Word: bins
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Four and a half years later, Hamdan is still at Guantánamo, but Swift's prediction has proved correct. A Yemeni man in his late 30s, Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, was at the center of perhaps the Supreme Court's most important decision on presidential power ever. He is now the first defendant in America's first war-crimes trial since World War II. Hamdan stands accused of providing material support for terrorism and conspiracy. If convicted, he could face life in prison...
...despite landing in the middle of a historic legal drama, Hamdan is largely unknown to the American public. It remains unclear whether he was a dedicated lieutenant of bin Laden's--"a body man for bin Laden," as one of the government's lawyers once described him to me--or, as his defense lawyers claim, little more than a lowly foot soldier. I have been following Hamdan's story since early 2004, when I started writing a book about his case, and have spent hundreds of hours interviewing his lawyers, his family, his mentor and his interrogator. From these conversations...
...mostly Yemenis like Hamdan, but they were stopped in Afghanistan before they could make it to Tajikistan. The ensuing days 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 arrived at bin Laden's camp in the caves of Tora Bora only days before Ramadan, Islam's holiest time of the year. For three days they listened to bin Laden preach about the religious imperative of reversing America's presence in the Persian Gulf...
Seventeen of the original 35 jihadis decided to 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 al-Qaeda leader when he relocated for security reasons to Tarnak Farms, a walled 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. Their accounts differ when it comes to Hamdan's level of involvement...
...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 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...