US releases ‘bin Laden video tapes’

The US has released five video clips of Osama bin Laden that it says were taken from the Pakistani compound where the leader of al-Qaeda was killed last week in a raid.

One shows him rehearsing a text statement and another has him watching news coverage of himself on TV.

Al Jazeera’s Rosiland Jordan, reporting from the Pentagon on Saturday, said that the video clips were shown to journalists, but the sound was removed from them.

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“We did see a video of Osama bin Laden watching video of himself on what appears to be Al Jazeera,” she said.

Speaking to Al Jazeera from Washington DC, Wayne Madsen, an investigative journalist, said it was still difficult to confirm that all these videos do show bin Laden, as some were not clear.

“There are going to be many more questions raised after the release of these videos, because there have been videos and images in the past that were thought to be of bin Laden, but some of those turned out to be fake,” he said.

In another video, bin Laden had apparently dyed and neatly trimmed his beard for the filming of taped remarks.

The video, which the US released without sound, was titled “Message to the American People” and was believed to be made sometime last year, a senior intelligence official said during a briefing for reporters.

None of the videos released had any sound and there was no way of confirming dates either.

Compound videos

Earlier on Saturday, Al Jazeera aired new footage of the compound where bin Laden was killed, video that showed the interiors of the house where he is thought to have been hiding for up to six years.

Filmed during daylight hours, there is no doubt that the compound is where bin Laden was shot and killed by US forces, Al Jazeera’s Imtiaz Tyab said, reporting from outside the house in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

“These pictures … give a sense of just how Osama bin Laden – the world’s most wanted fugitive – lived relatively undetected right here in Abbottabad,” he said.

It was not immediately clear how long after the raid the footage was taken.

Our correspondent said Pakistani forces have been in charge of the house since the US operation.

“They, presumably, have taken with them what they deemed important as well,” he said.

Meanwhile, Pakistanis stepped up calls for senior government officials to resign, with some of the sharpest language directed at the army and intelligence chiefs.

The calls marked a rare challenge to the most powerful men in the country, who are more accustomed to being feared than publicly criticised.

“It was an attack on our soil, and the army was sleeping,” Zafar Iqbal, a 61-year-old retired bureaucrat in the central city of Lahore, said.

He singled out the leaders of Pakistan’s army, air force and the main intelligence organisation – General Ashfaq Kayani, Air Chief Marshal Rao Qamar Suleman and General Ahmed Shuja Pasha – saying they all should be forced to resign.

In contrast, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, a former foreign minister and member of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party, fixed the blame squarely on Asif Ali Zardari, the president, and Yousuf Raza Gilani, the prime minister.

“This is a great violation of our sovereignty, but it is for the president and prime minister to resign and no one else,” Qureshi said.

The Pakistani army has said it had no idea bin Laden was hiding for up to six years in Abbottabad, an army town only two and a half hours’ drive from the capital, Islamabad.