Word: als
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...stay. Hamdan was one of them. With only a fourth-grade education, Hamdan made himself useful as a mechanic and driver. He ultimately ended up serving bin Laden himself as a chauffeur and bodyguard, following the sheik when he relocated for security reasons to Tarnak Farms, a walled al-Qaeda compound 30 minutes outside Kandahar. According to both al-Bahri and FBI interrogator Ali Soufan, Hamdan had bin Laden's trust but was not a member of his inner circle. Both men describe Hamdan as deferential, eager to please. Their accounts differ, though, when it comes to Hamdan's level...
...when I started writing a book about his case, and I have spent hundreds of hours interviewing his lawyers, his family, his mentor and his interrogator. From these conversations I have been able to assemble a portrait of Hamdan's extraordinary journey from the deserts of Yemen to an al-Qaeda compound in Afghanistan to the dock of the U.S. military tribunal he entered this week. Like few other cases, his story sheds light on how the Bush Administration has prosecuted the war on terrorism since 9/11, and where it might be heading...
...Hamdan's journey began in 1996, when he first met Nasser al-Bahri outside a mosque in Sana, the capital city of Yemen. At the time, al-Bahri, a well-educated Saudi and veteran holy warrior, was assembling a small army of jihadis to fight alongside Tajikistan's small Islamic insurgency against its Russian-backed government. Hamdan was by all accounts an easy convert. Orphaned at a young age, he found a father figure in the confident and committed al-Bahri, and a purpose in jihad...
...Al-Bahri ultimately managed to recruit 35 men, mostly Yemenis like Hamdan, but they were stopped in Afghanistan before they could make it to Tajikistan. What happened next would change Hamdan's life forever. At loose ends and casting about for a cause, one of the jihadis suggested that they go see a man named Osama bin Laden. Hamdan's group soon found their way to bin Laden, arriving at his camp in the caves of Tora Bora only days before Ramadan, the holiest time of the year. For three days they listened to bin Laden preach about the religious...
...days leading up to 9/11, Hamdan joined a small motorcade of al-Qaeda leaders, including bin Laden and his top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who drove into the mountains above Khost to watch the hijacked planes crash into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on satellite TV. Hamdan was also at bin Laden's side - as a driver - in the weeks that followed, while the motorcade moved from one guesthouse to the next as bin Laden and al-Zawahiri readied their remaining fighters for America's imminent invasion...