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Channel: Osama bin Laden | The Guardian

Hamza bin Laden, son of Osama bin Laden, believed dead – reports

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US reported to have had a hand in death of heir to al-Qaida ‘sometime in past two years’

Osama bin Laden’s son, Hamza, who was trying to lead an al-Qaida resurgence, is believed dead, according to US reports.

NBC News reported the US had received intelligence that he had died, citing three American officials. The New York Times, quoting two unnamed officials, also reported Hamza bin Laden had been killed sometime over the past two years, and it had taken time to confirm the death.

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Who is Hamza bin Laden? Heir who sought to revive al-Qaida

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The son of Osama bin Laden, Hamza was seen as an ‘emerging’ figure in al-Qaida before reports of his death

Osama bin Laden’s son, Hamza, is believed to be dead, according to reports out of the US. He had been seeking to stage attacks on western targets with the aim of restoring al-Qaida’s status at the vanguard of extreme jihadist groups, after many years of decline and eclipse by Islamic State

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Hamza bin Laden: the end of a dynasty, but not al-Qaida

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Osama bin Laden’s son was being groomed to be new leader of group responsible for 9/11

For most of the decade that followed the 9/11 attacks in 2001, hardly a day passed without news about al-Qaida. In the last year, by contrast, the Guardian has mentioned the group 11 times.

The event that has put it back in the spotlight is not a terrorist strike against the “Crusader-Zionist alliance” or the “hypocrite, apostate regimes” of the Middle East but the death of a high-profile member.

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No longer does al-Qaida grab the headlines. That might be the plan | Jason Burke

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The death of Osama bin Laden’s son should make us focus on the group’s new modus operandi

Do you remember al-Qaida? Not the al-Qaida of today that no one pays any attention to, but the one of a decade or so ago, with its sinister mastermind leader hidden in the deep cave complexes of the Hindu Kush; the “sleeper cells” all over North America; or, more realistically, its ideology that inspired young men in the UK to travel to Pakistan to be trained in the terrorist techniques used to kill more than 50 people on tube trains and a bus in London.

Probably not. If you’ve given much thought to the organisation in the past year or so, you’re a member of a fairly select group.

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Trump confirms US has killed Osama bin Laden's son Hamza

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Death of son of the al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was reported but not confirmed in July

Donald Trump confirmed on Saturday that the US has killed Hamza bin Laden, a son of the former al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

Bin Laden’s death was reported in July but not confirmed by the US government. The New York Times reported then he was killed some time in the last two years.

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The Guardian view on Baghdadi’s death: not enough to destroy Islamic State | Editorial

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The sociology of violence espoused by Isis will only be defeated by a political project that transcends the religious, nationalist and ethnic schisms in the region

At the end of June 2014 Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was announced as a caliph of all Muslims in a declaration that not only proclaimed a new “caliphate”, but also warned fellow believers in Islam that they must “pledge allegiance and support”. Baghdadi, the latest leader of so-called Islamic State, had made a name for his group with a murderous reign of terror culminating in the shock fall of the city of Mosul into his hands a fortnight earlier. His claims about “crushing the idol of democracy” and defeating “agents of the crusaders and atheists, and the guards of the Jews” were followed by a campaign of genocide, slavery, rape and ultra-violence against Muslims primarily. Baghdadi’s empire-building came to nothing when the “caliphate” collapsed in March this year. The world’s most-wanted terrorist ended his life as a fugitive who decided that he would kill himself rather than surrender to justice. He came to an ignominious end; reportedly cornered by US special forces, Baghdadi blew himself up in a tunnel in Syria, killing three of his children as well.

Unfortunately, Donald Trump could not resist the opportunity to make a series of questionable statements and promote himself. His claim that Baghdadi “died like a dog” was unpleasant, unnecessary and will cause unintended problems for the United States that will require undoing, especially in the Muslim world where canines are considered unclean. It would help first to get the facts straight, instead of shrouding them in the “fog of war”. When Osama bin Laden was killed under the Obama administration in 2011, days after the event it had to offer an account that contradicted its previous assertions. There’s good reason to expect that the Trump White House might have to correct a few self-serving myths in the coming days. The fact that Baghdadi took his own life means that the policy of killing members of terrorist groups as part of America’s war on terror continues without the necessary and longoverdue debate about the ethics and legality of targeted assassinations.

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Experience: I made bombs for al-Qaida

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In 1998, two US embassies were bombed, killing 200 Africans. I no longer wanted to be part of it

I grew up in Saudi Arabia, the youngest of six brothers. By the time I was 13, I had lost both my parents: my father in a traffic accident and my mother to a brain aneurysm.

