The Exile

by Adrian Levy

  At ten P.M., a Predator’s Hellfire missile destroyed the Kari Kot compound.43

  When Musharraf heard the news, he called his army chief, giddy with excitement. “Claim it,” he insisted. “A Pakistani rocket has killed the Taliban commander,” said a spokesman, as Nek’s newly dug grave instantly became a shrine. “He lived and died like a true Pashtun,” the freshly painted inscription declared.

  Almost immediately Al Qaeda’s commander at Shakai, Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi, began evacuating senior Al Qaeda figures, including financier Sheikh Saeed, who went to join his family in a village near the city of Dera Ismail Khan, on the edge of the Tribal Areas.

  Sheikh Saeed’s long-term houseguest, Osama’s second Saudi wife, Seham, who in 2002 had chosen not to accompany the rest of the family to Iran, dispatched a message for the Kuwaiti brothers asking if she could be reunited with her husband.44 When the answer came back “yes,” she and three of her four children set out from Shakai on a grueling three-hundred-mile journey—with Khalid, Osama’s fifteen-year-old son, fully veiled and posing as a girl. No one knew their final destination.

  Their escorts, a Pashtun couple related to the recently deceased Nek, would take them as far as Mattani, a settlement on the Kohat–Peshawar road that the Taliban had transformed into a ruddy Islamist fistula, where they would be handed over to one of Ibrahim’s contacts and taken to Peshawar.

  The move would take Seham far away from her oldest daughter, Khadija, who was married to Daood, the Saudi fighter. Still only seventeen, Khadija was pregnant for the third time and living on the border with Afghanistan, where her husband remained on active Al Qaeda duty.

  Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama’s deputy and the linchpin of Al Qaeda Central, headed deeper into the hills, settling on Bajaur, the smallest and most inaccessible of Pakistan’s seven tribal agencies. There, in Damadola, a town just four miles from the Afghan border, he lodged with a local family. They had promised to let al-Zawahiri marry their daughter to replace the wife who had died along with two of their children during the retreat from Afghanistan.45 Marrying into the local community meant no one would inform on him; and in any event, remote and cantankerous Bajaur was off-limits to the Pakistan Army and even the Frontier Constabulary, a paramilitary police force.46

  Summer 2004, Haripur, Pakistan

  After nearly three years apart, Osama bin Laden and Seham were reunited in a rented house in a nondescript Pakistan town—a temporary bolt-hole where they waited for their permanent home in Abbottabad to be finished.

  Amal, who now had a son as well as two daughters and had for the past year had Osama to herself, was snubbed, as the rest of the family enjoyed a tearful reunion. The last time Osama had seen Khalid was in the Melawa olive groves before the battle for Tora Bora. Now he was a handsome teenager with a downy beard. Seham maintained he “could defend himself in battle, fix up the house and recite the Koran.”47

  Osama’s daughters Miriam, fourteen, and Sumaiya, twelve, seemed so grown up he immediately announced a search would begin for husbands.

  Seham knew how to deal with Osama. “That can come later,” she said, distracting him with news of Khadija’s latest pregnancy and photos of their two grandsons.

  July 2004, Abbottabad

  Musharraf ordered for Abu Faraj’s picture to be printed in all national newspapers with a caption that he was “No. 3 man in the terrorist network.” The army offered $340,000 for his capture.

  NBC News followed up, regurgitating the intelligence spin: “Abu Faraj is also believed to know at least the general whereabouts of bin Laden and al-Zawahiri, and to be the mastermind of the December 14 and 25 assassination attempts against Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf.”48

  Seeing the news, Abu Faraj threw away his SIM cards and fled to Bajaur.49 But in October 2004, Osama, oblivious to the agreed security protocol, sent Ibrahim to find him. The courier had a package containing a video recording addressing the American electorate ahead of the forthcoming elections. “I tell you in truth, that your security is not in the hands of [Democratic candidate John] Kerry, nor Bush, nor al Qaeda,” Osama railed. “No. Your security is in your own hands.” If Americans chose Bush at the polls, they would be damned. “The real loser,” he concluded, “is … you.”50

  Abu Faraj was asked to take the video to Al Jazeera. In an accompanying letter, Osama requested updates about the financial situation in Waziristan, where Al Qaeda commanders and Arab families were now scattered.

