WASHINGTON, Dec 14: The Council on American Islamic Relations has said it is clear from the Osama bin Laden’s videotape released by the US on Thursday that Osama was involved in and had foreknowledge of the Sept 11 attacks.

The council’s spokesman, Ibrahim Hooper, said he was “sickened” by Osama’s contention that Islam had somehow benefited from the attacks.

The American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee said the tape would pinpoint the perpetrators of the attacks and lift the cloud of suspicion from the rest of the Muslim world. Spokesman Hussein Ibish said such a “chilling piece of evidence ought to really focus our attention on the people who did this act. ... And it militates rather strongly against expanding the war into unrelated adventures.”

But the president of the Washington-based Muslim Students Association, Altaf Hussain, was quoted as saying the tape “didn’t sit well” with him, and he wondered why Osama had seemed so calm in a moment when his entire operation was under attack. And why, the student leader asked, should a man obsessed with security leave a tape like this lying around. “I want to give the (US) government the benefit of the doubt. But there are too many open questions.”