LAWFUEL – The Legal Newswire – CNN claim to have intercepted a video from Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden that praises martyrdom as a weapon. The video was to appear on a radical Muslim website and appears to be a compilation of documentary footage and testimony by fellow militants praising fallen Islamists from north Africa to Tajikistan in central Asia. Some of the militants are seen reading their final testaments.
Reuters report that CNN did not say how the footage had been intercepted. But a segment of the video, produced by al Qaeda’s media arm al-Sahab, was seen on the lauramansfield.com Web site which provides Arabic translations and terrorism analysis.
CNN, which noted it could not verify the authenticity of the 40-minute video and had translated it from Arabic into English, said on its Web site there was no indication of where or when the footage had been shot.
The news network said the video contained old clips but concluded it had been compiled in the last four weeks.
The environment in which bin Laden is shown speaking is similar to that on releases made before the September 11 suicide attacks on the United States by al Qaeda militants in 2001.
Octavia Nasr, CNN’s senior editor for Arab affairs, said bin Laden appears in only a 50-second portion of the video in which he asserts the Prophet Mohammed had wanted to be a martyr.
