Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, in a video broadcast on Al-Jazeera television Friday night, threatened to launch new attacks against the United States similar to the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.

In the video tape purportedly from Bin Laden, the first in more than one year, he directly claimed responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks on the US in 2001.

The video tape was aired just four days ahead of the US presidential election.

Saudi-born multimillionaire Osama bin Laden was branded by Washington as the "prime suspect" behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States and wanted "dead or alive."

Bin Laden, born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 1957, is the 17th child of a Saudi construction tycoon whose family dominated housing and civil engineering in Saudi Arabia.

Bin Laden, educated in Jeddah as a civil engineer, was a giant in the construction sector in his own right. He has an estimated fortune of 400 million US dollars.

He was reported to have at least three wives and more than 20 children.

Bin Laden worked for his father's company before joining in 1979 the US-backed Jihad, or "Holy War," against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, where he founded the "al-Qaeda" military base camp and training center in 1988.

He moved to Saudi Arabia after Soviet troops pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989 and left in the following year for Yemen in disappointment as Saudi Arabia allowed US troops in to attack Iraq in the Gulf War. He went to Sudan after the end of the Gulf War.

Stripped of Saudi citizenship for allegedly channeling fund for terrorism activities in 1994, bin Laden has since been living in Afghanistan. Pulling together several Islamic extremist organizations from different countries and regions,he turned the al-Qaeda network into a nucleus in the campaign of driving Americans and Israelis out of Arab territories.

He was blamed by the United States for bomb attacks on US barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, in 1996, on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and on a US warship in Yemen in 2000.

The United States offered a 5-million-dollar reward for his capture in June 1999. Bin Laden denied involvement in any of the attacks.

The US stormed on bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and its Taliban host in Afghanistan after locking bin Laden as the prime suspect for the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.

Al-Qaeda network was impaired after the swift fall of the Taliban regime, but bin Laden remains at large despite intensive US manhunt employing high-tech and military strength.