Osama's son 'bent on avenging his father's death':Ex-FBI agent

May 13, 2017

Washington, May 13: Hamza, about 28 year old now, wrote those letters when he was 22 and had not seen his father bin Laden in several years.laden

Ali Soufan, the former FBI agent who was the bureau's lead investigator of al Qaeda after the 9/11 attacks, told CBS News the letters reveal Hamza to be a young man who adores his father and wants to carry on his murderous ideology.

The letters collected in the raid by helicopter-borne US Navy SEALs at a secure high-walled compound in Abbottabad, a garrison town north of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, in May 2011 have now been declassified.

Only a handful of US military and senior officials around then US President Barack Obama knew of the raid that was reportedly in the planning for months.

For a new episode of '60 Minutes' on the network, Soufan described one of those letters from Hamza: "He tells him that...he remembers 'every look...every smile you gave me, every word you told me.'"

Hamza also wrote this: "I consider myself to be forged in steel. The path of jihad for the sake of God is what we live."

Soufan said Hamza's potential as a leader was recognised years ago when he was still a boy. He was used in propaganda videos, sometimes holding a gun.

"He was a poster kid for the al Qaeda...and for members of al Qaeda, who were indoctrinated with these propaganda videos, he means a lot to them," Soufan said.

This January, the US named Hamza a "specially-designated global terrorist" - the same classification bin Laden had.

He even sounds like his father, said Soufan. "His recent message that came out, he delivered the speech as if it's his father...using sentences, terminology that was used by Osama bin Laden."

Hamza has recorded four audio messages in the last two years. "He's basically saying, 'American people, we're coming and you're going to feel it. And we're going to take revenge for what you did to my father...Iraq... Afghanistan'...the whole thing was about vengeance," Soufan said.

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News Network
July 5,2020

Washington, Jul 5: US President Donald Trump on Saturday thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his wishes on America's 244th Independence Day.

On Saturday, PM Modi tweeted: "I congratulate @POTUS @realDonaldTrump and the people of the USA on the 244th Independence Day of the USA. As the world's largest democracies, we cherish freedom and human enterprise that this day celebrates. @WhiteHouse"

While replying to PM Modi's wishes, Mr Trump tweeted: "Thank you my friend. America loves India!"

The US President also attended the July 4 American Independence Day celebrations in South Dakota.

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Agencies
January 6,2020

The Cambridge Analytica scandal is far from over. New explosive details leaked by a whistleblower shows that the extent of the rot is far deeper than previously thought.

An anonymous Twitter account, @HindsightFiles, has started releasing the documents, apparently on behalf of Brittany Kaiser, a former employee of the now defunct British data analytics and consulting company Cambridge Analytica.

"Democracies around the world are being auctioned to the highest bidder. We release the documents that explain how," reads the biography of the @HindsightFiles.

The document will reveal previously unreleased emails, project plans, case studies, negotiations and more spanning over 60 countries.

"Over the past two years I have given evidence to investigators, journalists and academics to analyse what happened at Cambridge Analytica, and how our data was used to influence democracies around the world. In the name of shedding light on these dark practices, I am releasing documents and emails in full for the public good," Kaiser, who worked with Cambridge Analytica from 2014 to 208, was quoted as saying.

"I do this to strengthen the case for data rights and enforcement of our electoral laws online globally. We should all be seeking more ethical digital future for ourselves and our children," added Kaiser who starred in the Oscar-shortlisted Netflix documentary "The Great Hack".

The details released so far includes links to material on the firm's activities in Malaysia, Kenya, Brazil and Iran, an addition to the John Bolton archive.

Over the next months, more than 100,000 documents relating to work in 68 countries are set to be released, according to a report in The Guardian.

More than one and a half year after the Cambridge Analytica scandal first became public, US regulators last month said that the now-defunct British data analytics and consulting company engaged in deceptive practices to harvest personal information from tens of millions of Facebook users for voter profiling and targeting.

According to Kaiser, the Facebook data scandal was part of a much bigger global operation designed to manipulate people in collaboration with governments, intelligence agencies, commercial companies and political campaigns.

The unpublished documents contain material that suggests the firm collaborated with a political party in Ukraine in 2017 even while under investigation as part of Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, said The Guardian report.

"There are emails between these major Trump donors discussing ways of obscuring the source of their donations through a series of different financial vehicles. These documents expose the entire dark money machinery behind US politics," Kaiser was quoted as saying.

Similar tactics were deployed in other countries that Cambridge Analytica operated in, including Britain, she claimed.

The files released by Kaiser suggest that Cambridge Analytica offered to help United Malays National Organisation (Umno), the party of Malaysia's Former Prime Minister Najib Razak, to influence the voting of 40 parliamentary constituencies in the 14th General Election (GE14) in 2013.

Umno, according to the leaks, requested the company to prepare a proposal to regain 13 seats, The South China Morning Post reported on Saturday.

In 2018, Razak claimed that he had never engaged Cambridge Analytica in any way.

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Agencies
June 16,2020

China on Tuesday justified the killing of an army officer and two soldiers of India and accused Indian troops of crossing a disputed border between the two countries.

Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Indian troops crossed the border line twice on Monday, "provoking and attacking Chinese personnel, resulting in a serious physical confrontation between border forces on the two sides".

An Indian Army officer and two soldiers have been killed in a "violent face-off" with Chinese troops along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), disrupting the fragile peace talks.

"During the de-escalation process underway in the Galwan Valley, a violent face-off took place last night with casualties on both sides," the Indian Army said in a statement.
 

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