An audio recording purporting to be Osama bin Laden’s son Hamza appeared on social media Saturday calling for lone wolf attacks on the West, bringing the global threat of al-Qaeda attacks back to the forefront.
Saturday's message marked the first time al-Qaeda has featured the young bin Laden relative, who is believed to be in his early 20s.
The recording was nearly an hour long and called for global jihad against capitals like Tel Aviv, Washington, Paris and London. Hamza said such attacks were the "duty" of al-Qaeda followers, and urged adherents to move the war from "Kabul, Gaza and Baghdad," to US capitals and those of its allies.
This isn't the first time the bin Ladens have shown up in headlines this week. Hamza's message came days before a new report by the BBC about the contents of some 1,500 tapes found in an al-Qaeda compound in Afghanistan in 2001.
University of California Arabic literature and culture expert Flagg Miller has spent years studying the massive tape collection, which features some 200 voices, including extensive recondings of Osama bin Laden. Unlike Hamza's most recent message this Saturday, the messages Miller collected from bin Laden are largely void of calls to attack America and the West until the last decade.
You can read more on that story here.