  Abu Faraj did not turn up at the contact point.

  Osama sent Ibrahim to track him down again. But he returned empty-handed.

  Abu Faraj had gone to ground.

  Summer 2004, Block 100, Quds Force Training Facility, Tehran, Iran

  Inside Evin prison, the Al Qaeda prisoners had gone on hunger strike.51 A small group had rioted, and the International Committee for the Red Cross continued to demand regular access to the jail. If the Quds Force wanted to keep them they would have to move them permanently out of sight.

  General Qassem Suleimani ordered a mass transfer to vacant buildings at the Imam Ali University for Army Officers, the main Quds Force training facility in Tehran. Located close to the former Sa’adabad Palace, in the far north of the city, beyond the last metro stop, the site was encircled by security detachments of every kind.

  “After driving north through the streets of Tehran, we entered a large military area and stopped in front of one of the buildings before a big gate was opened,” recalled the Mauritanian.52

  After several more gates, they reached a “residential complex” at the heart of the base: a prison within a training facility, concealed in the military university, its layers of security impossible to breach. They were led into a concrete bunker inside which were simple box-like rooms running along a central corridor. Outside was an alley and yard, facing six-foot-high walls topped with barbed wire, and a huge metal gate.

  Security cameras and movement sensors had been installed throughout the building, which backed onto a military parade ground. “The whole place seemed to be part of an old training camp built decades ago that had been abandoned,” the Mauritanian recalled. “Renovations and repairs for our arrival were still going on.”

  The walls of their new home—which the Iranians referred to as Block 100—were the thickness of an old oak trunk, and there were no windows, only narrow ducts beneath the eaves. Each of the cells was marked with a number in fluorescent pen. “Perhaps this is the place where Iran is hiding its nuclear bombs,” quipped one of the brothers.

  After a week, there was a banging at the Mauritanian’s cell door. It swung back and standing before him were his wife and children. Stunned and grateful, he sprang to his feet as tears filled his eyes, delighted to see them but embarrassed at the conditions they would have to live in.

  At night, the children’s cries echoed along the corridor. There was no privacy as the security cameras were monitored around the clock from a closed-circuit-television monitoring room far away in the administration area. There was also no air-conditioning, and the concrete boxes soon felt like “red-hot ovens spewing steam.” The prison complex was staffed by Quds Force and Ministry of Intelligence and Security officials, headed up by a man called Mr. Nasseri.

  The Mauritanian tried to extract concessions. The cameras offended the women’s modesty, he said. Nasseri, a devout Shia, tried to placate the prisoners by allowing them to construct a majlis (meeting area) out in the yard. They hung up sheets to partition off a section for the women and children while the men gathered on the other side beneath a large fig tree, boiling up pots of smoky green tea.

  The only thing no one complained about was the food. There was an abundance of lamb, fish, and chicken from which the wives and daughters prepared lavish meals.

  But days turned into weeks. Would they be here forever? they wondered, as they listened to the sound of Quds Force recruits being drilled on an unseen parade ground. One day in August, the dam broke.

  The Mauritanian was t
old he had fifteen minutes to prepare to receive “an envoy from the Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” He put on his smartest clothes and rushed about, ordering the brothers to sweep the small, windowless box-room they called the mosque, where the meeting would take place.

  When the official guests arrived they were led by a bearded ayatollah wearing a robe and white turban. He introduced himself as the security minister, Ali Younsei.53 The Mauritanian was worried. Although the Al Qaeda phalanx was now under the joint protection of the Quds Force and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, this man was a graduate of the Haghani school—a Shia academy in Qom that was controlled by hard-line right-wingers. Previously, he had been head of the political ideological bureau of the Revolutionary Guard and had once headed the Islamic Revolutionary Court. What was his agenda?

