Bin Laden ‘tried to set up satellite dish to watch 9/11’

Osama bin Laden tried to set up a satellite dish so he could watch the 9/11 bombings live on TV – but, like the Americans who hunted him, he was foiled by the mountainous terrain of his Afghan hideout, according to his former bodyguard.

Nasser al-Bahri, who spent three years by the al-Qaeda leader’s side, reveals his conversations with bin Laden and his experiences as an al-Qaeda employee in a new book, In the Shadow of Bin Laden, written with French journalist Georges Malbrunot.

Al-Bahri reported: "He asked for satellite TV to be able to follow the bombing." He even had a media chief, Hassan al-Bahloul, who he told on the fateful day: "It is very important that we are able to watch the news today." However, al-Bahri recounts that bin Laden was unable to get a signal in his hideout in rugged Kandahar.

The vision of the feared al-Qaeda leader becoming progressively angrier while his hapless underlings try to tune in to CNN on September 11 2001 would not be out of place in the new film Four Lions, to be released in cinemas on May 7.

The protagonists of satirist Chris Morris's film are a group of bungling Islamist terrorists planning to don ridiculous fancy dress costumes in a plot to blow up the London Marathon.

Al-Bahri's meeting with Mohammed Atta, the leader of the 9/11 bombers was similarly bizarre. Al-Bahri says he met Atta - who was famously so strict his co-conspirators called him "the Ayatollah" - in a safe house in Pakistan where "he was playing video games on a PlayStation where he was flying a plane".

Al-Bahri became friendly with the plotters – although he claims to have known nothing of their mission to destroy the World Trade Center.

He tells the French newspaper Metro that he met bin Laden in 1997 and was made his bodyguard after he disarmed a man who threatened the al-Qaeda leader. He appears to have been trusted implicitly: "One day [bin Laden] handed me a pistol and said: 'If the Americans ever surround us, I want you to kill me with this weapon'."

But the new bodyguard appears to have soon doubted his boss's agenda. The Daily Telegraph reports that after al-Qaeda’s 1998 bombings of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, al-Bahri asked why over 200 civilians were allowed to die.

Bin Laden replied: "And the Americans who imposed an embargo on Iraq, how many innocent deaths did they make?" Al-Bahri shot back: "OK, sheikh, but must we compare ourselves to our enemies?"  

Bin Laden appears to have appreciated al-Bahri’s honesty: "He used to say that I had a transparent personality, that I hid nothing, even if we had disagreements."

But by the time of the attacks, al-Bahri was in prison, having been arrested in Yemen. It was he who helped the CIA link the 9/11 attacks, which he describes as "one of the darkest days of my life", to bin Laden. It was his contacts in al Qaeda who passed on the information about bin Laden's attempts to tune in to the news.

As for the debate over whether the al-Qaeda leader still lives, al-Bahri is sure he does: "His death, even if it was not announced immediately for internal reasons, would end up being known in jihadist circles and on the internet." ·