The CIA on Wednesday released a vast archive of intimate al-Qaeda documents, including Osama Bin-Laden’s handwritten diary, seized in the deadly 2011 raid on his Pakistani compound. The CIA put online 470,000 additional files seized in May 2011 when US Navy SEALs burst into the Abbottabad compound and shot dead the leader of al-Qaeda’s global extremist network. The inclusion of Hamza Bin Laden’s wedding video, for example, gives the world public the first image of Bin Laden’s favorite son as an adult — an image apparently shot in Iran. Previous document releases, including letters revealed by AFP in May 2015, show that Bin Laden was grooming Hamza to succeed him as leader of al-Qaeda’s global jihadist campaign. Some in Washington are skeptical about the motives behind the release, coming after what the intelligence community had previously said was the last dump from the Bin Laden files.

Source: Dhaka Tribune November 01, 2017 20:03 UTC