The previously unseen footage showed the al-Qaeda leader sitting with his former lieutenant Mohammed Atef and Ramzi Binalshibh, another suspected planner of the 9/11 terror attacks.

Atef, also known as Abu Hafs al-Masri, was killed by a US airstrike in Afghanistan in 2001. Binalshibh was captured four years ago in Pakistan and is currently in custody in the US.

The station did not say how it obtained the video, which was produced by As-Sahab, al-Qaeda's media branch. It shows Bin Laden wearing a dark robe and white head gear walking outside in a mountainous area.

The television station also broadcast a recording attributed to the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, in which he said he was sure of victory against US-led forces in the country. The recording was posted on an Islamist Internet site as well.

Earlier today the alleged mastermind of the September 11 terrorist attacks also planned to crash airliners into Heathrow, according to documents released by American intelligence.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is accused of planning the Heathrow attack in 2003, as well other plots, and is dubbed "one of history's most infamous terrorists" in documents published by America’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence (Odni).

The information is detailed in profiles of 14 terror suspects who, the US announced yesterday, had been transferred from the secret CIA prisons to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Mohammed, one of the 14, enlisted Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, another of the suspects, as the lead operative for the planned Heathrow attack.

Mohammed, accused of devoting most of his adult life to terrorism, first came to attention after his 1995 indictment over a plan to explode a number of US commercial jets over the Pacific Ocean.

Bin al-Shibh, who was "slated" to be a hijacker for the September 11 operation, according to the documents, fled Afghanistan after the overthrow of the Taleban in late 2001 and headed to Karachi.

There, he and Mohammed worked on "follow-on plots against the West, particularly the Heathrow plot," the US document said.

The statement continued: "He was tasked by KSM to recruit operatives in Saudi Arabia for an attack on Heathrow Airport, and as of his capture, Bin al-Shibh had identified four operatives for the operation."

Bin al-Shibh was captured in September 2002 at a house in Karachi, Pakistan, after a shootout.

For his part, Mohammed, a mechanical engineering graduate, is further accused of plotting to attack a skyscraper on the US west coast with a jet and a 2003 plan to smuggle explosives into gas stations, railways and a bridge in New York. He was arrested in Pakistan in 2003.

This latest information comes into the public domain weeks after British airports were plunged into chaos when police said they had disrupted a plot to blow up transatlantic airliners.

Meanwhile, during a speech about the CIA programme yesterday, President Bush said information from those held had "helped stop a plot to hijack passenger planes and fly them into Heathrow or the Canary Wharf in London".

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