  With his face fixed in a half smile, Younsei informed the Mauritanian of the supreme leader’s position. Mahfouz knew enough about how Iran worked to know that Younsei’s meeting with Ayatollah Khamenei would have been one-on-one. “The Islamic Republic is going out of its way to be hospitable to Al Qaeda despite its appalling track record,” he said, addressing the Mauritanian as Dr. Abdullah. He cited the bombing of Mashhad in 1994, in which twenty-six Shia devotees had died and more than two hundred had been wounded, and the killing of Iranian diplomats in Mazar-e-Sharif in 1998. “The Islamic Republic of Iran endured these wounds and worse than these,” Younsei said bitterly. “But instead of holding you responsible for these reprehensible acts, we have provided you with hospitality.”

  The Mauritanian decided to meet Younsei head-on. “It was not us who killed the Iranian diplomats,” he countered. It was the Taliban. “And you know very well that we were not responsible for the bombings in Mashhad.” It was Ramzi Yousef who had carried out the attack at the shrine. The Mauritanian also reminded the security minister that Iran had supported the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. “We forgive you for this crime,” he said disingenuously.

  After this initial exchange of accusations, the two men studied each other. Younsei clearly detested Al Qaeda, and Mahfouz feared Tehran’s complicated agenda. Were he and his brothers really guests, or collateral? he wondered. Who held the upper hand, the Quds Force or the Reformists? Instead of asking, he reeled off a list of grievances. Al Qaeda had been invited to enter the country, he said, and yet here they were locked up again. “Our imprisonment is an injustice that is not permissible under any circumstances.”

  Younsei cut him off. Iran was under “considerable and continuing international pressure” to deport Al Qaeda prisoners, he explained, in a sideways reference to Javad Zarif’s recent discussions with Zalmay Khalilzad and Ryan Crocker, about which the Al Qaeda contingent knew nothing. Now that these talks had failed and the “Grand Bargain” that could have seen them handed over to the United States was off the table, the “guests” had been granted a temporary reprieve. “We are here to reassure you that you and your brothers will not be delivered to any international destination against your will,” Younsei continued. He stood to leave. “We will meet those needs we can,” he said. “And as for the rest—you can wait and see.”

  Conditions gradually improved. Khanum Medeni, a female intelligence official who also worked for the foreign ministry, was appointed to deal with women’s affairs. She recruited a team of female escorts, who accompanied the wives and daughters to hospital. A television was installed broadcasting Al Jazeera and an Islamic prayer channel. On Friday afternoons the children were allowed to watch cartoons. A snack shop opened up next to the mosque, where the families could buy basic groceries, and a clinic staffed by a medic, Dr. Jamali, offered treatment.

  After three years on the run or in prison on their own, several women became pregnant at the same time. “One baby was born every few months,” said the Mauritanian, who officiated at aqeeqah ceremonies, wondering when, if ever, these children of Block 100 would experience freedom.54

  More settled than they had been since their arrival in Iran, the prisoners were now wooed. Dr. Jamali from the clinic offered the Mauritanian a deal to leave the compound and settle in a villa if he also worked for Iran. “Your family will live a happy life and enjoy many great advantages,” he suggested, adding that several Al Qaeda brothers had already taken up this offer and were now “living a normal life in Tehran.”55

  Other brothers? The Mauritanian wondered if some brothers had been forced to make compromises in exchange for benefiting from such special treatment, but there was no way of knowing for sure. Nervous, he refused, claiming that he was needed here to teach the children and lead prayers.

  He warned the others to be wary. “They want to draw me into cooperating with them on matters that may be initially acceptable but then would commence with other things I would have to reject.”

  He continued to push for more privileges, negotiating for the wives and children to go on chaperoned trips. Being cooped up for so long was taking its toll, he said. He couldn’t guarantee compliance unless they were allowed to let off steam. The Iranians agreed after a wrangle over appearances.

  The Mauritanian insisted that the wives could only visit public places with their faces covered. The officials pointed out that while all Iranian women had to wear a scarf, niqabs were a rarity on Tehran’s streets and so would draw unnecessary attention.

