Bin Laden's heir thought to have escaped US raid
Hamza was being groomed as a future leader
Islamabad/Washington: Pakistani security officials believe a relation of Osama Bin Laden disappeared during the raid by a crack team of US Navy SEALs that killed the Al Qaida leader, deepening confusion over the fate of a son regarded as the Crown Prince of Terror.
Three of Bin Laden's widows, currently in Pakistani custody, have told interrogators that one son has not been seen since the operation on May 2, raising fears that the Al Qaida leader's youngest son and closest confidant, Hamza, may have escaped capture.
The White House initially claimed that Hamza, 20, had been killed at the house in Abbottabad, about 48km from Islamabad. Officials later said his 22-year-old brother Khalid had been killed instead.
On Tuesday night an intelligence source in Islamabad told The Daily Telegraph that shifting accounts of what had happened, coupled with the widows' testimony, left them unable to account for one person they believe had been living in the house.
"We don't know if it was his son. Someone may have been in the compound that we now cannot account for — if we believe what we are being told," he said.
Bin Laden, who was married five times, had as many as 24 children. No one knows for certain who was in the compound where he had lived, hidden in plain sight, for five years. Hamza's mother, Khairiah Sabar, has been widely reported to be among the family members in Pakistani custody.
Thought to be Bin Laden's youngest sons, Hamza has been described as the Crown Prince of Terror by Patrick Mercer, a British MP and featured on an extremist website to mark the third anniversary of the July 7 London bombings in which 52 people died, reading a poem calling for "destruction" of America, Britain and France.
Intelligence agencies believe he was being groomed as a future leader of Al Qaida. He was implicated in the assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007.
More than a week after the wives and 12 children were picked up at the compound in Abbottabad, CIA interrogators have still not been given the chance to question them for crucial evidence.
