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Germany: ‘Special Measures Committee’ to Study Deporting Osama Bin Laden’s Bodyguard

Osama bin Laden. Reuters
Osama bin Laden. Reuters
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Germany: ‘Special Measures Committee’ to Study Deporting Osama Bin Laden’s Bodyguard

Osama bin Laden. Reuters
Osama bin Laden. Reuters

The German government decided to form a "special measures committee" to study ways of deporting a Tunisian man, who allegedly served as one of Osama bin Laden’s bodyguards, to his home country.

Germany’s Federal Ministry of Interior announced Thursday the formation of this committee and said it will focus primarily on receiving assurances from the Tunisian government not to torture and humiliate Sami A. once he lands in his country.

The federal interior ministry established this committee back in 2005, and it is being controlled by the parliament (Bundestag).

The committee’s headquarters is in the Berlin-based Joint Counterterrorism Center, and it includes experts from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Federal Intelligence Service (BND).

It is specialized in cases of terrorism suspects and "dangerous" militants, who are not German nationals. It also considers cases of the withdrawal of asylum from serious and criminal offenders.

A spokesman for the federal interior ministry said “there are attempts to deport the former bodyguard of Bin Laden” and a ministerial task force will examine the case soon.

Responding to queries from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, the government of North Rhine-Westphalia state said the 42-year-old can’t be deported because he might face torture in Tunisia.

The man, only identified as Sami A., has lived in Germany since 1997 and gets €1,168 (£1,022) a month in welfare payments.

The figure was revealed by a regional government, after the far-right AfD asked about him.

Sami A was investigated for alleged al-Qaeda links in 2006, but he was not charged.

According to witness testimony from a German anti-terror trial in 2005, Sami A. served for several months in 2000 as one of Bin Laden's bodyguards in Afghanistan. He denies that, but judges in Dusseldorf believed the witness.

He lives with a German wife and four children in the city of Bochum, in western Germany.

After obtaining a temporary residence permit in Germany in 1999 he took several technology courses and moved to the city in 2005.

His asylum application was rejected in 2007 because the authorities had listed him as a security risk. He has to report daily at a police station.

The Federal Constitutional Service has put Sami A. since 2012 in the list of dangerous hardliners, whom the department believes they are ready to carry out terrorist operations in Germany.

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UN Says 14 Million Children Did Not Receive a Single Vaccine in 2024

A mother holds her baby receiving a new malaria vaccine as part of a trial at the Walter Reed Project Research Center in Kombewa in Western Kenya on Oct. 30, 2009. (AP)
A mother holds her baby receiving a new malaria vaccine as part of a trial at the Walter Reed Project Research Center in Kombewa in Western Kenya on Oct. 30, 2009. (AP)
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UN Says 14 Million Children Did Not Receive a Single Vaccine in 2024

A mother holds her baby receiving a new malaria vaccine as part of a trial at the Walter Reed Project Research Center in Kombewa in Western Kenya on Oct. 30, 2009. (AP)
A mother holds her baby receiving a new malaria vaccine as part of a trial at the Walter Reed Project Research Center in Kombewa in Western Kenya on Oct. 30, 2009. (AP)

More than 14 million children did not receive a single vaccine last year — about the same number as the year before — according to UN health officials. Nine countries accounted for more than half of those unprotected children.

In their annual estimate of global vaccine coverage, released Tuesday, the World Health Organization and UNICEF said about 89% of children under one year old got a first dose of the diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough vaccine in 2024, the same as in 2023. About 85% completed the three-dose series, up from 84% in 2023.

Officials acknowledged, however, that the collapse of international aid this year will make it more difficult to reduce the number of unprotected children.

In January, US President Trump withdrew the country from the WHO, froze nearly all humanitarian aid and later moved to close the US AID Agency. And last month, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said it was pulling the billions of dollars the US had previously pledged to the vaccines alliance Gavi, saying the group had “ignored the science.”

Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic, has previously raised questions the diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough vaccine, which has proven to be safe and effective after years of study and real-world use. Vaccines prevent 3.5 million to 5 million deaths a year, according to UN estimates.

“Drastic cuts in aid, coupled with misinformation about the safety of vaccines, threaten to unwind decades of progress,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

UN experts said that access to vaccines remained “deeply unequal” and that conflict and humanitarian crises quickly unraveled progress; Sudan had the lowest reported coverage against diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough.

The data showed that nine countries accounted for 52% of all children who missed out on immunizations entirely: Nigeria, India, Sudan, Congo, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Yemen, Afghanistan and Angola.

WHO and UNICEF said that coverage against measles rose slightly, with 76% of children worldwide receiving both vaccine doses. But experts say measles vaccine rates need to reach 95% to prevent outbreaks of the extremely contagious disease. WHO noted that 60 countries reported big measles outbreaks last year.

The US is now having its worst measles outbreak in more than three decades, while the disease has also surged across Europe, with 125,000 cases in 2024 — twice as many as the previous year, according to WHO.

Last week, British authorities reported a child died of measles in a Liverpool hospital. Health officials said that despite years of efforts to raise awareness, only about 84% of children in the UK are protected.

“It is hugely concerning, but not at all surprising, that we are continuing to see outbreaks of measles,” said Helen Bradford, a professor of children’s health at University College London.

“The only way to stop measles spreading is with vaccination,” she said in a statement. “It is never too late to be vaccinated — even as an adult.”