Hamza bin Laden, the son of late al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, is believed to be dead, U.S. officials said Wednesday, pointing to evidence that confirms their beliefs.
They added that the United States had a role in the death, but refused to give additional details due to the sensitivity of the information. The New York Times wrote that Hamza bin Laden, widely considered an eventual heir to al Qaeda’s leadership, was most likely killed in a strike sometime during the first two years of the Trump administration.
It also wrote that he was certainly dead by the time a $1 million reward was announced by the State Department earlier this year when intelligence agencies had not yet received the information regarding his killing.
However, the outlet notes that his death did not, in reality, represent the removal of a threat because the terrorist organization had not conducted a more serious attack in years and bin Laden had not yet taken over the group.
Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent, who has written about al Qaeda in detail, advised caution saying that it was highly atypical for the terrorist group to conceal the death of one of their leaders and not celebrate him as a martyr. But, if the information the U.S. government possesses is true, that would significantly affect “Al Qaeda’s plans for moving to the second generation,” Soufan noted.
CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank echoed his comments, saying the secrecy around Hamza bin Laden’s death is puzzling researchers closely tracking al Qaeda.
The future leader of the group had threatened with attacks on the U.S. multiple times, releasing “audio and video messages on the Internet, calling on his followers to launch attacks against the United States and its Western allies,” the State Department said at the time it announced the reward.
When asked about the news, President Donald Trump refused to comment.
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