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New video of bin Laden shown
©Associated Press, DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- New images of Osama bin Laden appeared Friday on an Arab television station, showing the terrorist somber and composed amid a celebration by his followers at an arid mountain base. The station, Al-Jazeera, said it believed the video was made recently. The Qatar station did not say whether the footage was shot before or after the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States, or how the station obtained it. The video has bin Laden standing side by side with his top lieutenant, Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahri. Al-Jazeera said the footage was believed to record a celebration of a union of bin Laden's al-Qaida network and al-Zawahri's Egyptian Jihad group. The gathering, at an al-Qaida camp with dry, rugged mountains in the background, also marked the graduation of a group of newly trained fighters into al-Qaida, Al-Jazeera said. Singing and the beating of drums ring out in the video. A handful of men armed with AK-47s, their faces covered, stand near the two leaders. In the background is a stark encampment with three or four squat cement huts and at least a half-dozen sand-colored tents. Bin Laden, dressed in robes and an Afghan-style turban, glances at times at the camera, unsmiling. There was no word of any statement from him accompanying the video. Al-Zawahri's group, Jihad, is linked to the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, 20 years ago today. Jihad and three other militant Islamic groups joined with al-Qaida in 1998 to form bin Laden's new International Front for Fighting Jews and Crusades. The alliance with al-Qaida led to a split within Jihad, some of whose members feared taking on the United States. It was not clear what union the video commemorated, or when the union would have taken place.
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From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
