Word: jandal
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...star" of the film is the former bin Laden bodyguard, Abu Jandal, a jovial, extroverted taxi driver now living in Yemen. After working for bin Laden in Afghanistan in the 1990s, Jandal moved back to Yemen, where he was arrested by authorities in connection with the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000. He was briefly jailed and then made a deal with the Yemeni government to take part in the government's "reintegration" program, trying to persuade young Islamists to give up violence for education. Following the 9/11 attacks, Jandal was interrogated by FBI officials and became...
...other man is Salim Hamdan, who had been recruited to work for al-Qaeda by Jandal, his brother-in-law. Hamdan was captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in late 2001 and sent to Guantanamo Bay, where he was held for seven years. He was released last January and returned to Yemen. "I wanted to look at two people who worked for bin Laden - one who was low-level, Hamdan, [and] the other [who] was much closer," the film's New York-based director, Laura Poitras, tells TIME. (See the 100 best movies of all time...
...Poitras says she set out to make a film about Guantanamo detainees returning to Yemen after being released by the U.S. government, but switched her focus when a Yemeni reporter introduced her to Jandal. The former bodyguard seems like a contradiction in the film: in one scene, he describes how he was shocked to hear about the 9/11 attacks, but in another, he reveals that he had met many of the hijackers in Afghanistan while he was working for bin Laden. He also says he feels responsible and guilty for the imprisonment of his brother-in-law, who does...
...question viewers may have is whether Jandal is still a jihadist. "I don't think he's repentant, in the way he says 'I was wrong,' but his thinking has changed and he believes in trying to communicate rather than use guns," says Poitras. "I wanted to show how people are drawn to Abu Jandal by his psychology and charisma. At a practical level, he's telling younger people not to fight and instead get an education." (See pictures from the 2009 Cannes Film Festival...
...Jandal's cooperation, Soufan and McFadden laid a trap. After palliating his rage with the sugar-free cookies, they got him to identify a number of al-Qaeda members from an album of photographs, including Mohamed Atta and six other 9/11 hijackers. Next they showed him a local newspaper headline that claimed (erroneously) that more than 200 Yemenis had been killed in the World Trade Center. Abu Jandal agreed that this was a terrible crime and said no Muslim could be behind the attacks. Then Soufan dropped the bombshell: some of the men Abu Jandal had identified in the album...