BIN LADEN - Yes, I did it

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Current News - Homefront Preparations : One Thread

Telegraph

Bin Laden: Yes, I did it By David Bamber (Filed: 11/11/2001)

OSAMA BIN LADEN has for the first time admitted that his al-Qa'eda group carried out the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, the Telegraph can reveal.

Osama bin Laden with journalist Hamid Mir during the interview for a Pakistani newspaper

In a previously undisclosed video which has been circulating for 14 days among his supporters, he confesses that "history should be a witness that we are terrorists. Yes, we kill their innocents".

In the footage, shot in the Afghan mountains at the end of October, a smiling bin Laden goes on to say that the World Trade Centre's twin towers were a "legitimate target" and the pilots who hijacked the planes were "blessed by Allah".

The killing of at least 4,537 people was justified, he claims, because they were "not civilians" but were working for the American system.

Bin Laden also makes a direct personal threat against Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, for the first time, and warns nations such as Australia, Germany and Japan to stay out of the conflict.

The video will form the centrepiece of Britain and America's new evidence against bin Laden, to be released this Wednesday.

The footage, to which the Telegraph obtained access in the Middle East yesterday, was not made for public release via the al-Jazeera television network used by bin Laden for propaganda purposes in the past. It is believed to be intended as a rallying call to al-Qa'eda members.

In the video, bin Laden says: "The Twin Towers were legitimate targets, they were supporting US economic power. These events were great by all measurement. What was destroyed were not only the towers, but the towers of morale in that country."

The hijackers were "blessed by Allah to destroy America's economic and military landmarks". He freely admits to being behind the attacks: "If avenging the killing of our people is terrorism then history should be a witness that we are terrorists. Yes, we kill their innocents and this is legal religiously and logically."

In a contradictory section, however, bin Laden justifies killing the occupants of the Twin Towers because they were not civilians - Islam forbids the killing of innocent civilians even in a holy war.

He says: "The towers were supposed to be filled with supporters of the economical powers of the United States who are abusing the world. Those who talk about civilians should change their stand and reconsider their position. We are treating them like they treated us."

Bin Laden goes on to justify his entire terror campaign. "There are two types of terror, good and bad. What we are practising is good terror. We will not stop killing them and whoever supports them."

He directly threatens the lives of President Bush and Mr Blair. "Bush and Blair don't understand anything but the power of force. Every time they kill us, we kill them, so the balance of terror can be achieved." He also calls on all Muslims to join him. "It is the duty of every Muslim to fight. Killing Jews is top priority."

Bin Laden warns other nations to keep out of the conflict, implying that they could face terror attacks if they do not.

In the video, he also claims responsibility for an unspecified terrorist outrage in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which he claims was sparked by secret messages in one of his videos.

He admits for the first time using public pronouncements on video to whip up terrorism - a danger about which the British and American governments have warned broadcasters.

It is significant that throughout the video he uses the personal pronouns "I" and "we" to claim responsibility for the attacks. In the past, he has spoken of the attackers only in the third person.

Bin Laden has publicly issued four previous videos since September 11, always denying carrying out the atrocities.

He now claims to have access to nuclear and chemical weapons. Bin Laden made the claims on Friday night during an interview with the English language Pakistani newspaper Dawn.

He said: "If America used chemical or nuclear weapons against us, then we may retort with chemical and nuclear weapons. We have the weapons as deterrent."

Defence analysts dismissed these claims. They said that although bin Laden could have access to nuclear material through links with Pakistan or former Soviet republics, he was unlikely to have the technology to cause an explosion.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We know that he was looking for that capability. We believe he does not have it."

Emergency powers to imprison suspected international terrorists indefinitely using special closed courts will be announced this week. The measure, which will require exemption from human rights legislation, will be used to round up about 20 suspects hiding in Britain beyond the reach of existing laws.

-- Anonymous, November 10, 2001

Answers

Pakistani journalist says he met Osama bin Laden in a cold mud hut somewhere in Afghanistan

By Christopher Torchia, Associated Press, 11/10/01

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- A Pakistani journalist said Saturday he was blindfolded, bundled into a jeep and driven for five hours to a cold mud hut in Afghanistan where he met the world's most wanted man -- Osama bin Laden.

Amid the distant staccato bursts of anti-aircraft fire during the interview, bin Laden was sometimes relaxed and sometimes aggressive, journalist Hamid Mir said.

Bin Laden claimed, according to Mir's report Saturday in the English-language Pakistani newspaper Dawn, that his al-Qaida organization had nuclear and chemical weapons and would use them if the United States employed such weapons on him.

Mir, who is widely known in Pakistan for his contacts with bin Laden, told The Associated Press that he went to Afghanistan this week to report on the U.S. bombing campaign and was approached by bin Laden lieutenants who offered him an interview.

On Wednesday, Arab militiamen drove him to the interview, which he said took place in a "very cold place -- much colder than Kabul." Mir said he was taken to a mud hut and bin Laden eventually arrived, accompanied by a dozen bodyguards and his deputy Ayman el-Zawahri.

"He told me five times that `maybe this place will be bombed now and both of us will be killed, and I'm not scared of death,"' Mir quoted bin Laden as saying.

Mir said bin Laden vowed that if his Taliban allies lose the capital Kabul and other cities, "we will move to the mountains. We will continue our guerrilla warfare against the Americans."

The United States and its coalition allies have been hunting bin Laden as the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. President Bush launched air attacks on Afghanistan on Oct. 7 after Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia refused to hand over bin Laden.

Mir told AP that bin Laden keeps up with news of the conflict by watching Western satellite television broadcasts. It was impossible to independently verify Mir's account of the interview.

