New Bin Laden video praises hijacker on 9/11 anniversary
(UPDATE 2) WASHINGTON -- Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden praises one of the September 11 hijackers in a video released Tuesday, the sixth anniversary of the traumatic attacks, reports said.
IntelCenter, a US-based organization that monitors Islamic militant websites, told AFP that it had a copy of the video, which CNN said had appeared on the Internet.
The video appears to only show a still image of Bin Laden with a voice identified as his praising hijacker Walid al-Shehri, who was aboard American Airlines Flight 11 which crashed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, the CNN website reported.
IntelCenter said the video had not been officially released by al-Qaeda's media arm, As-Sahab, and that it lasted just over 47 minutes.
"We believe that the new Bin Laden video is an audiotape with a still picture," IntelCenter head Ben Venzke told Agence France-Presse, adding that his organization was still checking if the video contained moving images.
IntelCenter said the video is titled: "The Wills of the Heroes of the Raids on New York and Washington, The Will of the Martyr [As We See Him] Abu Mus'ab Walid al-Shehri, With a Forward by Sheikh Osama bin Laden."
The organization, which declined to reveal how it obtained the video, was still analyzing the content.
Bin Laden appeared in a video on Friday, his first since October 2004, when he threatened new attacks against the United States just days before the US presidential election.
As-Sahab had said Monday that it would release a second video of the group's leader.
CNN said the video released Tuesday appeared to be purely a eulogy of Shehri, who like Bin Laden hails from Saudi Arabia. There is also no indication of when it was recorded, the US news network said.
In the September 11 attacks, al-Qaeda slammed two jets into the World Trade Center towers in New York, one crashed into the US Defense Department headquarters in Washington and another crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after a passenger uprising. Almost 3,000 people were killed in the worst attack on America since Pearl Harbor.
A second, 47 minute video that allegedly shows al-Qaeda's leader Osama bin Laden has aired on the Internet, the six-year anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Reports are saying that the video only shows an image of bin Laden, much like the ones in the previous tape, but that his voice can be heard praising Waleed al-Shehri, a 9/11 hijacker who was aboard one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center in New York City, American Airlines Flight 11, in a "eulogy" with the title being ''The Wills of the Heroes of the Raids on New York and Washington.''

The tapes authenticity has yet to be verified.

The first videotape of bin Laden was released on September 7 and on Monday, As-Sahab, an Islamic media agency, stated that a new video would be released soon.