Osama bin Laden urged his followers to join the "caravan" of martyrs as he hailed one of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers in a new video that emerged Tuesday to mark the sixth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
This year's video showed hijacker Waleed al-Shehri, addressing the camera and warning the U.S.: "We shall come at you from your front and back, your right and left."
The latest videotape of the hijacker's testament starts with an audiotape introduction by bin Laden. While his voice is heard, the video shows a still image of him, raising his finger. In the image, bin Laden has the same dyed-black beard and the same clothes that he had in Saturday's video.
In the tape, bin Laden praised al-Shehri, saying he "recognized the truth" that Arab rulers were "vassals" of the West and had "abandoned the balance of (Islamic) revelation." "It is true that this young man was little in years, but the faith in his heart was big," he said, according to the AP.
"So there is a huge difference between the path of the kings, presidents and hypocritical Ulama (Islamic scholars) and the path of these noble young men," like al-Shehri, bin Laden said. "The formers' lot is to spoil and enjoy themselves whereas the latters' lot is to destroy themselves for Allah's Word to be Supreme."
"It remains for us to do our part. So I tell every young man among the youth of Islam: It is your duty to join the caravan (of martyrs) until the sufficiency is complete and the march to aid the High and Omnipotent continues," he said.
After bin Laden speaks, the video of al-Shehri appears. Al-Shehri - one of the hijackers on American Airlines Flight 11, which hit the World Trade Center - is speaking in front of a backdrop with images of the burning World Trade Center.
"We shall come at you from your front and back, your right and left," al-Shehri said, asserting that America would suffer the same fate as the Soviet Union.
He also praised the losses the United States 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."
