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US airs tape showing Laden's 'complicity' in strikes

In an amateur video released by the Pentagon on Thursday, Saudi renegade Osama bin Laden was shown 'admitting' that he had planned the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

In the 40-minute videotape Laden explained in detail planning aspects of the operation.

He said he expected the floors above the points where the hijacked planes hit the World Trade Centre to collapse.

"We calculated in advance the number of enemy casualties based on the position of the tower," he said, according to a transcript translated into English from the Arabic.

"Due to my experience in this field (construction business), I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only," he said. "That is all that we had hoped for."

He also said the hijackers who seized the four airliners on September 11 had little knowledge of their operations.

Laden was shown as saying that the hijackers knew they were on a martyrdom operation, but were not given prior details.

"The brothers who conducted the operation, all they knew was that they have a martyrdom operation," Laden said.

"We asked each of them to go to America but they didn't know anything about the operation not even one letter. But they were trained and we did not reveal the operation to them until they are there and just before they boarded the planes."

The videotape, which was of poor quality, was reportedly recovered from a house in Jalalabad in Afghanistan. The US administration wrestled for days over a decision whether to reveal it to the public, fearing that the poor quality would affect its credibility.

Agencies

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