Osama bin Laden bodyguards

Who is Osama bin Laden bodyguards?

American officials have reported that the late al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had numerous bodyguards. They reported that the detainees held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp included at least 30 of Bin Laden's bodyguards.

How long Osama bin Laden had known an individual before he would trust them to be a bodyguard has been a topic of debate. According to Steve Coll, in his book Ghost Wars

"Bin Laden practiced intensive operational security. He was wary of telephones. He allowed no Afghans into his personal bodyguard, only Arabs he had known and trusted for many years."

Historian Andy Worthington, author of the The Guantanamo Files, has pointed out that many of those Guantanamo analysts characterized as Osama bin Laden bodyguards had only been in Afghanistan for weeks.

According to Graeme Steven and Rohan Gunaratna, in Counterterrorism: A Reference Handbook, Ali Mohammad, formerly a Captain in the Egyptian army, who became an American citizen and a Sergeant in the US Special Forces, provided the initial training to the early cohort of Osama bin Laden's bodyguards.

One source of the allegations was Guantanamo captive Mohammed al Qahtani. Al Qahtani was believed to be one of the 20 hijackers. The DoD acknowledges he was subjected to "extended interrogation techniques, including two months of sleep-deprivation". Other sources described his treatment as torture. After this, he is reported to have denounced 30 other Guantanamo captives as being bodyguards of Osama Bin Laden.