CAIRO, May 24, 2006 (IslamOnline.net) America's number one
public enemy continues to haunt the Bush administration with his
audiotapes, this time refuting claims that Zacarias Moussaoui or detainees
in the notorious Guantanamo detention camp had links to the 9/11
attacks.
"I am responsible for assigning the roles of the 19 brothers
to conduct these conquests and I did not order Zacarias to be with those
on this mission," Osama bin Laden said in an audio recording posted on the
internet.
"His confession that he was assigned to participate in those
raids is a false confession," added the speaker.
"No intelligent person doubts (the confession) is a result of
the pressure put upon him for the past four and a half years."
A US official said they had no reason to doubt the
authenticity of the recording. Washington had authenticated all recent
tapes by bin Laden.
In a new stinging defeat for the Bush administration, a
federal jury on Wednesday, May 3, spared Moussaoui, the only person
convicted for the 9/11 attacks, the death sentence and slapped him with a
life sentence.
After seven days of deliberations, the jury of nine men and
three women did not find Moussaoui's actions resulted in the deaths of
about 3,000 people on 9/11, a central part of the government's demand for
the death penalty.
Three of the 12 jurors found that the role of Moussaoui, a
37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan origin, in the 9/11 operation, if any,
was minor.
Two Groups
Bin Laden said the 9/11 attackers were split in two groups:
pilots and support teams to control the hijacked planes.
Moussaoui was learning how to fly so he could not have been
the so-called 20th hijacker supposed to help control the airplanes as
Washington had claimed, he noted.
"And if Moussaoui was studying aviation to become a pilot of
one of the planes, then let him tell us the names of those assigned to
help him control the plane.
"But he won't be able to tell us their names, for a simple
reason: that in fact they don't exist."
The speaker recalled that Moussaoui had been arrested two
weeks before the attacks.
"If he had known something even very little about the
Sept. 11 group, we would have informed the leader of the operation,
Mohammad Atta, and the others ... to leave America before being
discovered," Bin Laden said.
Moussaoui had pleaded guilty to six charges of conspiracy
over the Al-Qaeda attacks using hijacked planes.
He told the court he would have piloted a fifth airplane into
the White House a contradiction of his earlier claims he was meant to be
part of a second wave of attacks.
Moussaoui later tried in vain to withdraw his guilty
plea.
No Links
Bin Laden also said that the hundreds of detainees held by
the US at Guantanamo have no links with the 9/11.
"Our brothers in Guantanamo ... have no connection whatsoever
to the events of Sept. 11."
He stressed that they were not even Al-Qaeda
sympathizers.
"Many of them have no connection with Al-Qaeda in the first
place, and even more amazing is that some of them oppose Al-Qaeda's
methodology of calling for war with America."
Bin Laden said the Bush administration was well aware of this
fact but they avoid mentioning it for reasons.
"There must be some justification for the tremendous spending
of hundreds of billions of dollars on the Defense Department and other
agencies," he said.
He did indicate that two suspects had links to the attacks on
the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
"All the prisoners to date have no connection to the Sept. 11
events or knew anything about them, except for two of the brothers," he
said without naming or elaborating.
Bin Laden also cleared two journalists and a relief worker of
links to his network, saying they had no such ties.
Sami al-Hajj, an Al-Jazeera cameraman, was arrested in
Afghanistan in 2001 and held at Guantanamo.
Tayssir Alouni, an Al-Jazeera correspondent, was convicted by
a Spanish court of collaborating with Al-Qaeda, a charge he vehemently
denies.
Abdul Aziz al-Matrafi, the founder of an Afghan charity, is
accused by the US of supporting terror.
If authentic, this would be third tape by bin Laden this
year.
In a tape aired on Arab television in April, he denounced the
US and Europe for cutting off funds to the Hamas-led Palestinian
government, accusing them of leading a "Zionist" war on Islam.
In January, he offered the American people a truce. The
message was his first in over a year, his longest period of silence since
the 9/11 attacks.
