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Published bin Laden will denounced as false

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LONDON, England (CNN) -- The will attributed to Osama bin Laden published in an Arab news magazine last week is false, according to a statement posted on a Web site said to be connected to al Qaeda.

The alleged will was printed in Al-Majalla, an Arabic weekly based in London. The document, signed December 14, 2001, advised bin Laden's sons to stay away from al Qaeda, urged his wives not to remarry, and appeared to cast blame on bin Laden's friends, the Taliban, for abandoning him.

But a strongly worded statement posted on the alneda.com Web site, which claims to carry news and communiqués from al Qaeda, says the will is false and that "it is a ruse by Al-Majalla to get more subscribers."

"We don't want to get into a war with Al-Majalla because our basic war is with the Jews and Crusaders, but the pressure for victory in jihad means we must respond to this fake will," the statement says. "The way we saw how Western news carried the story of this fake will, we decided it was time to respond."

The statement goes on to offer a point-by-point refutation of the alleged will, noting, for example, that no Muslim has the right to tell his wives not to remarry after his death because that violates the Koran.

It also says the bin Laden signature on the will was false.

Hani Nakshabandi editor-in-chief of Al-Majalla said the will was written late last year and was obtained by one of his reporters posted near Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan. He said the magazine waited to publish it until it could confirm its authenticity.

U.S. government officials have said they could not determine if the purported will was genuine.

The alneda.com statement said that Al-Majalla has lied in previous articles about al Qaeda, including a claim that it was the first to enter caves being used as al Qaeda hideouts in Afghanistan. It said it would take "10 pages" to refute the "lies" printed by the magazine, "so a magazine like this is making a fool out of the readers who hope to get information from it."

-- CNN Senior Producer Henry Schuster and Hayat Mongodin contributed to this report



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