Al-Qaeda has issued a new video featuring footage of one of the 9/11 hijackers speaking his last will and testament.

The tape, issued on the sixth anniversary of the terror attacks on America, features footage of Waleed al-Shehri, a Saudi terrorist whose task was to intimidate the passengers and crew aboard Flight 11 as ringleader Mohammad Atta piloted it into the first of the Twin Towers.

The young man, dressed in traditional Islamic robe and headgear, has been superimposed by the video's editors against a backdrop of the World Trade Center burning.

"We shall come at you from your front and back, your right and left,” al-Shehri says in the tape, asserting that America would suffer the same fate as the Soviet Union. He also praises the losses the United States suffered in Somalia in the late 1990s.

“As for our own fortune, it is not in this world,” he continues.

“And we are not competing with you for this world, because it does not equal in Allah’s eyes the wing of a mosquito.”

The tape – titled The Wills Of The Heroes Of The Raids On New York And Washington, The Will Of The Martyr (As We See Him) Abu Mus'ab Waleed al-Shehri, With A Forward By Sheikh Osama bin Laden – has been obtained by IntelCenter, a US body that monitors Islamic militant websites.

Laura Mansfield, a terrorism analyst who has viewed the tape, said that the first 14 minutes were apparently a still image of Osama bin Laden with a soundtrack of the al-Qaeda leader's voice praising the hijackers, followed by the footage of al-Shehri.

“This talk of mine consists of some reflections on the will of a young man who personally penetrated the most extreme degrees of danger and is a rarity among men: one of the 19 champions (may Allah have mercy on them all),” says what purports to be bin Laden's voice.

“Abu Mus’ab and his brothers made a covenant with Allah that they would be victorious for his religion and they were true to their covenant and they died without having changed.”

Video wills recorded by suicide bombers before they carry out their fatal attacks are a potent part of the myth-making surrounding Islamic terror.

Memorial services and candlelit vigils are being held across America today to commemorate the victims. In New York, the names of the dead were once again being read out, in a ceremony at a park close to Ground Zero. The roll call of names will halt four times, to mark the times when each tower was hit, and when it fell.

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