In the dramatic US raid that killed Bin Laden, his son Hamza escaped. Now he’s taken on his father’s jihad against the West ...
HIS father was Osama Bin Laden, once the world’s most wanted man. And now Hamza Bin Laden, his son and heir, has reputedly married the daughter of one of the 9/11 hijackers, to create what would be an extraordinary dynasty of terror.
Incredibly, he is reported to have wed the daughter of Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian-born terrorist who flew American Airlines Flight 11 into the World Trade Center, one of four hijacked planes that hit targets in Washington and New York.
The disclosure was made by Bin Laden’s family to Martin Chulov, the Guardian’s respected Middle East correspondent.
‘We have heard he [Hamza] has married the daughter of Mohamed Atta,’ Ahmad al-Attas, a half-brother of the dead terror leader, told Chulov. ‘We’re not sure where he is, but it could be in Afghanistan.’
Hamza’s new bride is, apparently, from Egypt, where Atta spent his youth and his 20s. Atta had studied engineering at university in Cairo, then moved to study in Hamburg, where he became evermore radicalised in his support for extremist Islamism.
It’s thought that in the late 1990s he formed links with Al Qaeda, and headed to Afghanistan where he discussed the plan to strike America with Osama Bin Laden.
He’s believed to have set up a terrorist cell back in Hamburg that included two of the other 9/11 hijackers, and in June 2000 flew to New Jersey.
After that, he took flying lessons in Florida and eventually booked himself onto American Airlines Flight 11, with consequences that shook the world.
Although the jihadi was said to have little interest in sex — Chulov writes that ‘some accounts of his adult life had portrayed him as an avowed virgin’ — his daughter is believed to have been born some time around 2001.
CHULOV writes of Hamza Bin Laden: ‘His marriage to the daughter of Atta . . . appears to confirm that the 9/11 alumni remain a central hub of Al Qaeda and the group continues to be organised around Osama Bin Laden’s legacy.’
The extraordinary report about the wedding emerged from an interview conducted by Chulov with Bin Laden’s mother at the family home in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which she shares with two of Osama’s half-brothers and her second husband, who raised Osama from the age of three.
Osama’s mother, Alia Ghanem, told Chulov that in the years after her son became a terrorist leader, ‘my life was very difficult because he was so far away from me. He was a very good kid and he loved me so much’.
She went on: ‘He was a very good child until he met some people who pretty much brainwashed him in his early 20s. You can call it a cult. They got money for their cause.
‘I would always tell him to stay away from them, and he would never admit to me what he was doing, because he loved me so much.’
She claimed it never crossed her mind that her son would become a jihadi. But now her grandson Hamza is following the same path, too.
Hamza Bin Laden’s marriage to the daughter of suicide pilot Mohamed Atta was discussed during the interview by her two sons, who were also present. Such a remarkable union is a story that will put Osama Bin Laden’s most militant child under the spotlight once more.
Last year, Hamza was added to the US Specially Designated Global Terrorist list after he was ‘determined to have committed, or posed a serious risk of committing, acts of terrorism that threaten the security of US nationals or the national security’.
Like his father, Hamza has spent much of his life on the run. His father was killed — but Hamza miraculously escaped — when, in the early hours of May 2, 2011, US Navy Seals arrived to take out the man who cost 3,000 lives on September 11, 2001.
In a shoot-to-kill operation sanctioned by President Barack Obama, the Navy Seals had flown through the night aboard Black Hawk helicopters to Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, an affluent town outside Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital.
There, for six years, the world’s most wanted man had been living in a custom-built million-dollar house inside a walled compound with his three wives, as well as a number of his children and grandchildren, including Hamza.
Everything changed on the night the Bin Laden clan were roused by the sound of American helicopters.
With night vision goggles and lasers picking out targets, a US Seal team overwhelmed armed fanatics guarding the compound, before entering Bin Laden’s house and moving from room to room.
THE building had been plunged into darkness moments before the raid, when CIA spies cut the power supplies. In the gloom, Khalid, another of Osama’s sons, encountered the Seals on the staircase, and was shot dead.
While women and children were pushed to the ground, their hands tied with plastic binds, the Seals encountered Bin Laden in the third floor, and fired at him as he darted into a bedroom. He was found cowering inside, standing behind a woman with his hands on her shoulders.
Robert O’Neill, a long-serving Navy Seal, shot Bin Laden twice in the head and once in the body as he fell to the ground. Another Seal fired more bullets into the body. With adrenaline pumping, O’Neill radioed his commanders: ‘For God and country — Geronimo! Geronimo! Geronimo!’ and added: ‘Geronimo! E.K.I.A’ (enemy killed in action).
A jubilant Obama, watching the unfolding drama from the White House, crowed: ‘We got him.’
Rumours swirled that not all went as planned — and that, incredibly, Bin Laden’s favoured son and heir escaped under the noses of the US special forces.
That appears to be true. Known as the Crown Prince of Terror, Hamza Bin Laden was even pronounced dead by the White House in the aftermath of the raid — only for US officials to later retract this and claim another son had died.
Certainly, Hamza today remains alive and well, having been groomed for a life of terror as a child at jihadi training camps.
Photogenic and charismatic, he is reportedly being used by Al Qaeda’s leadership to help ‘revive the brand’ of the terror