Video Said to Be of 9/11 Planners

Al Jazeera broadcast Thursday a video of what were described as preparations for the Sept. 11 attacks, in which Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was said to be meeting with some of the planners in an Afghan mountain camp.

The station said that Bin Laden also was shown greeting some of the hijackers, although their faces were not clearly visible and it was not immediately known which of them were purportedly shown.

The video included the last wills and testaments of hijackers Wail Al Shehri and Hamza Al Ghamdi.

Al Jazeera did not say how it obtained the video, which was produced by Al Sahab, Al Qaeda’s media branch.

Islamic militant Web forums said the entire video would be posted soon on the Internet. In the past, such announcements came a day or two before a video appeared on the Web.

Thursday’s was the fourth in a series of videos that Al Qaeda has released to mark the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, said Ben Venzke, head of IntelCenter, a U.S. company that monitors militant message traffic and provides counter-terrorism intelligence services for the U.S.

The previous videos were issued in April and September 2002 and September 2003, each showing the planning of the suicide hijackings and farewell statements from some of the hijackers, Venzke said.

In the latest video, Bin Laden appears to be sitting outdoors with his former lieutenant Mohammed Atef, and Ramzi Binalshibh, another suspected planner of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Venzke said the scenes had not been previously broadcast.