Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man is boasting that he has dodged being captured or killed four times, and confirms one of his close calls came in a 2004 firefight with the Pakistani Army.

It had been speculated that Ayman al-Zawahiri was in a mud hut on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border targeted in March 2004. The raid even prompted Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to stoke expectations of al-Zawahiri’s demise.

But when the dust settled, the al-Qaida chief was nowhere to be found, and U.S. and Pakistani officials said he was probably never there.

In a new videotape, al-Zawahiri swears he was in the mud hut, and that he slipped out the back when the shooting started. He also tries to turn the tables on Musharraf, saying his days are numbered.

“Your American masters are fleeing from Iraq and Afghanistan,” al-Zawahiri warns Musharraf. “So, await a day of accounting for the Muslim blood you have spilt.”

Al-Zawahiri details three other times he was almost nailed by U.S. and Pakistani forces:

¢A U.S. cruise missile attack ordered by President Clinton in August 1998 nearly got him at an Afghanistan training camp.

l Missiles fired in retaliation for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in December 2001 missed him in his Tora Bora mountain hideout in Afghanistan.

¢An American missile attack Jan. 18 in Pakistan that killed al-Zawahiri’s son-in-law.