DUBAI: The Arab television channel Al-Jazeera broadcasted video footage it said showed Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda suicide candidates preparing the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States.
Al-Jazeera had said earlier it would broadcast "video that included scenes showing for the first time Al-Qaeda leaders preparing the September 11 attacks and practicing for their execution."
The video broadcasted on Thursday showed Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and two of the 19 Islamist militants that took part in the attacks, Saudi nationals Hamza el-Ramdi and Wael el-Shemari. The two bearded men spoke of the situation faced by Muslims in Bosnia and Chechnya.
Fifteen of the 19 attackers on September 11 were Saudis, and Al-Jazeera said it had only aired a few minutes from a document that it said lasted about an hour and a half.
Bin Laden was shown in the company of several dozen men, walking in a deserted, rocky zone that was not identified.
Almost 3,000 people died on September 11, 2001 when suicide hijackers took control of four United States passenger planes.
They smashed two of them into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York, causing them to collapse.
Another plane slammed into the Pentagon, the US military heaquarters building near Washington, and the fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. The attackers were trained in martial arts and armed for the most part with box cutters.
The footage showed hand-to-hand combat practice between people who wore masks, and one of who appeared to be training with a knife.
