We have analyzed the tapes of Osama bin Laden for our national TV station. More than one week after the release of the tapes and a couple of days after Americans claimed that the voice is indeed from Osama, Slovenian national TV presented a short report based on our analyses during prime time: TV clip here. What we claim (and claimed) is as follows:

• The tape is not artificially assembled from old speeches.
• The voice is not the same as it was in previous tapes, but is very similar, meaning that this is not (!) the voice of healthy Osama.
• There are two possibilities left:
• It is indeed the voice of Osama, but the voice has changed due to for example health problems.
• It is the voice of another human, very similar, maybe even some relative, but not Osama himself.

Around 2 weeks later Swiss researchers claimed that the voice on the tape is not from Osama.

Here we comment present opinions of American and Swiss scientists. Although our research capabilities are modest compared to worlds best, our remark to American scientists is that they possibly relied too much on the human aspect - if one listens to the tape, the voice seems very similar. But the machine analysis shows important differences between older and the last recording. Our remark to the Swiss researchers is that they relied too heavily on the machine analyses thus eliminating the possibility that the voice has changed e.g. because of health problems.

CNN.com November 13, 2002: Coalition intelligence sources with long experience in listening and analyzing bin Laden's voice tell CNN that the voice on the audiotape belongs to al Qaeda leader. They say there is no indication the tape had been edited in any way, and they think the tape dates from the last two and a half weeks.

BBC News November 29, 2002: A team from the Lausanne-based Dalle Molle Institute for Perceptual Artificial Intelligence, Idiap, said it was 95% certain the tape does not feature the voice of the al-Qaeda leader.