Laughing 9/11 bombers
in new al-Qaida video

Ziad Jarrah and Mohammed Atta

Five years after Mohammed Atta piloted an American Airlines plane into the north tower of the World Trade Center, a videotape has surfaced showing him and fellow 9/11 plotter, Ziad Jarrah, laughing together in Osama bin Laden's Afghan compound as they read their "martyrdom" wills for the camera.

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Based on the hour-long video's time date, Atta was in Afghanistan with Jarrah, who hijacked United Flight 93 which crashed in Pennsylvania, on January 18, 2000.

The new information is the first to show Atta at a training camp in Afghanistan and the first to show him together with Jarrah. Experts say it fills in a missing gap in our knowledge of the unfolding plot.

Investigators in the U.S. and Germany have been unable to track Atta after he moved from Hamburg in January 2000. The tape places him in Afghanistan, with bin Laden, at the moment he was given command of the operation and just months before he and Jarrah enrolled in U.S. flight schools.

The high quality video was obtained by the London Times and validated by the newspaper's contacts in al-Qaida and the U.S. It lacks a sound track and efforts at lip reading the pair as they speak have been unsuccessful.

The video shows both mean laughing, smiling and well groomed, becoming sober only when they read a document labeled "the will" in Arabic. An AK-47 is propped against the wall as they speak.

On the same tape, unedited footage taken 10 days prior to Atta's and Jarrah's appearance, shows bin Laden addressing a group at his compound near Kandahar. Among those identified in the crowd is Ramzi Binalshibh, allegedly a central figure in the 9-11 terror attacks who has since been captured.

Government officials have alleged that Binalshibh – who tried unsuccessfully at least three times to enter the United States and take flying lessons before Sept. 11, 2001 – may have planned to join the hijack effort. Now officials have said he is cooperating with authorities.

Attah and Jarrah stood out from the other 17 hijackers, most of whom were young Saudi fundamentalists. They were well educated and fit into western society while studying in Germany, according to those who knew them there.

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