Newly released video footage of Osama bin Laden and his followers celebrating against an arid mountainous backdrop was being pored over on Friday by US and allied intelligence officials trying to determine whether it might represent a claim of responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks, a warning of more terrorism to come, or both.
The undated video, thought to have been made somewhere in Afghanistan, was delivered to the Kabul office of the al-Jazeera Arabic-language television channel. The Qatar-based station said the film was made recently, but did not say whether it had been made before or after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the US.
The film shows bin Laden flanked by his closest collaborator, Ayman al-Zawahiri, both wearing white robes and turbans. Mohamed Atef, bin Laden's chief of military operations, also makes a fleeting appearance.
The pictures give little away. In the background is a dry, rugged mountain range. In the middle distance there is a huddle of square mud houses. It could be almost anywhere in Afghanistan.
The timing and symbolism of the video is unlikely to be accidental. Bin Laden controls media access carefully, and allows himself to be filmed only when he has a particular message to convey.
A video broadcast on al-Jazeera in June showed him sitting on a carpet wearing a traditional Yemeni dagger and reciting poetry celebrating the attack on the USS Cole a few months earlier and threatening further mayhem for the US, Israel and their allies.
In the new video, Bin Laden stands unsmiling and serene next to al-Zawahiri, the leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad group. They acknowledge the cheers of a crowd of supporters as they review a platoon of guerrillas wearing camouflage fatigues. In every direction, guards stand holding assault rifles, their faces hidden by hoods.
Atef appears for a moment at the fringes of the crowd. A former Egyptian policeman, he was charged earlier this year with masterminding the 1998 bombing of the US embassies in East Africa, and US intelligence officials suspect he played the same role in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Al-Jazeera said it believed the scene showed a celebration of the union of bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization with al-Zawahiri's Jihad group.
Al-Jazeera, which is based in Qatar, is known for its close links with bin Laden and his aides. The satellite channel interviewed bin Laden in 1997 and 1998, and in January obtained exclusive footage of the Saudi dissident at his son Mohamed's Kandahar wedding.
The station enjoys the patronage of the Taliban and has been allowed to keep two correspondents in Kabul.
Al-Jazeera has rejected claims made by the US two days ago that its reporting was biased in favor of the Taliban.
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