In a new videotape posted on the Internet on Tuesday, Osama bin Laden reasserted his role as the planner of the Sept. 11 attacks and declared that Zacarias Moussaoui had played no role in the 2001 plot.
Moussaoui was sentenced on May 4 to life in federal prison for failing to warn US authorities of the attacks. He had told jurors that he had conspired with Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber, to fly a plane into the White House on the day of the hijackings, but US intelligence officials have said there was no evidence to support that claim.
Though a technical review of the tape was incomplete on Tuesday night, a US counterterrorism official said that the speaker appeared to be bin Laden. The tape includes English subtitles and a still photograph of the al-Qaeda leader in front of a plain white wall.
PHOTO: AP
During the four-and-a-half-minute tape, the voice believed to be that of bin Laden addresses "the American people," saying Moussaoui had "no connection whatsoever" with Sept. 11.
According to a translation by the SITE Institute, a private organization in Washington that tracks terrorism on the Internet, bin Laden adds, "I am certain of what I say, because I was responsible for entrusting the 19 brothers, Allah have mercy upon them, with those raids."
He says that the hijackers were divided into "pilots and support teams" but that Moussaoui was "only learning to fly."
Bin Laden also lists others who he says had no role in the Sept. 11 attacks, including prisoners held by the US in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and several individuals he describes as working for relief agencies and the news media.
The counterterrorism official called the tape "propaganda" possibly intended to demonstrate that bin Laden "is still relevant."
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
RSS