Not long after they died, in 1992, the Bosnian war began. The evening news detailed atrocities perpetrated against defenceless Muslims, and the papers praised the bravery of the Saudi men who went to fight alongside them. My eldest brother had lectured us on the importance of fighting in defence of Islam, and when I learned that a childhood friend had decided to join the Bosnian mujahideen, I felt someone was paving the way for me.

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The Caravan: Abdallah Azzam and the Rise of Global Jihad review – recent history at its finest

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Thomas Hegghammer delivers a meticulously researched account of a charismatic Islamist

Abdallah Azzam is not exactly a household name – at least when compared with the far more notorious Osama bin Laden. But the militant Palestinian cleric who inspired and mobilised Arabs to come to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union in the 1980s is the most important jihadist figure before the birth of al-Qaida and the continuing consequences of the 9/11 attacks on the US.

Azzam is still revered by many who believe that the Islamic ummah (community/nation) matters more and has greater legitimacy than individual authoritarian Arab and Muslim states. Mosques, fighting units, training camps and websites have been named after him since he was assassinated in Pakistan in 1989. Fans maintain Twitter and Telegram accounts. Uncritical and heroic accounts of his achievements abound – in Arabic and English.

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Joe Biden advised against Osama bin Laden raid, Barack Obama writes

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The then vice-president suggested Obama wait before ordering the mission that killed the al-Qaida leader in 2011, new memoir says

Obama: ‘Americans spooked by black man in White House’ led to Trump presidency

Joe Biden advised Barack Obama to wait to order the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the former president writes in his new memoir.

“Joe weighed in against the raid,” Obama writes in A Promised Land, about discussion of the Navy Seals mission, which he ordered to go ahead as intended in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on the night of 1-2 May 2011.

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'To give him space': Biden reveals why he told Obama to wait on Bin Laden raid

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President-elect in new CNN film tells of agonized discussions but says he subsequently advised Obama to follow his instinct

Joe Biden has revealed why he advised Barack Obama to wait to order the raid which killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May 2011, advice the president did not take.

It was to “give him space”, the president-elect told CNN for a documentary about vice-presidents, President in Waiting, which will broadcast on Saturday night with contributions from all five living former VPs: Biden, Dick Cheney, Al Gore, Dan Quayle and Walter Mondale.

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The day before 9/11: what was life like before the world changed?

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The age of Big Brother and famous football victories seems like another time. But did the terrorists’ planes, as it seemed, really come out of nowhere?

There is always an eeriness in the archives of days that immediately precede tragedy. The newspapers of the day before the Titanic’s maiden voyage, or the reports from the eve of President Kennedy’s visit to Dallas, forever after take on the shadow of innocent, sunlit photos of a suddenly lost loved one. We have come to accept that, 20 years ago this week, on the morning of 11 September, the world as we knew it changed for ever. But from what? What were the immediate befores of that indelible after?

I’ve spent the last few days reading through the papers of the week beginning 3 September 2001, looking for any clues that suggested those were times of relative security and a certain naivety or blitheness, at least in the affluent corners of the west; wondering, with hindsight, if the terrorists’ planes really came out of nowhere, with their era-defining message of hate, as it appeared to so many.

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The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden review – how the son of a brickie became the leader of al-Qaida

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Peter Bergen’s thoroughly researched biography of the notorious Islamist reveals his strikingly mundane, human side

Just over 10 years ago, US special forces killed Osama bin Laden in the house in northern Pakistan where he had been living for several years. The successful operation ended the biggest manhunt in history and is the penultimate chapter of this fine, rigorous and riveting account of the life of the founder of al-Qaida and the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks of 2001.

Peter Bergen was among the first journalists to understand the threat Islamist extremism posed and has since written a series of books on the topic, as well as the US reaction to it. He draws on a wealth of first-hand reporting over 25 years, hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents for this new work. Among the last is new material scooped up during the raid that killed Bin Laden, which has only recently been released.

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Al-Qaida: the terror group that learned the secret of longevity

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Twenty years after 9/11, 33 years after it was first conceived, and against all the odds, the terrorist group survives

In the summer of 1988, a dozen or so men gathered in the sweltering Pakistani frontier town of Peshawar. Across the border in Afghanistan, the war was reaching a bloody climax, as hundreds of thousands of local mujahideen took on the Soviet occupiers and their local auxiliaries.

The men, who probably met in one of the guesthouses that acted as offices and hostels for foreign visitors to Peshawar, were all from the Middle East. Most had been in Pakistan for several years but had played only a very marginal role in the bloody war raging to the west. But a handful had been with their de facto leader, a wealthy Saudi Arabian called Osama bin Laden, when he had fought off a Soviet attack on a base inside Afghanistan a year earlier.

