So, how did Osama bin Ladens bodyguard become a taxi driver in Yemen?
Poitras: That’s one of the essential questions of the film. So many people were sent to Guantánamo , and many of them had no association with Al Qaeda. But here’s Abu Jandal, and he’s free and driving a taxi. Not only that, but his house is actually in the shadows of the U.S. embassy. So when I would go to his house, I would have to first go to the U.S. embassy, go through some roadblocks and then get to his house. He was really fortunate in the sense that if he’d been captured in Afghanistan, my guess is he would have been “disappeared” and taken to one of the C.I.A. black sites. But he happened to have been in prison in Yemen before the 9/11 attacks, and he was in prison up until 2002. So I think because he was in Yemeni custody, the United States didn’t go after him. Still, he was clearly in the real inner circle in Al Qaeda, and the fact that he’s driving a taxi is perplexing and surreal. That’s part of the story that I’m telling in this film. I want the audience to be thinking, wh
