DUBAI (TIP): Al-Qaida on September 13 posted an online video of two plane hijackers of the September 11, 2001 suicide attacks, which they said were part of a war to drive US forces out of the Arabian Peninsula.
Salim al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdar, two of the 19 extremists who hijacked the four airliners, appeared reading their wills, in the video titled ‘The Emerging Sun of Victory Over the Victorious Ummah and the Vanquished Crusades’ produced by As-Sahab media arm of al-Qaida and provided by the US-based SITE Monitoring Services.
Mihdar, dressed in a military jacket and white turban, with a machinegun to his left, said he was reading his will on 21 Safar 1422, on the Islamic calendar, which was April 26, 2001. Mihdar is believed to have landed in the US in January 2000. “Arab leaders… have gone far in betraying their nation and have permitted Christian Americans into the land of the two holy sites” of Mecca and Medina, he said.
The operation was “part of jihad campaign against the US and its supporters,” said Hazmi. “It is to restore dignity for Muslims and to drive you out of the Arabian Peninsula,” said Hazmi, who appeared with a patchy beard, wearing a brown thawb garment and a black turban.