Agence France Presse

Munich, January 3

German police experts believe the various videos and tapes attributed to Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US are authentic, according to a report quoted by the weekly Focus which goes on sale on Monday.

It said experts had ruled out the possibility that the tapes had been put together from archive material or otherwise manipulated.

According to Focus, the analyses established that Laden uses modern recording equipment, including a computer. The experts also put forward the hypothesis that the terrorist network has its own recording studio in which it handles its raw material.

The German specialists even analysed a bird-song that could be heard in the background on one of the tapes, and identified it as coming from a bird which only lived in certain regions. Since September 11 2001 around 15 video and audio recordings have been attributed to Laden by various media. The most recent was broadcast by the Dubai-based satellite news channel Al-Arabiya on December 20.

The voice, said to be that of Bin Laden, described Iraq war as a “crusade against Islamic world.”