Inside Osama bin Laden's Afghan lair

Rare images of al-Qaeda leader in Tora Bora during the 1996 visit of a journalist are revealed during US terror trial

Osama Bin Laden at his Tora Bora hideout high in the Afghan mountains in 1996

They show the spartan life of ai quaeda"s leader in the years before terrorists flew airliners into the World Trade Centre in New York and offer a glimpse into the warren of tunnels and fortifications he was building in the remote, mountainous area of Afghanistan known as Tora Bora.

They were taken by Abdel Barri Atwan, a Palestinian journalist who was invited to the hideout in 1996, as part of Bin Laden's propaganda campaign to spread his message of hate around the world.

                      

The images came to light last month in a Manhattan courthouse, only a few blocks from where the Twin Towers once stood. They were shown during the terrorism conspiracy trial of Khaled al-Fawwaz, who acted as Bin Laden's mouthpiece in London during the mid-1990s.

He helped set up bin Laden's first television interview - with CNN's Peter Arnett and Peter Bergen in 1997 - and the visit by Mr Atwan that yielded the photographs.

"I was told that Osama bin Laden was fond of my writing, he liked my style, and he wanted to meet me personally," he was quoted as saying in Mr Bergen's 2006 book, The Osama bin Laden I Know. "I was hesitant, because it was very dangerous."

He arrived in the Afghan city of Jalabad after being asked to leave Sudan in 1996, and promptly set about building a fortified lair in the mountains close to the border with Pakistan, ready for a last stand.

Mr Atwan met bin Laden in a small, book-lined cave. It was location used to film his pronouncements.

"He wanted media exposure," Mr Atwan said. "He wants to say, 'Now I am an international figure; I'm not just a Saudi. I am aggrieved at Americans who are occupying Saudi Arabia who are desecrating the Holy Land.'