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World Botheration Al-Qaeda: United States offers reward for Osama’s son Hamza Bin Laden

The United States is offering a reward of up to $1m (£750,000) for information about one of the sons of the Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.

After his father, Osama Bin Laden was neutralised, Hamza Bin Laden is emerging as a leader of the Islamist militant group.

He is thought to be based near the Afghan-Pakistani border.

In recent years, he has released audio and video messages calling on followers to attack the US and its Western allies in revenge for his father’s killing.

In 2011, US special forces killed Osama Bin Laden in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. He approved the attacks on the US on 11 September 2001, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed.

On Friday, Saudi Arabia’s interior ministry announced it had stripped Hamza Bin Laden of his citizenship.

In March 2018, he appeared in an audio message urging citizens of Saudi Arabia to prepare for jihad against their monarchs.

Details Known About Hamza Bin Laden

Hamza Bin Laden, who is believed to be about 30 years old, was officially designated by the US as a global terrorist two years ago.

The US state department says he married the daughter of Mohammed Atta, who hijacked one of the four commercial aircraft used in the 2001 attacks and crashed it into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York.

Letters from Osama Bin Laden seized from his compound indicated that he had been grooming Hamza, thought to be his favourite son, to replace him as leader of al-Qaeda.

Hamza Bin Laden is believed to have spent years with his mother in Iran, where it is thought his wedding took place, while other reports suggest he may have lived in Pakistan, Afghanistan or Syria.

“We do believe he’s probably in the Afghan-Pakistan border [sic] and… he’ll cross into Iran. But he could be anywhere though in… south-central Asia,” said Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security Michael Evanoff.

The Origin And Expanse Of Al-Qaeda

  • Emerged in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, as Arab volunteers joined US-backed Afghan mujahideen fighting to expel the occupying Soviet forces
  • Osama Bin Laden set up an organisation to help the volunteers, which became known as al-Qaeda, or “the base”
  • He left Afghanistan in 1989, returning in 1996 to run military training camps for thousands of foreign Muslims
  • Al-Qaeda declared “holy war” on Americans, Jews and their allies

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