  Al Qaeda refused to move. Ground down, the Iranians agreed to a trial run, with niqabs in place.

  Khanum Medeni’s female officers took the Al Qaeda wives and daughters to the zoo, a park, and a games arcade on the top floor of a smart shopping mall popular with diplomats. They began to swap stories and realized they had much in common. Most of the escorts were Iraqi Shias who had migrated from Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq War and now worked for the Ministry of Intelligence and Security. They, too, considered themselves to be stateless.

  They also complained about being overworked: “When we finish with you we have to tend to the other group, and they are a lot more trouble.”

  The Mauritanian’s wife resisted the urge to jump on the comments and instead reported them back to her husband: There were other Al Qaeda prisoners being held in another location.

  A few days later, Dr. Jamali asked the Mauritanian for help. He revealed that Al Qaeda prisoners were being held at Rajai Shahr prison in Karaj, and they were rioting over the right to have conjugal visits. Some were bent on starving themselves to death. Would he intervene?

  The Mauritanian agreed to write a letter, passing on an Iranian proposal: if they called off the strike, wives and children would be allowed to visit the men while permanent family accommodation was built adjoining the prison.

  Rajai Shahr Prison, Karaj, Tehran

  Families staying at the Quds Force holding center in Arak arrived on buses, among them the wife of Abdullah Saeed al-Libi, a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. Her husband, who in Afghanistan had been a close confidant of Saif al-Adel, spent a night with his wife in a family room. With the security cameras switched off, he slipped out a razor with which to shave his beard. He then put on his wife’s black chador and niqab, reminding himself that a similar incident written of in the Koran made this maneuver permissible in the eyes of the Prophet.

  When the departure bell rang, Abdullah and a Moroccan friend who had done the same boarded the women’s bus.

  It was only when the prison authorities discovered two women dressed in men’s clothes that they realized their mistake. Furious, the Ministry of Intelligence and Security ordered a lockdown. The hunger strike restarted, then rioting, which led to an Iranian guard being taken hostage and lynched.

  When the ringleaders were transferred to Block 100 in Tehran, they brought with them a story about how Abdullah was planning to head back to Al Qaeda Central in Waziristan, determined to update Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri about Al Qaeda’s predicament in Iran. He would know how to get them out.

  Spring 2005, Damadola, Bajaur Agency, Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Pakistan

  Dr.
Ayman al-Zawahiri was feeling comfortable. Married to a local Pashtun girl, he had been given a new home, a large mud-brick compound up in the hills. He wrote that it was a “good place” owned by his new father-in-law, “a simple old man,” originally from Mohmand. Recently, his young wife had given birth to a daughter, who they named Nawwar, meaning “the timid female gazelle” and “a woman who is free from suspicion.”56 Dressed in tribal robes, Al Qaeda’s deputy leader was practically indistinguishable from locals, and he roamed among a dozen or more compounds in the area, where he was secretly welcomed as a hero.

  “The real danger,” he wrote in a couriered update to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi that was intercepted by the Americans on its way to Iraq, “comes from the agent Pakistani army that is carrying out operations in the Tribal Areas looking for mujahideen.”

  As a result of Dr. al-Zawahiri’s move to Damadola, Al Qaeda had followed suit, under the command of Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi, who had fled fallen Shakai and was creating a new heavily fortified base along two ridges west of Damadola, straddling the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. A deep warren of 156 subterranean bunkers was hewed into an area of three square miles. Stocking up on food, sleeping bags, and weapons, Abdul Hadi’s men were reinforced by brothers serving with Qari Zia-ur-Rehman, an Afghan warlord from neighboring Kunar Province.

  May 2, 2005, Ghazi Baba Shrine, Mardan, Pakistan

  After months of false starts and near misses, the ISI’s prisoner Salahuddin finally persuaded Abu Faraj to emerge from his hiding place, exploiting Al Qaeda’s cash crisis just as the CIA had done when they put Asset X into play with Khalid Shaikh Mohammad. A wary Abu Faraj agreed to a rendezvous to discuss “a significant new donor.”