The Oath (2010)

"The Oath" is a fascinating documentary about Abu Jandal, Osama bin Laden's former bodyguard, now living in Yemen as a cab driver with his ten year old son, Habib. In 1995, at the age of 19, he joins the jihad in Bosnia and a couple of years later, falls in with bin Laden in Afghanistan who is like a father figure to the impressionable young men and sounds like he may have had some sort of cult of personality going. In the present day, Abu Jandal talks to young men about the old days. His talking started with his being politely interrogated by the FBI while he was in jail in Yemen in 2001(he spent three years in jail as part of a roundup of jihadists after the USS Cole attack and was released on condition that he behave himself) and continues as he has also been interviewed by 60 Minutes and Al Arabiya. While truthful about bin Laden in general, I do not know how much to trust about what he says about himself and is contradictory on the subject of 9/11 and defining where a battlefield is in a jihad. While in bin Laden's camp, he considered himself the Emir of Hospitality and met all 19 hijackers. Today, there are younger jihadists who have made threats against Abu Jandal's life for his changing attitudes. One regret that gnaws at Abu Jandal is his recruitment of Salim Hamdan(as in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld) to the cause and is his brother in law.(bin Laden ordered the two men to marry sisters and so they did.) Hamdan, a driver, was apprehended in Pakistan in 2001 and has been imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay since then awaiting trail. After his victory at the Supreme Court, the charge of giving material comfort to terrorists was created.(I'm not a lawyer but it sounds fishy.) The charges sound so bogus, that even his military lawyer thinks he is innocent. Especially ridiculous is the Nuremburg comparison by the prosecution because I am sure after World War II, they were really gung ho to prosecute the drivers for war crimes.