Six years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks took nearly 3,000 lives, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden appeared in a new video during which he praised the 19 Islamic fundamentalists who carried out the attacks on the World Trade Center twin towers and the Pentagon.

For 47 minutes bin Laden and one of the extremists who hijacked a commercial airliner spoke about the suicide mission and encouraged other fundamentalists to carry out similar attacks.

Over the past years, al-Qaeda aired the last words of one of the suicide attackers on September 11, when Americans across the country pay a tribute to those killed six years ago. Until now, the terrorist organization’s leader hasn’t appeared in any of the videos showing the dead hijackers.

In fact the video released late Monday represents the testament of Walid al-Shehri, bin Laden introducing the video under the title of “The Wills of the Heroes of the Raids on New York and Washington.”

Bin Laden appears in a still photograph, while his purported voice presents “one of the 19 champions ... who personally penetrated the most extreme degrees of danger,” as the IntelCenter translated into English his statement.

IntelCenter is a company founded more than a decade ago in the United States, which has the purpose of studying “terrorist groups and other threat actors.”

Scenes from the terrorist attacks are shown in the background, as a photo of bin Laden is posted in the forefront before al-Sheri begins to describe the suicide operation as being a “medicine” for the “illness” of those who don’t believe in Islam. Bin Laden said others should followed the same path as al-Sheri.

The White House said bin Laden remains al-Qaeda’s “symbolic leader,” but he can’t do more but send tapes and is “virtually impotent.”

“The United States remains vigilant about al-Qaeda,” White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said. “Certainly, we'd love to find bin Laden. That has not changed.”

This latest video of bin Laden stirs up some controversy among US politicians, the Bush administration being once again criticized for deviating in the Iraq campaign from the primary goal: crush al-Qaeda into submission.

Meanwhile, the aggrieved families and friends of the 9/11 victims gathered in New York City at Zuccotti park to pay another tribute to their loved ones. For the first time, the commemoration didn’t take place at Ground Zero, because of the construction work.

Even so, relatives of those killed six years ago walked down a ramp and laid flowers in the pit of Ground Zero, that will soon be the site of new imposing towers due to be finished by 2010.

Rain drops merged with tears of dozens of people who remained without a friend or family member when the twin towers crumbled after being struck by two hijacked planes. Other people lost their lives when a third plane was flown into the Pentagon, in Arlington County, Virginia and a fourth airliner crashed on a field Pennsylvania.

The passengers tried to regain control over the plane that was reportedly heading towards another symbol of the US in Washington.