WASHINGTON, Aug 19: CNN television began early on Monday broadcasting a secret library of Al Qaeda training videotapes, casting new light on the inner workings of the terror network, its training tactics and chemical gas experiments.

Experts consulted by the network said the cache of videotapes demonstrates that the terror network blamed for the September 11 attacks may be even more sophisticated than previously thought, adept at handling chemical agents and possibly making chemical weapons.

The archive of 64 videotapes, which spans more than a decade, also show previously unseen images of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden and his top aides, including the Saudi exile’s personal security arrangements and training procedures for terrorists.

The network’s weeklong series of broadcasts began with chilling footage that showed the effects of a poison nerve gas on three dogs, which died in the experiments.

“I think what we have here is a very crude binary weapon,” said Jonathan Tucker, a weapons expert consulted by the network in Monday’s broadcast.

Virtually all the tapes, recovered from inside Afghanistan, pre-date the attacks of September 11, although one features segments from televised news reports of the attacks on New York and Washington, CNN said.

The network said it had shown the tapes to several experts who said the footage depicted Al Qaeda operatives training in the field, practicing urban combat, assassinations and kidnappings.

Rohan Gunaratna, who has testified to the US Congress, the United Nations and the Australian parliament about the terror group, said he believed the tapes were intended only for Al Qaeda eyes.

“The collection has Al Qaeda videos taken by Al Qaeda of events,” the Al Qaeda expert said in remarks published on CNN’s website.

“Whenever Osama bin Laden met with foreign journalists, he always had his own cameraman. And it is those tapes that are there, because that itself shows that this is the Al Qaeda library.”

“This is their history, the record room of Osama bin Laden,” Gunaratna added.

CNN correspondent Nic Robertson said an Afghan source passed him the tapes after he spent 17 hours in a car, traveling from the Afghan capital Kabul to a remote part of the war-torn country.

The source told the reporter the tapes had been found in an Afghan house where Osama had stayed.

Some of the tapes are video training manuals, one among them showing how to make purified TNT from easy-to-get materials.

Another scene shows bin Laden with his security detail, firing shots in the air as they prepare to announce their new jihad against Americans in 1998, CNN said.—AFP