Home videos of Osama bin Laden seized from the Pakistani compound where he was killed have been released by the Pentagon.
One tape shows him preparing a video message addressed to the United States while in another Bin Laden, looking like an elderly grandfather with a cap on his head and blanket around his shoulders, holds a TV remote control in his hide-out and watches himself on television. The videos offer the world a tiny glimpse of Bin Laden's life on the run.
The most extraordinary video shows the visibly ageing terrorist in a very different way to normal glimpses of al-Qaida's dead leader.
Gone is the gun-toting rebel or the scholarly sheikh dictating messages to the outside word. Instead he is shown with greying hair and a grey beard, rocking back and forth as he watches stories about himself on al-Jazeera.
Sitting on the floor, with the TV perched on a ramshackle wooden desk in a room draped with electrical wires, Bin Laden intently watches the screen and then repeatedly changes channels, always watching stories about himself. At one stage Bin Laden – apparently while in his bolthole – watches older video of himself clambering up a steep mountain. He also gestures and speaks to someone off-camera.
The tapes, released by American intelligence officials, were among a trove of DVDs and computer hard drives that have been described as the single greatest intelligence haul in the fight against al-Qaida. It also contained telephone numbers and other information that will probably lead to further breakthroughs. That haul has led to at least one public alert that al-Qaida was actively considering attacking the American rail network, possibly by tampering with tracks, which led to a security alert being sent out to law enforcement agencies by the Department of Home Security late last week. A special task force has been set up to deal with the leads being generated and to analyse all the intelligence.
At a briefing at the Pentagon, officials gave reporters more details of the raid, saying DNA tests proved the man killed was the 54-year-old Bin Laden.
Other videos released to the media yesterday showed a more familiar image of Bin Laden. One, apparently recorded last year in either October or November, was titled "Message to the American people".
Audio from the video was not released but it apparently contained a condemnation of the US and of global capitalism. That video showed that Bin Laden always dyed his hair and beard black before making broadcasts. In the clip shown to reporters, Bin Laden is wearing a dramatic gold and white robe and a white cap. His beard and hair are almost jet-black and he looks years younger. Officials said they were not releasing the sound as they did not want to appear to be helping spread the content of Bin Laden's speeches.
The remaining videos were also apparently for an international audience. One was almost a "blooper reel" as it shows Bin Laden making a mistake while delivering a speech and then starting again.
The release of the videos was clearly intended by the US to portray Bin Laden as someone obsessed with his own public image. But intelligence officials also said that they showed Bin Laden was still active in al-Qaida on both a strategic and tactical level when they were made. That goes against the opinion of some terrorist experts who had long assumed Bin Laden had been more of a symbolic figurehead than active leader while he was in hiding. The intelligence officials told reporters they believed the Abbottabad compound was an "active command and control centre" where Bin Laden kept control of al-Qaida.