Free Republic

RABAT, Morocco - For more than a decade, Osama bin Laden had few soldiers more devoted than Abdallah Tabarak. A former Moroccan transit worker, Tabarak served as a bodyguard for the al Qaeda leader, worked on his farm in Sudan and helped run a gemstone smuggling racket in Afghanistan, court records here show. During the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, when al Qaeda leaders were pinned down by U.S. forces, Tabarak sacrificed himself to engineer their escape. He headed toward the Pakistani border while making calls on Osama bin Laden's satellite phone as bin Laden and the others...

US military officials are holding a bodyguard of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden at the naval base prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Washington Post reports. The report cites Defence Department memos and sources familiar with base captives. The Post says the bodyguard is Moroccan Abdallah Tabarak, who enabled bin Laden to escape from the battle of Tora Bora in Afghanistan in late 2001 by making calls on his leader's personal satellite telephone. The information is contained in memos documenting meetings between military personnel and inspectors from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). ICRC officials, who keep...