– Groomed as successor –
It was not possible to independently verify the origin of the documents or the accuracy of the CIA translation.
Officials said the seized documents showed the “enormous toll” counterterrorism operations had on Al-Qaeda, including its inability to replace leaders it had lost.
“Bin Laden at the time of his death had recognized this peril and planned to bring his son Hamza to his Abbottabad compound to groom him as a successor,” a senior intelligence analyst told AFP.
Hamza had not seen his fugitive father in eight years, and described the “pain of separation” he felt at age 13 and his hopes of a reunion as a young man of 22.
“You bid us farewell and we left, and it was as if we pulled out our livers and left them there,” he wrote.
After Hamza’s release from house arrest, top Al-Qaeda lieutenant Atiyah Abd al-Rahman wrote to bin Laden on April 5, 2011, one month before his death, detailing three possible ways to shepherd Hamza to his father.
The “least dangerous option” was sending him through Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, which borders Iran, to the teeming port city of Karachi, Abd al-Rahman said, writing under the pseudonym Mahmud.
Meanwhile, Abd al-Rahman arranged for Hamza “to attend a course on explosives,” he wrote.
As the plan emerged, Hamza’s brother Khalid wrote to say Hamza should use a fake ID and driver’s license to safely navigate Baluchistan.
Abd al-Rahman wrote Bin Laden promising to train Hamza in firing various weapons, adding that the young man was “very sweet and good.”
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