This video, moreover, is so audacious and astonishing that it is impossible not to think that something about it is a put-up job. It provokes all kinds of sceptical questions. When, where and why was the video made? How was it obtained by the Americans? Is it the sole piece of incriminating evidence collected against Bin Laden, or is it just the juiciest bit? If the latter, where is the rest? How long has the video been in American hands and why has it been released at this time? It should not be taken wholly at face value.
Even so, in statement after statement in the video Bin Laden appears to incriminate himself, often chillingly. "We had notification since the previous Thursday that the event would take place that day," he tells his visitors from Kabul. "They were trained and we did not reveal the operation to them until they are there and just before they boarded the planes." Then comes the coldest-hearted of all the remarks: "We calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy who would be killed."
And this: "Due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all that we had hoped for." Maybe this is all mere bravado, rather than the arrogant and evil talk of a man who seems all the time to be courting martyrdom. But there can be very few honest people who will watch the new footage and fail to conclude that Bin Laden is precisely the prime suspect that the United States has always said he is.
The video tells us about other things than Bin Laden's probable guilt, however. When one has got past the thought that the most wanted man in the world is willing to discuss his crimes with Saudi visitors armed only with a video camera, the next most striking thing is how firmly the conversation is saturated in religious fanaticism, in the world of the imagination and in very specific Saudi preoccupations. Bin Laden speaks in riddles, rhymes and religious verses, but his final words - "We will not stop our raids until you free our lands" - are a reminder that his agenda is not focused as much on attacking America as on getting the Americans out of Saudi Arabia.
Nevertheless, this video is likely to help undermine Bin Laden's reputation in the Muslim world as well as to further blacken it in the already hostile west. Muslims who were confident that the case against Bin Laden was just a flimsy excuse for American aggression, and that the true perpetrators of September 11 were the Americans themselves, or the Israeli secret service, or anyone but a Muslim - and there were millions of such people from Luton to Lahore - will find those fantasies that bit harder to sustain to themselves today. Those who are already in thrall to Bin Laden's mystique will brush these difficulties aside. But there is no reason to believe that the average rational Muslim will not be just as persuaded by the evidence of the video as the average rational non-Muslim.
