Bin Laden praises 9/11 hijackers

On the sixth anniversary of 9/11, Osama bin Laden has released a new tape praising the "19 champions" who carried out the bombings.

The voice on the tape, believed to be bin Laden by US intelligence officials, introduces the video testament of Waleed al-Shehri.

He was one of two Saudi brothers who helped Mohamed Atta slam the first hijacked plane into New York's World Trade Center.

Bin Laden describes Al-Shehri as a magnificent young man "who personally penetrated the most extreme degrees of danger and is a rarity among men: one of the 19 champions", referring to the number of hijackers.

The tape was issued four days after bin Laden urged Americans to convert to Islam in his first video for nearly three years.

Al-Qaeda have issued such statements and testaments to mark the September 11 attacks before to remind Americans that bin Laden is still alive and at large.

The Asia-Pacific Foundation, a think-tank based in London, said: "Bin Laden's video tapes (are) aimed to keep the wounds of 9/11 bleeding, to reassure followers that al-Qaeda's operational ability has not been degraded by the war on terror, and to incite further attacks on their perceived enemies.

"Al-Qaeda is now the strongest that it has been since 9/11."

The think-tank added that bin Laden's network had managed to regroup in Pakistan and train new recruits.

Bin Laden has long been suspected of hiding somewhere in the mountains along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Afghanistan's foreign minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta said he was no longer in the country whose former Taliban rulers provided him with sanctuary until 2001.

Nearly 3,000 people died in the hijacked jetliner attacks of 2001 that destroyed the World Trade Center, damaged the Pentagon and crashed a plane into a Pennsylvania field.

The anniversary is often a time of heightened security alerts.

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