Osama Bin Laden's son shown as adult for first time in home video discovered at Pakistan compound
Hamza bin Laden is seen sitting with a group of men as he verbally agrees to get married in unearthed wedding video
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Your support makes all the difference.Video footage of Osama Bin Laden’s son as an adult on his wedding day has emerged for the first time after the CIA released more than 470,000 documents taken from the Abbottabad compound in 2011.
Hamza bin Laden, believed to be Osama’s favourite son and his heir as head of al Qaeda, has only been seen before in childhood photographs which were used as propaganda by the terror group.
It is believed the group has not released images of him as an adult for his own safety.
The hour-long video shows Hamza as he prepares for his wedding and is believed to have been recorded around 10 years ago, when he was around 17 or 18 years old and living under house arrest in Iran.
The footage shows Hamza sitting on the floor with a group of men while another man is heard chanting passages from the Quran in the background.
He is heard verbally committing to his marriage “on the book of God and the example of the prophet. Peace be upon him”.
The identity of the bride is unclear and Hamza is believed to have been married more than once, though his marriage to the daughter of another senior al Qaeda leader, Abu Mohammed al-Masri, is well known.
It is unclear how the wedding tape came into the possession of Osama who is believed to have spent most of the 10 years between the 9/11 attacks and his death in 2011 living in his secret compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
The documents were originally retrieved after six Navy Seals stormed the compound shooting Osama and another son, Khalid bin Laden, dead.
They were released on Wednesday following a request by the Long War Journal – a website that chronicles the West’s war on terror.
The documents were mostly in Arabic, including Osama’s untranslated 228-page private journal, as well as other documents which officials say demonstrate US intelligence estimates that the 54-year-old had continued as the operational commander of al Qaeda even in the months leading up to his death.
The CIA said “the materials provide insights into the origins of fissures that exist today between al Qaeda and Isis; as well as strategic, doctrinal and religious disagreements within al Qaeda and its allies; and hardships that al Qaeda faced at the time of Bin Laden's death.”
The documents also show the more complex relationship between the Sunni-dominated terror group and Iran.
Iran is run by Shia clerics and is the sworn enemy of the Sunni powers, such as Saudi Arabia, which have often been accused of funding al Qaeda.
Two US officials told NBC News that a 19-page report assessing al Qaeda’s relationship with Tehran was “evidence of Iran’s support of al Qaeda’s war with the United States”.
According to the officials Osama dispatched members of the group to Iran to talk to its leaders shortly after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which killed more than 3,000 people.
At various points Tehran is alleged to have offered al Qaeda help in the form of “money, arms” and “training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon” in exchange for attacking US and Saudi targets.
Iran has vigorously denied that it cooperated with al Qaeda.
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