The Washington Post
September 10, 2002

CAIRO, Sept. 9 -- The Arab satellite television station al-Jazeera reported today that Osama bin Laden can be heard naming four of the Sept. 11 hijackers on a new videotape, and one of the station's reporters said two key members of al Qaeda had described bin Laden's personal involvement in the attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

There was no way to verify whether the voice heard on the video clip, which the station aired partially, belonged to bin Laden or when the recording was made.

The al Qaeda leader's whereabouts are not publicly known, and he did not appear in the excerpts shown across the Arab world.

"As we talk about the conquests of Washington and New York we talk about those men who changed the course of history," a male voice, attributed to bin Laden, is heard saying in Arabic, according to the Associated Press.

In the excerpts, he identified four of the Sept. 11 hijackers -- Mohamed Atta, Marwan Al-Shehhi, Ziad Samir Jarrah and Hani Hanjour -- as ringleaders and prayed for their souls.

The 19 hijackers were described as "great men who deepened the roots of faith in the hearts of the faithful and reaffirmed allegiance to God and torpedoed the schemes of the crusaders and their stooges, the rulers of the region."

The tape also included old footage of several young men identified as some of the hijackers during training in Afghanistan. They appeared to be looking at aviation maps and manuals of cockpit gadgetry.

Al-Jazeera, which has aired several al Qaeda videotapes since last year's attacks, said it would air the latest video in full on Thursday.

The station will also broadcast the second portion of a report on al Qaeda by Yosri Fouda, one of its investigative journalists.

Fouda told the Reuters news agency that interviews he conducted in June in or near the Pakistani port city of Karachi with al Qaeda operatives Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Sheik Mohammed "will prove that [bin Laden] had an integral role in planning the attacks."