Bin Laden ex-guard’s warning from Yemen
Updated on 06 January 2010
A former bodyguard to Osama bin Laden tells Jonathan Rugman there are "a million people out there" like alleged failed plane bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
Nasser al-Bahri now works as a business consultant in Yemen. But in the late 1990s, based in the Afghan mountains, he served as bodyguard to the world’s most wanted man.
Speaking to Channel 4 News Diplomatic Correspondent Jonathan Rugman in Yemen, al-Bahri said: "I love Osama bin Laden more than my own father."
And he went on to warn that there were "a million people out there" like Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian allegedly responsible for the failed attack on a plane over Detroit on Christmas day.
Last summer Abdulmutallab went to Sana’a, the capital of a country identified by Hillary Clinton as an al-Qaida base, to study Arabic. His teacher told Channel 4 News: "He was always smiling."
Smiling – like the friendly former bodyguard of the world’s most wanted man, who now lives in a city where al-Qaida still inspires men to wage war against the west.
Read more from Jonathan Rugman about the growing terrorist threat from Yemen.