Hamza bin Laden's citizenship gets stripped by Saudia Arabia.
As is oft said, "apples don't fall far from their trees..." It will come of no surprise but it would appear that Saudi Arabia has revoked the citizenship of Hamza bin Laden, the son of the late al-Qaida leader who has become an increasingly prominent figure in the terror network -- and whose whereabouts remains in question, the country announced on Friday. Sound familiar? "This is an example of history rhyming," said Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies who studies al-Qaida and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). "He's basically born right after al-Qaida is founded, so his life is totally consumed in the establishment, the formation of al-Qaida and the launching of its war against the West and America."
Hamza bin Laden is now believed to be around 30. He began appearing in militant videos and recordings in 2015 as an al-Qaida spokesman. A United Nations report published last year noted that Hamza bin Laden "continued to emerge as a leadership figure in al-Qaida." It suggested both he and Ayman al-Zawahiri, who took over al-Qaida after Osama bin Laden's death, "are reported to be in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border areas."
As a bit of a news junkie, I am going to find the upcoming "peace negotiations" with Al-Qaeda interesting given that the Taliban have appointed Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who founded the movement with Mullah Mohammad Omar in 1993, as the chief negotiator in the peace talks with the United States, being held in Qatar. Baradar is revered among the Taliban as a charismatic military leader and a deeply religious figure who still reflects the origins of the Taliban movement, when it was founded to end the Afghan civil war and warlordism.in the mid-'90's. With the young whipper snapper bin Laden coming of age, it will be interesting to see just how it all proceeds...and I know "I" will be very interested to see if this kid gets a seat at the table.
Afghan civil war and warlordism in the mid-1990s.