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Lives lost, poverty, an arms race, rights destroyed … the continuing cost of 9/11

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The US has now spent $8 trillion over 20 years in its response to the attacks. But the true price has been more than financial

Successive US administrations since 2001 have spent $8tn – that’s to say $8,000bn or $8 million million – on what George Bush, its progenitor, termed the “global war on terror”. Joe Biden complains that Afghanistan alone cost the US $300m a day for 20 years. These mind-boggling numbers are mere estimates. Their sheer size is hard to comprehend. In any case, it’s absurd to reckon the cost of a worldwide trauma purely in dollars and cents.

So how should a phenomenon that, looked at in the round, is the most epically damaging man-made calamity of recent times be properly measured? The overall cost of the “war on terror” can be gauged in many different ways – in terms of international development, arms spending, environmental impacts, civil and human rights, the rule of law and the balance of power. Yet most striking is the cost expressed in ordinary lives lost and ruined.

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TV tonight: Martin Clunes in a true-crime drama about a case that haunted the Met

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A tense ITV drama serial follows the desperate, seemingly endless hunt for the so-called Night Stalker. Plus, David Beckham’s rise to stardom. Here’s what to watch this evening

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From a Thatcher nutcracker to a Trump toilet brush: my curious collection of political memorabilia

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As a foreign correspondent I used to report on dictators and democrats. Now I collect them

‘Emmanuel Macron? No, we have nothing at all. People were happy for a day or two after he was elected, but now they all hate him.” It was a disappointing response from a souvenir shop owner in the heart of Paris between the Boulevard St Germain and Notre-Dame. Figurines of Marianne, models of the Eiffel Tower and tricolore-draped bric-a-brac were ranged on shelves looking out over the Seine on my visit in 2018. But there was not a hint of the newish man in the Élysée. Not a single bust, figurine, badge or plate. Rien.

Franklin D Roosevelt and Winston Churchill globe cup celebrating the 1941 Lend-Lease agreement to provide support for the allies before the US entered the war. The inscription is: ‘Let’s drink to victory. Let’s drink to peace.’ Bought in Portobello Road, London, 2012

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Prince Charles accepted £1m from family of Osama bin Laden, report claims

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Future king allegedly accepted donation for his charity in 2013 but Clarence House disputes the claims

The Prince of Wales received a £1m donation for his charity from relatives of Osama bin Laden, according to a report.

The Sunday Times alleged that the future king accepted the payment from Bakr bin Laden, the patriarch of the Saudi family, and his brother Shafiq.

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'Justice has been delivered': al-Qaida leader killed in US drone strike, Biden says – video

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US President Joe Biden  has announced  the top al-Qaida leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has been killed in a US drone strike in Afghanistan. The US president described the death of al-Zawahiri, who was Osama Bin Laden’s deputy and successor, as a major blow to the terrorist network behind the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The CIA strike will be seen as a proof of the US’s ability to conduct 'over-the-horizon' operations despite last year’s military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. But it also raised questions over al-Qaida’s continued presence in the country since the Taliban regained power

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Who was Ayman al-Zawahiri? The al-Qaida leader who helped plot its deadliest attacks

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A lifelong jihadist who became Osama bin Laden’s successor, Zawahiri waged a long war of terror against the US and its allies

Sallow-skinned and clad in white in front of a green backdrop, Ayman al-Zawahiri looked a shadow of the man who had terrorised the world for more than a quarter of a century. The first – and last – image of the al-Qaida leader taken in close to 15 years was a far cry from the dour militant on a mountain ridge depicted in earlier shots. Instead it evoked an image of a man who was nearing his time.

And so it was when a US drone finally caught up with Zawahiri, sitting on a balcony in the heart of Kabul, a long way from Afghanistan’s valleys and plateaus, from where he had helped lead a generation of global jihadists and plot a series of terror attacks that had defined modern history.

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Ayman al-Zawahiri obituary

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Founder of al-Qaida with Osama bin Laden who went on to succeed him as its leader

After nearly two decades in hiding, the Egyptian terrorist Ayman al-Zawahiri, successor to Osama bin Laden as head of al-Qaida, has died aged 71. He was killed by two missiles fired from a US drone at his home in central Kabul. Zawahiri provided the arguments and the systematic organisation that persuaded Bin Laden, six years his junior, to operate on an international scale, culminating in the attacks of 11 September 2001 in the US that resulted in more than 3,000 deaths. However, after Bin Laden was killed by US forces in Pakistan in 2011, Zawahiri made threats, but never repeated atrocities against the west on the scale of 9/11.

Once leader, he steered an al-Qaida demoralised by Bin Laden’s death, and later by the emergence in Iraq of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (IS) movement. Though the rival jihadis rapidly outdid al-Qaida in brutality, after five years they were largely crushed, leaving Zawahiri’s now more decentralised operation intact, and spreading.

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