It was reported that Hamza Bin Laden, the son of notorious al-Qaeda head Osama Bin Laden, married the daughter of Mohamed Atta, one of the ringleaders of the 9-11 attacks. It is unclear whether this marriage is intended more as an expression of Hamza’s terrorist aspirations or a genuine move toward domestic bliss.
In an interview with The Guardian, Ahmad al-Attas, Hamza’s half-brother, let slip a tiny bit of information about her grandson.
“We have heard he has married the daughter of Mohammed Atta,” he said. “We’re not sure where he is, but it could be Afghanistan.”
Mohamed Atta piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001. Atta was not known to have had any children and his will, written five years before the attack, made no mention of any offspring.
The Bin Laden family is enormously wealthy and intimately connected with the innermost circles of the Saudi royal family. They rarely speak to the media about Osama, who was killed along with his son, Khalid, in a 2011 Navy SEALS raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Another of his son’s, Saad, was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan in 2009.
Hamza, born in 1989 to one of Osama’s three wives, has been the focus of a global search by U.S. intelligence due to his personal connection with al Qaeda. The U.S. government labelled him a specially designated global terrorist in January 2017. Documents seized in the raid that killed Osama indicated that he was grooming Hamza to replace him.Hamza threatened revenge against the U.S. and its allies in a 21-minute audio recording posted online in 2016.
In The Guardian interview, Hamza’s uncle expressed regret that his nephew was continuing in Osama’s terrorist footsteps.
“We thought everyone was over this,” Hassan said. “Then the next thing I knew, Hamza was saying, ‘I am going to avenge my father.’ I don’t want to go through that again. If Hamza was in front of me now, I would tell him, ‘God guide you. Think twice about what you are doing. Don’t retake the steps of your father. You are entering horrible parts of your soul.’”
