One is called a poet, a propagandist and Osama bin Laden's protector. The other drove the al-Qaeda chief around during the years he was plotting his greatest terrorist attacks -- Sept. 11, the US embassy bombings in East Africa, the USS Cole strike.
Both Ali Hamza Ahmad Sulayman al-Bahlul and Salim Ahmed Hamdan are from Yemen, the homeland of bin Laden's father.
Al-Bahlul, the seemingly flashier of the two, was bin Laden's bodyguard in 2001 and "wore an explosives-laden belt" while protecting his boss, the US military alleges.
Al-Bahlul apparently was a man of many talents and allegedly worked in the al-Qaeda media operation before becoming a gunman. Bin Laden "personally tasked" al-Bahlul to create a videotape glorifying the al-Qaeda bomb attack against the USS Cole in a Yemeni port in 2000, killing 17 American sailors, according to US military prosecutors.
"He is cultured and peace-loving. He speaks English and enjoys reading and writing poetry," al Bahlul's father, Hamza Ahmed, told the Associated Press.
The Pentagon has accused al Bahlul of being a "key al-Qaeda propagandist who produced videos glorifying the murder of Americans to recruit, inspire and motivate other al-Qaeda members" to attack Americans, the US and other countries.
The media expert wasn't so successful, however, on Sept. 11, 2001 -- the day al-Qaeda staged its hijacked plane attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Bin Laden asked al-Bahlul to set up a satellite connection so the al-Qaeda leader and other members could watch news reports of the attack from Afghanistan, according to the US military charges, but failed "because of mountainous terrain." Al Bahlul followed up by obtaining media reports of the attacks and their economic impact for bin Laden, military prosecutors say.
Al-Bahlul, 33, and Hamdan, whose age was unavailable, are among four terrorist suspects facing military commission hearings this week at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They both are charged with conspiracy as an al-Qaeda member to commit war crimes, including attacking civilians and civilian targets, murder, destroying property and terrorism.
Al-Bahlul, according to his family, did not know Hamdan.
Hamdan has acknowledged he was the al-Qaeda chief's driver in Afghanistan before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, but the US detainee denied taking part in terrorist activities.
The US military, however, alleges Hamdan delivered weapons, ammunition or other supplies to al-Qaeda members and associates from 1996 through 2001. He's also accused of keeping bin Laden's convoys of three-to-nine vehicles running -- buying small trucks and making them available to bin Laden's bodyguards and sometimes ferrying the al-Qaeda leader himself.
Hamdan, also known as Saqr al-Jaddawi, was a bodyguard and personal driver for bin Laden between February 1996 and Nov. 24, 2001, when he was captured, the US military said. He isn't accused in taking part in any specific acts of violence or operational planning of attacks.
Both al Bahlul and Hamdan joined a Yemeni branch of the Egyptian militant group Islamic Jihad before al-Qaeda was formed in 1989, Yemeni security officials said. A faction of Egyptian Islamic Jihad led by bin Laden's chief aide, Ayman al-Zawahri, merged with al-Qaeda in 1998.
Neither of the Yemen men were senior members of Islamic Jihad, said the security officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The officials also said they left Yemen for Afghanistan before the Sept. 11 attacks to join what they saw as a holy war for Islam.
Al-Bahlul's father said that his son left for Pakistan to seek medical treatment for his grandson before Sept. 11 and never returned.
"In his letters he told me how much he missed his wife and children. He has not committed any crimes and he hates no one," said Ahmed.
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the