Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan in 2011. Photo / US Justice Department.
Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan in 2011. Photo / US Justice Department.
The German Government has been paying about US$1400 ($1965) a month to a man who once allegedly guarded Osama bin Laden.
"Sami A.," from Tunisia, is said to have worked for the al-Qaeda leader in 2000 in Afghanistan.
The 42-year-old has lived in Germany since 1997, receiving about US$1429 amonth in welfare payments. His full name has not been reported in the German media because of the country's privacy rules.
Sami A. travelled to Germany on a student visa more than two decades ago. In 2000, he allegedly trained at one of bin Laden's terrorism camps. His purported position in al-Qaeda was revealed in a 2005 trial in Düsseldorf, Germany. During the trial, a witness told the judge that Sami A. had worked for Bin Laden.
He has denied any links to al-Qaeda, but a judge found the witness testimony credible. Sami A.'s asylum request was denied in 2006, and a court in Münster called him "an acute and considerable danger for public security."
Even today, the Evening Standard reports, he is thought to maintain ties with Islamist circles. He lives with his wife and four children in Bochum, a city in western Germany. He must report to the local police station daily.
Sami A. was not deported to Tunisia after the denial of his asylum request because of fears that he might be tortured there. As the BBC explains, "Tunisia and its Arab neighbours are not on the list of safe countries of origin to which migrants can be deported."
Osama bin Laden's former bodyguard lives as asylum seeker off benefits in #Germany and cannot be deported https://t.co/Kn7XdrMH1U
At least three of the hijackers who flew planes into the twin towers of New York's World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001, were members of an al-Qaeda cell based in Hamburg, Germany.
The news of Sami A.'s welfare payments was confirmed by the government of North Rhine-Westphalia state, after inquiries from the hard-right Alternative for Germany party.
AfD is staunchly opposed to immigration. In a news release, AfD decried the decision, writing, "What fate awaits Sami A. in Tunisia is not the problem of German taxpayers. To protect and financially equip an Islamist, to feed hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants while less and less remains for our own people is not acceptable, but it suits [Chancellor Angela] Merkel's [vision for] Germany."
