Usama bin Laden's brother pleads with terrorist mastermind's son not to follow in his footsteps
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Usama bin Laden’s brother has pleaded with the al Qaeda founder’s son Hamza not to follow in his infamous father’s footsteps.
Hamza bin Laden, officially designated a terrorist by the U.S., surprised his family by going to Afghanistan where he has become an al Qaeda leader under Usama’s former deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, The Guardian reported Friday.
The paper reported that Usama’s brothers, Ahmad and Hassan, shook their heads when asked about their nephew.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“We thought everyone was over this,” Hassan told the Guardian. “Then the next thing I knew, Hamza was saying, ‘I am going to avenge my father.’ I don’t want to go through that again.”
Hassan added: “If Hamza was in front of me now, I would tell him, ‘God guide you. Think twice about what you are doing. Don’t retake the steps of your father. You are entering horrible parts of your soul.’”
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Bin Laden's mother, Alia Ghanem, told the paper that her son was a good man until he was "brainwashed" in college by Islamic radicals.
"He was a very good child until he met some people who pretty much brainwashed him in his early 20s. You can call it a cult," she said.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Bin Laden was the mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks in New York and Washington that killed nearly 3,000 people. He was killed in 2011 in his Abbottabad compound in Pakistan during a daring U.S. Navy SEAL raid.
In January it was reported that Hamza bin Laden’s 12-year-old son was killed in an airstrike along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border sometime in 2017. His father said the boy died a “martyr.”