Moussaoui played no role in 9/11, says bin Laden

AN AUDIO recording in which al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden says convicted September 11 plotter Zacarias Moussaoui played no role in the attacks is authentic, a US intelligence official said yesterday.

“Following a technical analysis, it has been revealed that the voice is indeed Osama bin Laden,” said the official.

In the audio tape, bin Laden also said he had personally assigned tasks to the 19 hijackers who staged the attacks on US cities that killed about 3,000 people.

Terrorism experts said yesterday the tape may be an attempt by the al-Qaida leader to regain his eminence in the global terror network, after being sidelined by insurgents in Iraq.

Bin Laden stated that Moussaoui was arrested two weeks before the events, and if he had known something about the September 11 group, the leader of the operation, Mohammad Atta, and the others would have been informed to leave America before being discovered.

“I am the one in charge of the 19 brothers and I never assigned brother Zacarias to be with them in that mission,” he said, referring to the 19 hijackers.

The al-Qaida leader also said all of those held in Guantanomo Bay, bar two, were innocent of involvement in the 9/11 attacks.

If authentic, it would be the third tape that bin Laden has issued this year — a sharp increase in the volume of propaganda issued by al-Qaida since August, according to terror experts.

“Al-Qaida messaging volume levels are at the highest now than at any point since the group’s inception,” said Ben Venzke, head of counter terrorism specialists IntelCenter.

Rohan Gunaratna of the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies in Singapore said the increase in propaganda was apparently bin Laden’s attempt to compensate for his group’s loss of ability to mount attacks. The US-led war on terror apparently has severely disrupted the portion of al-Qaida directly under bin Laden’s control, he said.

It has allowed the head of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to capture the spotlight. Militants are increasingly looking to al-Zarqawi, who is on the ground and killing US citizens everyday in Iraq, according to Gunaratna.

“Al-Zarqawi is stealing the thunder of bin Laden.”

By stepping up his propaganda, Gunaratna said he believed “bin Laden is trying to maintain his eminence in the global jihad”.