Terror leader issues tape to mark Sept. 11
CAIRO, Egypt — Osama bin Laden urged sympathizers to join the "caravan" of martyrs as he praised one of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers in a new video that emerged today to mark the sixth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
Al-Qaida traditionally issues a video every year on the anniversary, with the last testament of one of the 19 hijackers involved in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. This year's video showed hijacker Waleed al-Shehri addressing the camera and warning the U.S.: "We shall come at you from your front and back, your right and left."
The new message came days after the world got its first current look at bin Laden in nearly three years, with the release of a video Friday in which the terror leader addressed the American people.
The latest videotape, of the hijacker's testament, had not yet been posted on extremist Web sites. But IntelCenter, a monitoring group in suburban Washington, said it had obtained the 47-minute video and provided it to Associated Press Television News.
It begins with an audiotape introduction by bin Laden. While his voice is heard, the video shows a still image of him, raising his finger. In the image, bin Laden has the same dyed-black beard and the same clothes — a white robe and cap and beige cloak — that he had in the previous video.
But it was not known if the audiotape was recently made. In the past, al-Qaida has used footage and audio of bin Laden taped long ago for release later.
In the tape, bin Laden praised al-Shehri, saying he "recognized the truth" that Arab rulers were "vassals" of the West and had "abandoned the balance of (Islamic) revelation."
"It is true that this young man was little in years, but the faith in his heart was big," he said.
"So there is a huge difference between the path of the kings, presidents and hypocritical Ulama (Islamic scholars) and the path of these noble young men," like al-Shehri, bin Laden said. "The formers' lot is to spoil and enjoy themselves whereas the latter's' lot is to destroy themselves for Allah's Word to be Supreme."
At the end of his speech, bin Laden also mentions the al-Qaida leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in an U.S. airstrike. Al-Zarqawi followed in the footsteps of al-Shehri and his brothers who "fulfilled their promises to God."
"And now it is our turn," bin Laden says.
