Latest Bin Laden Tapes Said to Be Part of Documentary Produced By Pro-Al-Qaeda Company
Aired April 18, 2002 - 09:10 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: As we've reported this morning, the latest Osama Bin Laden tapes are said to be part of a documentary reportedly produced by a pro-Al-Qaeda company. The documentary was scheduled to air in full on the Arab Al Jazeera network. But CNN has now learned that Al Jazeera has decided not to air the entire thing. And Hafez Al Mirazi is the Washington Bureau Chief for Al Jazeera. He joins us now this morning. Good of you to join us. Thanks for being with us sir.
HAFEZ AL MIRAZI, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF FOR AL JAZEERA: Thank for inviting me back.
ZAHN: Sure. Help us better understand what's going on here. Will you, in fact, air the entire documentary or not?
AL MIRAZI: Well, if we air the entire documentary, we would be playing into the hands of that production company that is linked to Al-Qaeda and trying to put in propaganda. And the decision has been taken from the very beginning. Since we put the clips, we decided that we're going to put some of that tape. They produced something called a documentary entitled "The Will of the Martyrs of New York and Washington Conquest." What matters for us and what is important for us and significant is not Bin Laden talking but actually the completion or the statement of one of the supposedly hijackers, especially the one who was on United 93 in Pennsylvania.
This is very clear evidence of that Al-Qaeda has been responsible for September 11th and such evidence has been there before, accept that Bid Laden say it was released by the Pentagon and people in the Arab and Muslim world suspected whether it was doctored (INAUDIBLE) or not. This is evidence of their link.
Other than that there's nothing really new or significant in the whole tape.
ZAHN: So what you're saying, sir, this is the first evidence that you have seen that would prove that Osama Bin Laden had something to do with the September 11th attacks?
AL MIRAZI: Exactly. It's from the horses mouth, if we would say, and that's very compelling case for the rest of the world about it and unfortunately we are very disappointed that the - the public diplomacy efforts in the U.S. have not captured and have not tried to use that and to put it outside. It is taken for granted here in the U.S. that the case is settled, that we don't want to make any evidence and when we try to invite people from the government, whether the Justice Department or the Public Diplomacy and the State Department, they decline to be there when we put the documentary today or half hour of that one to present that view and to spin on the fact that the Al-Qaeda did it and that's why people would have to join in the coalition against terrorism.
They missed that opportunity because they speak to the domestic audience and they don't care too much about the outside audience.
ZAHN: So what are you saying the U.S. government should do with this tape?
AL MIRAZI: Well, I'm saying that they should come out and make the case with that tape about the September 11th, about that this is what they suspected from the beginning and that's what they believed in.
And it seems that this is a taken for granted case for the U.S. government and the public relation effort is not in their mind.
For us what matters is that this for the record. We are not there to prove the U.S. point of view or to prove Al-Qaeda point of view. We found in our hands a piece of evidence or something newsworthy and we are putting it out. We found in the tapes things (ph) of a kind of propaganda and ceremonies (ph) of Bin Laden and we don't think that this is worth broadcasting.
ZAHN: All right. You said in parts of it you found propaganda and you won't broadcast that and yet, as Senator Shelby described in our show this morning, one of the most singular indicting things he saw on the tape was a reference you make to one of the Flight 93 hijackers who essentially made a farewell speech celebrating the potential death of Americans. How did you decide what is propaganda and what isn't here?
AL MIRAZI: For us, like I mean if you receive many tapes of Bin Laden and you have to sort it out and find out what is significant in it, it will that add anything to the news or not? If you have Bin Laden praising the September 11th hijackers as in the tape that was released by another network yesterday, that's not news because Bin Laden has been praising them from the very beginning. This one is adding something for the record that this is one of the hijackers and this one is putting a confession. That's what matters for us.
ZAHN: How long has Al Jazeera had this tape?
AL MIRAZI: I think it's about a week before we aired it. We were trying first to make sure that that hijacker, Okma Hasnowi (ph), is really one of them. We compared that the images of that person with the images on the Web site of the FBI and we found almost identical resemblance between both of them. However, so far we haven't heard from the FBI or the Intelligence Committee in the U.S. to confirm that this is really one of them. ZAHN: That's interesting because I know Senator Shelby who sits on the Intelligence Committee said that you know his committee members have seen this tape. How did you find out about this tape? Was it something that was sold to you?
AL MIRAZI: It was not sold. We received it in our main headquarters of Al Jazeera in Dohacarter (ph) like many other tapes before. That's a production company that's trying to put out Bin Laden tapes. And when before we tried to air it and we did air it out about four to five minutes of Bin Laden's tape that we broadcast last November in which he was making reference to specific U.S. targets in the Arab and Muslim world asking his followers who were targeted.
We found this is something we should not put out and we edited out five minutes of it. So what we found out two weeks later that they were distributing a VHS copy of the whole tape without editing in Pakistan and other Muslim countries. The same thing with the latest tape of Bin Laden that was put by another Arab network yesterday. We were given that tape before - two months before, we found nothing in it and we did not put it out. Then they went to another company to put it out for them. They are trying to put their message out saying that Bin Laden is still there or Al-Qaeda is still there. And there's nothing so far to prove in all of these tapes that Bin Laden is dead or alive.
ZAHN: Mr. Al Mirazi, we just have 15 seconds left. I know Senator Shelby said he - there's no way of proving this but he thought perhaps the tape was shot sometime in November or December. When do you think it was shot?
AL MIRAZI: The tape is a collection of many footages that was shot in different times. For example, the hijacker testament or will has recorded according to the what we have on the tape on March 6th, 2001. That's six months before September 11th. Bin Laden tape that has the background, a natural background behind him it gives the fall in Afghanistan. That has to be at the end of September, early October but nothing later than that.
ZAHN: All right. Hafez Al Mirazi, Washington Bureau Chief of Al Jazeera, thank you very much for spending some time with us here this morning.
AL MIRAZI: Thank you.
ZAHN: Appreciate it.
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