Word: ladened
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...glitz and glamour, the festival is famous for its political-themed movies, which aren't aimed at your normal popcorn-munching audience. One of the films generating the most buzz this year is The Oath, a hard-hitting documentary about two former jihadists who once worked for Osama bin Laden - his bodyguard and driver. The lives of the two men, related through marriage, go in vastly different directions in the post-Sept. 11 crackdown on terrorism by the U.S. and its allies. (See pictures of movie costumes...
...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...
...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...
...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 not appear in the film. (Excerpts from his letters from Guantanamo are read aloud.) "When [Jandal] was younger, he felt taking up arms was justified - he left home to go to Bosnia...
...counterterrorism experts insist that even if bin Laden is alive, he is probably too deep in hiding to be anything other than a symbolic figurehead for al-Qaeda and the many jihadi groups it has spawned globally. Day-to-day management of the operation is said to be handled by his No. 2, the Egyptian doctor Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was nearly killed in a drone attack in the Pakistani tribal territory several years back. Nevertheless, the capture of top Taliban and al-Qaeda commanders in Karachi may help solve the mystery: Is bin Laden still alive...