'Jazeera' TV says it has al-Qaeda confession

Dubai, United Arab Emirates (Reuters): Arabic television station Al-Jazeera said on Thursday it had confessions from two men it identified as members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network claiming the group was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.

A Jazeera official identified the two men as Yemen-born Ramzi bin al-Shaibah, a former room-mate of Mohamed Atta, one of the 19 hijackers of the aircraft which were flown into U.S. landmarks.

The other man, Khaled al-Sheikh Mohammad, appears on a U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) Web site list of most-wanted "terrorists". The Web site however does not link him to al-Qaeda. Shaibah was not on the FBI most-wanted list.

In the first part of a documentary aired on Thursday, the Qatar-based channel, noted for its footage of bin Laden, said the two men were interviewed in Karachi, Pakistan, but did not say when.

"In the second part of this documentary, there will be the first direct confession as to how al-Qaeda planned and executed the Sept. 11 (attacks),"Yosri Fouda, the journalist who prepared the documentary, said. The second part will be aired on next Thursday.

The interviews were arranged by an al-Qaeda liaison officer, identified by the channel as Abu Bakr. It gave no further details about the interview.