Blair: Evidence Against Bin Laden Mounting

LONDON – There is evidence linking most of the suicide hijackers in the United States to Usama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network, the government said Wednesday, but it did not release any details in a new dossier.

Background: The British Dossier on Bin Laden

"Of the 19 hijackers involved in 11 September 2001, it has been established that the majority had links with Al Qaeda," according to the document released by Prime Minister Tony Blair's office.

The dossier asserted that there was "evidence of a very specific nature relating to the guilt of Bin Laden and his associates," but said "it is too sensitive to release."

"A senior bin Laden associate claimed to have trained some of the hijackers in Afghanistan," the document said.

The Sept. 11 attacks were "similar in both their ambition and intended impact to previous attacks undertaken by Usama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, and also had features in common."

The British document also cited a video allegedly produced on Oct. 20 that was not released to the media but circulated to Al Qaeda members. In it, the dossier maintains bin Laden came closest to admitting responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks.

"It is what we instigated for a while, in self-defense ... So if avenging the killing of our people is terrorism, let history be a witness that we are terrorists," the document quotes bin Laden as saying.

"The battle has been moved inside America, and we shall continue until we win this battle, or die in the cause and meet our maker," the document quotes bin Laden as saying.

Details of the video were first reported over the weekend in The Sunday Telegraph.

It also quoted him as saying: "The bad terror is what America and Israel are practicing against our people ... what we are practicing is the good terror that will stop them doing what they are doing."

Bin Laden made specific threats against the United States and Britain in the video, the British document said. It quoted bin Laden as saying: "Bush and Blair...don't understand any language but the language of force. Every time they kill us, we kill them, so the balance of terror is achieved."

The 74-point dossier, entitled "Responsibility for the Terrorist Atrocities in the United States, 11 September 2001," does not purport to provide a prosecutable case against bin Laden.