A new intelligence report alleges Osama bin Laden's eldest son deceived the CIA into believing he died in a 2019 airstrike, and has since been secretly appointed al-Qaeda's top leader.
Hamza bin Laden, now 37, allegedly staged his own death with help from al-Qaeda and the Haqqani Network, a powerful militant faction sometimes called "the Sopranos of Afghanistan" for its grip on Taliban politics. The intelligence assessment, first reported by the Daily Mail, claims Hamza has spent the years since building a network of operatives across Asia and Africa, linking up with the Iranian military, Hamas, Islamic State, and dozens of other militant organizations.
The report's central allegation is staggering in scope: the terror network behind the September 11 attacks, which killed 3,000 Americans and triggered a 20-year war, deliberately manipulated intercepted phone calls to convince U.S. intelligence that its future leader was dead. No body was ever produced after the 2019 operation. And now, the assessment warns, al-Qaeda is planning fresh attacks against the West.
Donald Trump publicly stated in September 2019 that Hamza bin Laden had been killed in a CIA-sponsored airstrike. The intelligence assessment tells a different story.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian physician who led al-Qaeda after Osama bin Laden's assassination by U.S. special forces in 2011, had groomed Hamza for power. After the 2019 airstrike, Zawahiri allegedly instructed Hamza's associates to speak openly on phone calls about Hamza's death, knowing full well that American intelligence agencies were listening.
The assessment states that "family telephone conversations were manipulated to reinforce intercepted reporting and that the result was Hamza's removal from active targeting while he remained under protection." In plain terms: al-Qaeda used the CIA's own surveillance apparatus against it, feeding false confirmation through channels the agency trusted.
The ruse worked. Hamza dropped off the active targeting list.
Zawahiri was killed in a U.S. airstrike on a Kabul balcony in 2022. With the old leader gone, the assessment claims Hamza stepped into full command. On November 14, 2022, he was formally appointed al-Qaeda's emir at the al-Farooq camp in Kandahar, Afghanistan, the same facility his father originally built, which was destroyed and later rebuilt.
The ceremony was not a small affair. Representatives from the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, and delegates described as African and Syrian representatives were present. If the assessment is accurate, the appointment amounted to a coronation, the son of al-Qaeda's founder inheriting the organization his father created, in the very camp his father constructed, under the protection of a Taliban government the U.S. spent two decades fighting.
The intelligence document frames Hamza's significance in blunt terms:
"Hamza bin Laden's value to al-Qaeda is ideological, dynastic and operational. As a son of Osama bin Laden, he offers a direct line to the movement's founding mythology."
Even before the reported counter-terrorism operation, Hamza had publicly called for attacks against the United States and its allies and positioned himself as an avenger of his father's death. The assessment notes that he "had already been used to call for attacks against the US and its allies, to encourage revenge for his father's death and to present himself as an inheritor of al-Qaeda's global cause."
One of the assessment's most alarming claims involves Camp Bastion in Helmand province, a former British military headquarters in Afghanistan. The report alleges the facility has been repurposed as a training camp for multiple militant groups, including Hamas fighters before the October 7 attacks on Israel.
If true, the implication is severe: a base that Western forces once operated from is now allegedly serving the organizations those forces fought against. Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, the assessment warns, gives al-Qaeda "strategic depth" it lacked during the years of American military presence.
The assessment does not limit its threat picture to the United States. Britain, it warns, sits squarely in al-Qaeda's sights. The report cites the UK's military alliance with America, its colonial history in the Middle East, its ties to Israel, and its business relationships with Gulf states as factors driving the threat.
"The United Kingdom faces a convergent threat. Al-Qaeda retains a historic focus upon Britain as a military ally of the United States, whether under this shaky U-turn government or otherwise."
The catalog of potential attacks the assessment describes is broad: "externally directed mass-casualty attacks, remotely enabled plots, attacks by inspired individuals, aviation and transport targeting, assaults on Jewish and Israeli interests." It also warns of political assassinations, hostage-taking, and cyber-enabled operations.
Conflict in Gaza, Iranian state competition, instability across Africa's Sahel region, and online radicalization all provide what the report calls "opportunities for mobilisation." Hamza's reappearance, "whether principally operational or symbolic, can unify these strands," the document states.
For all its dramatic claims, the intelligence assessment raises as many questions as it answers. The issuing body, which agency, government, or private intelligence firm produced the document, is not identified in the reporting. Its classification level and the date it was compiled remain unclear. No Western government has publicly acknowledged or responded to its findings.
The evidentiary basis for the central claim, that Hamza is alive, rests on the assessment itself. His current whereabouts are not disclosed. The specific groups beyond Hamas, Islamic State, and the Iranian military that Hamza has allegedly linked up with are not named. No specific plots or attacks carried out by his network since 2019 are described.
These gaps matter. The assessment's core warning, that "al-Qaeda should no longer be assessed as a defeated legacy organisation" and that it "has retained patience, senior expertise, regional affiliates and a powerful brand", demands serious scrutiny regardless of whether Hamza bin Laden is alive or dead. But the specific claim that the CIA was deceived about the death of its most high-profile target since Osama bin Laden himself is extraordinary, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
Twenty years of war, trillions of dollars spent, and thousands of American lives lost were supposed to ensure that al-Qaeda could never reconstitute. If this assessment is even partially correct, the question isn't just whether Hamza bin Laden fooled the CIA, it's whether anyone in Washington is still paying attention.
