Was warned of Osama son: Bhutto in book

The naming of bin Laden’s teenage son, Hamza, could bolster intelligence claims that he is being groomed as a future leader of Al Qaeda.

He featured in a joint Taliban and Al Qaeda video shot in 2001 of a militant attack on a Pakistan army camp in South Waziristan, a militant stronghold near the Afghan border. In September, he was described in reports as a senior leader who had been waging a jihad, or holy war, in the lawless tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

“I was told by both the Musharraf regime and the foreign Muslim government that four suicide bomber squads would attempt to kill me,” Bhutto reportedly says in the book, Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy & the West, which is to be published on February 12.

“These included, the reports said, the squads sent by the Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud; Hamza bin Laden, a son of Osama bin Laden; Red Mosque militants; and a Karachi-based militant group,” she says in the book.