Word: hamdan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...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 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...
...Four and a half years later, Hamdan is still on Guantánamo, but Swift's prediction has proved correct. Hamdan is certainly famous. Not only was this Yemeni man, a former driver for Osama bin Laden with a fourth-grade education, at the center of what is perhaps the Supreme Court's most important decision on presidential power ever, he is now the first defendant in America's first war-crimes trials since World War II. Hamdan, in his late 30s, stands accused of providing material support for terrorism and conspiracy. If convicted, he could face life in prison...
...despite landing in the center of a historic legal drama, Hamdan remains largely unknown to the American public. His story is still shrouded in mystery. 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 will claim, little more than a lowly foot soldier. I've been following Hamdan's story since early 2004, when I started writing a book about his case, and I have spent hundreds of hours interviewing his lawyers...
...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...
...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 imperative...