In his report in Dawn, a major English-language daily, Mir quoted bin Laden as saying: "I wish to declare that if America used chemical and nuclear weapons against us, then we may retort with chemical and nuclear weapons. We have the weapons as a deterrent."

The story was also published in Ausaf, a widely circulated Pakistani Urdu-language newspaper that Mir edits. Mir has written a biography of bin Laden, due out in Pakistan next month.

The United States says it has no evidence that bin Laden possesses nuclear weapons. Intelligence experts believe al-Qaida has experimented with crude chemical weapons at a training camp in Afghanistan.

"They're seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons," Bush said in Washington on Friday. "Given the means, our enemies would be a threat to every nation and, eventually, to civilization itself."

Mir wrote that when he asked bin Laden where he allegedly got the mass destruction weapons, bin Laden replied: "Go to the next question."

In the published interview, Bin Laden did not acknowledge responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks but he said they were justified because Washington had been arming Israel, and was conducting "atrocities" against Muslims in Iraq, Kashmir and elsewhere.

"The Sept. 11 attacks were not targeted at women and children," bin Laden said. "The real targets were America's icons of military and economic power."

-- Anonymous, November 10, 2001


Printed from www.timesofindia.com

Bin Laden in high spirits, more confident: interviewer

ISLAMABAD: He's in high spirits, speaking confidently and laughing readily. Osama bin Laden is a man at ease even though he feels the Americans will eventually kill him, his Pakistani interviewer said Saturday.

Journalist Hamid Mir ratcheted up the world's jitters Saturday with an exclusive interview with bin Laden in which the suspected terrorist mastermind said he had nuclear and chemical weapons and was ready to use them.

Mir, who published the interview in Pakistan's English-language newspaper Dawn, says he met with bin Laden in 1997 and 1998. When he saw the shadowy Saudi millionaire this time in Afghanistan, he found him greatly changed.

"Previously he was very softspoken," the 36-year-old Mir told AFP. "But now he speaks like an experienced orator. He is very hard-hitting. He was in high spirits. He's very healthy and he laughs a lot.

"He's very critical about the government of Pakistan. Previously he was not so critical about Pakistan. So there is a big change in that man. He's more confident," said Mir, editor of the Urdu-language newspaper Ausaf.

The world's most hunted man since the September 11 terror attacks on the United States, bin Laden feels certain the Americans will kill him sooner or later, according to Mir, who met him at a secret location outside Kabul.

"He told me, 'I am ready to die.' He said, 'I know that they can bomb this place also. They are not aware that I am present here. But they are dropping bombs blindly everywhere. So I may get killed even with you.'"

"My cause will continue after my death," he quoted bin Laden as saying. "They think they will solve this problem by killing me. It's not easy to solve this problem. This war has been spread all over the world."

Bin Laden, who is said to live constantly on the move to avoid capture and reportedly often shuttles from cave to cave, expressed no regret for his difficult circumstances.

"I cannot gain anything by adopting this way of life," Mir quoted him as saying. "I am fighting because they are killing us. We are the victims and they are the aggressors so we have no other option but to fight back."

The interview conducted Thursday was bin Laden's first since the kamikaze assaults on New York and Washington. But Mir said the terror suspect planned to invite journalists to Kabul for a press conference in the coming weeks.

The tortured logistics of organizing Mir's session with bin Laden were typical of the clandestine, ultra-security-conscious world surrounding the terror suspect.

The intense, mustachioed Mir, who contributes regularly to Dawn, was on a one-day trip to the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad when he mentioned to commanders of the ruling Taliban militia his desire to see bin Laden.

He drove to Kabul on Tuesday and checked into a small hotel. The next day, an Arab man came to pick him up and he spent the entire day shuttled from one place to another in a jeep.

"In the night they took me out of Kabul to some unknown place where they changed the jeep. I was blindfolded and I was rolled in a blanket and they put me on the back seat of the jeep.

"After five hours, early in the morning of the eighth of November, I arrived at a place where he (bin Laden) appeared," said Mir, who is writing a book on the Islamic militant.

He could not say where he was, offering only that "the place was much colder than Kabul. I think that maybe it was some area where snow was."

Mir was ushered into into a small, unfurnished room with blankets covering the walls. Outside, the sounds of anti-aircraft guns echoed through the morning.

He said bin Laden, wearing a camouflage jacket over his white robe, arrived with his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri and sat down on a traditional Afghan gadda, or cushion, for the two-hour interview.

More than a dozen bodyguards armed with Kalishnikov rifles stood by. None were masked, all were Arab.

Mir said he asked his questions in English and bin Laden's Arabic responses were translated back into English by al-Zawahiri.

When the article appeared Saturday in the Dawn, Pakistan's largest English-language daily with a circulation of 196,000, it made Mir an instant celebrity. Media lined up at his home on a quiet street here for interviews.

Analysts poring over an Urdu version of the text published in Ausaf created a minor stir by noting that it did not include an explicit statement by bin Laden that he had nuclear and chemical weapons.

But Mir explained he was saving the full quote for a complete transcript to run in the color magazine of Ausaf in the coming days. He stood by the English version.

It's not the first time the 14-year reporting veteran has put out controversial copy. Mir said he was fired from two previous publications for his writings about corruption in high places.

Mir thinks the interview might also cause trouble, appearing as Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was in the United States for talks on Islamabad's role in the US-led coalition trying to hunt down bin Laden.

He said the government and his bosses were not happy.

"They say our president is in America and this interview will be published and it will create problems for him," Mir said. "I said this is your perception. This is not my problem." ( AFP )

-- Anonymous, November 10, 2001


Moderation questions? read the FAQ