Bin Laden meeting with 9/11 hijackers screened

Previously unshown footage of the preparations for the September 11 attacks in which al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden is seen meeting some of the planners and hijackers in a mountain camp in Afghanistan was screened tonight by al-Jazeera television.

The station did not say how it obtained the video, which was produced by As-Sahab, al Qaida’s media branch.

The video included the last will and testaments of two of the hijackers, Wail al-Shehri and Hamza al-Ghamdi.

The footage was the fourth in a series of long videos that al Qaida has put out to memorialise the September 11, 2001 attacks against the Pentagon and World Trade Centre, said Ben Venzke, head of IntelCenter, a private US company that monitors militant message traffic and provides counterterrorism intelligence services for the American government.

The previous videos were issued in April and September 2002 and September 2003, each showing footage from the planning of the suicide hijackings and testimonies from some of the hijackers, Venzke said.

In the latest video, bin Laden is shown sitting outside in what appears to be a mountain camp with his former lieutenant Mohammed Atef and Ramzi Binalshibh, another suspected planner of the 9/11 attacks.

Atef, also known as Abu Hafs al-Masri, was killed by a US airstrike in Afghanistan in 2001.

Binalshibh was captured four years ago in Pakistan and is currently in US custody. This week US president George Bush announced plans to put him on military trial.

Bin Laden, wearing a dark robe and white head gear, strolls through the camp, greeting dozens of followers, some masked, some barefaced, many carrying automatic weapons.

Al-Jazeera said that among those he greets in the footage are several of the 9/11 hijackers in the scene, but their faces were not clear and it was not immediately known which ones are shown.

The footage shows scenes of training at the camp. Masked militants perform martial arts kicks or learn how to break the hold of someone who grabs them from behind. Several militants are shown practising hiding and pulling out fold-out knives.

Venzke said the footage shown on Al-Jazeera was part of a video he expected would be more than an hour long, based on the previous such videos on the 9/11 attacks.

“They produce long videos like these not just for 9/11, but for any significant events they feel warrant their attention,” Venzke said.

One aim is to boost recruitment, but such videos have several purposes – “to speak to their supporters, to raise morale within their own group, to facilitate fundraising, and to serve as a psychological attack”, he said.