among the hijackers. Reportedly
shot in Afghanistan a few months before the attacks, it shows them
looking at detailed maps including one of the Washington area.
Al-Omari is the second
alleged hijacker to appear in a "farewell video"
Al-Jazeera identified the
four as Wail Alshehri, Hamza Alghamdi, Saeed Alghamdi, and Ahmed Alnami.
A farewell message of a man it identified as hijacker Abdulaziz Al-Omari
- said by the FBI to have been on the first plane to fly into New York's
World Trade Center - is also included in the tape.
"This is a message to
all the infidels and to America. The message says: 'Leave the
Arabian Peninsula defeated and stop supporting the coward Jews in
Palestine'," he says, reading from a piece of paper.
"May God reward all those who trained me to tread this path and
contributed to this great action. I would like to particularly
mention mujahid leader Sheikh Osama Bin Laden, may God preserve him
from the plots of the plotters, the envy of the envious ones and the
rancour of the rancorous ones."
Al-Jazeera said the tape was
shot in the southern Afghan town of Kandahar, but did not say how it was
obtained.
Al-Qaeda leaders
interviewed The channel has
broadcast previous statements by Bin Laden. It said over the weekend
that one of its correspondents had interviewed two leading al-Qaeda
fugitives in June.
They reportedly told al-Jazeera that al-Qaeda initially planned to fly
hijacked jets into nuclear installations - rather than the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon. The US Congress was the fourth American
landmark on al-Qaeda's 11 September hit list, the correspondent added.
This interview will also be broadcast in full on Thursday.
