DUBAI (Islamweb & News Agencies) - Washington's allies were quick to judge the latest videotape of Osama bin Laden to be final proof of his guilt on Thursday, but in the Arab world many dismissed the footage as false propaganda.
While some senior Arab officials declared themselves convinced, it was harder to find ordinary citizens who did and most governments in the region maintained silence on the issue.
``I think this recording is forged ... I don't believe this tape is authentic,'' said Sheikh Mohammad Saleh, a Saudi cleric.
Ali, a Saudi civil servant, concurred. ``The picture is real but the voice is not. It could be a voice over,'' he said. ``Do the Americans really think the world is that stupid to think that they would believe that this tape is evidence?'' asked Abdul Latif Arabiat, head of Jordan's mainstream Islamist party the Islamic Action Front.
``In my view this tape has been fabricated by Washington to condemn bin Laden and conceal America's ugly crimes in Afghanistan,'' said Yousef Abdul Hamid, an Amman taxi driver.
A less skeptical Bahraini man said: ``If the recording was real, it only adds that bin Laden was aware of the incident but not necessarily that he had planned it.''
``It is possible that another group was behind it but had informed bin Laden about their plan,'' he concluded from the muffled tape, which was accompanied by an official U.S. translation which some Arabs described as inaccurate.
Many in the Islamic world choose to believe theories that the September 11 attacks were a plot by Israeli secret services to discredit Muslims.