Nasir al-Bahri

Sudarsan Raghavan has this profile on Nasir al-Bahri, a former bodyguard to Osama bin Laden. Nasir, or Abu Jandal, is someone many western researches on Yemen know well – and last time I was in the country heard that he was even working on an autobiography – this is a good overview, at least in my opinion, and should be read.

But for those of you with Arabic or access to the FBIS I would recommend the wonderfully detailed 10-part series of oral interviews conducted by Khalid al-Hammadi with Nasir back in 2005 for al-Quds al-Arabi. I found them to be extremely illuminating. Essentially, the biography of a foot soldier in al-Qaeda during the 1990s. (One thing that isn’t mentioned is that al-Bahri is also the brother-in-law of former Guantanamo Bay detainee Salim Hamdan of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld fame.)