M A I N   N E W S

Tape deepens Laden mystery

Cairo, December 27
A Qatar-based television station aired excerpts of a videotape of Osama bin Laden, adding a new twist to the guessing game about the alleged terror mastermind’s whereabouts and whether he even is still alive.

His words indicated he could have been speaking in the first half of December.

Dressed in a green camouflage military jacket, a thinner and gaunt-looking Bin Laden referred to the September 11 terrorist attacks, saying he was speaking “three months after the blessed attack against the international infidels and their leaders, the USA, and two months after the beginning of the vicious aggression against Islam.”

The chief editor of Al-Jazeera, Ibrahim Hilal, said his station received the tape “a couple of days ago” by an air courier service from Pakistan. The sender was anonymous, he said. The popular Arabic satellite station has received and aired many past such videotapes of Bin Laden.

Mr Hilal said the entire tape runs 33 minutes and would be shown on Al-Jazeera on Thursday at 1830 GMT. Only about five minutes were shown on Wednesday night’s news. Bin Laden’s references to dates of recent events were inexact.

He referred to the September 11 terror attack on the USA as occurring “three months ago,” and the beginning of US military action in Afghanistan, which was October 7, as “two months ago.”

He also referred to the bombing of a mosque in Khost, Afghanistan, saying it happened “several before. It was not clear which strike he was referring to, or when he got the news about the mosque being damaged.

In Washington, White House spokesman Mr Scott McClellan dismissed the tape as “nothing more than the same kind of terrorist propaganda we’ve heard before.” AP