In the 47-minute video footage Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden reads an introduction dedicated to Abu Musab Waleed al-Shehri, the Virginia-based respected monitoring group IntelCenter and other sources said, citing an advance copy. The video is titled "The Wills of the Heroes of the Raids on New York and Washington."
Bin Laden said al-Shehri "personally penetrated the most extreme degrees of danger and is a rarity among men: one of the 19 champions," according to IntelCenter. Osama bin Laden also
urged sympathizers to join him and what he called the "caravan" of martyrs.
Saudi-born al-Shehri was identified by the US 9/11 Commission as a "muscle hijacker" for his role in helping take over one of the airliners on September 11. Al-Shehri — one of the hijackers on American Airlines Flight 11, which hit New York’s World Trade Center (WTC) — was seen wearing a white robe and headscarf, with a full black beard, speaking in front of a backdrop with images of the burning World Trade Center.
NEW THREAT
"We shall come at you from your front and back, your right and left," al-Shehri said after bin Laden’s introduction, asserting that America would suffer the same fate as the Soviet Union. He also praised the losses the US suffered in Somalia in the late 1990s.
"As for our own fortune, it is not in this world," he said. "And we are not competing with you for this world, because it does not equal in Allah’s eyes the wing of a mosquito."
Last week, bin Laden appeared in his first video in nearly three years. President George W. Bush called the video a reminder of the dangerous world in which we live, and he said it showed the need for all nations to work together against terrorism.
President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice were to hold a moment of silence on the White House lawn. In New York, rescue workers and families of victims began reading out the names of the 2,750 victims killed there.
WOMAN NAMED
Among the names, for the first time, Dunn-Jones, a 42-year-old civil rights attorney, who died of lung disease on February 10, five months after the WTC towers fell. She managed to escape, but not to protect herself against the toxic dust that eventually destroyed her lungs.
Doctors fear many more people have died, or will face death, because of respiratory illnesses and the exposure to the mixture of pulverized concrete, asbestos, mercury and other toxins that wafted over ground zero for close to a year, The Associated Press (AP) news agency reported Tuesday, September 11.
Joseph Jones told AP he doesn’t know how he would feel when hearing the name of his wife while standing for hours with other victims’ families in a small park southeast of ground zero. "It’s just a sense of sadness, really," he said. "It’s just a sense of acknowledgment that…her death was caused by events happening that day."
His words echoed on the eve of September 11, when Christian leaders gathered for a prayer vigil near the White House "praying for God’s protection, blessing and direction for America on the eve of the 6th anniversary of 9/11," BosNewsLife learned.
