Al Jazeera, television on Monday broadcast new video excerpts that included a final will and testament from one of the September 11 hijackers and the purported audio taped voice of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden claiming unequivocal responsibility for the attacks.
The voice also identified the specific names and roles of various terrorists in the attack, information that dovetailed with investigative work carried out by US justice officials.
The declaration, coming as the United States prepares to commemorate on Wednesday the death of 3 052 people who died in last year’s devastation, was ”apparently intended to mark the first anniversary of the attacks”, said the Qatar-based Arabic language satellite channel.
Al Jazeera said it would screen the full videotape at 1805 GMT Tuesday. Cable News Network, which carried some parts of the tape, said it was not clear when or where the videotape was made.
Al Jazeera said it was the first time that bin Laden had mentioned Mohammed Atta and other attackers by name. In previously broadcast tapes, he has praised the attackers for their ”good” work.
The voice identified as bin Laden’s praised the 19 hijackers for their heroism.
”Those great men have changed the course of history and blew up the schemes of the crusaders and their agents, rulers of the region,” Bin Laden said in the audiotape. There was no footage that showed him speaking.
The voice also threatened further attacks if the United States does not withdraw its influence from the Middle East.
Bin Laden, who is the son of an influential Saudi family and has operated a militant Islamic terrorist network out of Afghanistan, has in the past frequently condemned the continued military and diplomatic influence of the United States in Saudi Arabia.
”This work is intended to send a message to all those who hear it, a message to America calling upon it to come out of the Arabian Peninsula and to stop extending a hand to the cowardly Jews in Palestine, otherwise we will bring you to your knees and humiliate you,” he added.
Bin Laden specifically identified the terrorist suspects and their detailed roles in carrying out the attacks.
He said Mohammed Atta, an Egyptian, ”led the group and destroyed the first tower” of New York’s World Trade Center – confirming the results of investigations by US justice officials. ”We hope the Almighty will accept him as a martyr,” bin Laden said.
The others that he praised were Marwan Al-Shehhi, from the United Arab Emirates, who ”destroyed the second tower”; Hani Hanjour, ”from Taif” in Saudi Arabia, who he said was ”the destroyer of the Pentagon”; and Ziyad Al-Jarrah from Lebanon, whom he identified as a key member of the group.
The videotape showed a number of persons, whose names and pictures have been released by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as the likely September 11 terrorists, during training missions at the Afghan city of Kandahar before they travelled to the United States.
According to the FBI, several of the hijackers took flight training at US flight schools to prepare for the attacks.
CNN said the videotape claimed it took two and a half years to plan the attacks. Some of the footage broadcast by al Jazeera showed maps of Washington, where the terrorist plowed a commercial passenger plane into the Pentagon killing 189 people, and some pictures of the terrorists as they prepared the attacks.
The videotape also showed one of the hijackers, Abdulaziz Alomari, reading out his last will and testament. ”I am writing this testament at the moment of an end, which resembles the beginning,” he said.
He praised bin Laden for his guidance and his role in training him.
US officials in the past have treated al Jazeera broadcasts with some skepticism until they have a chance to provide their own translations from the Arabic. – Sapa-DPA