The Mind of a Terrorist

by Kaare Sørensen

  Headley could get in touch with some of these men, who had “money, weapons, and manpower” to carry out the suicide attack, if he could just provide a good attack plan.

  Kashmiri revealed that the men lived, among other places, in Great Britain and Sweden. The men in Great Britain came from the Kotli district on the border with India—where Kashmiri himself had lived. They could be trusted.

  Kashmiri gave Headley some phone numbers so he could contact them and bring them on board. He also needed to make clear to them that they needed to make martyr videos before the attack.

  They need to know that this is a suicide mission, Kashmiri declared.

  * * *

  Al-Qaeda had been working for years to refine the plans for a new attack in Europe.

  In 2009, a high-ranking member of al-Qaeda authored a document entitled “Future Works,” which was a collection of loosely organized thoughts about possible spectacular attacks in the West.

  Among the suggestions was the hijacking of a cruise ship on the open ocean. Hostages would be dressed in orange prison outfits—like those worn by prisoners at Guantánamo Bay—and then be filmed as they were executed over the course of several days. The killings would stop only if the local authorities could convince the Americans to release specific, predetermined prisoners. The Americans would hardly be willing to give in, but that didn’t mean much—the attack would create fear and confusion. Westerners would realize that their governments didn’t want to save them even if they were given the chance.

  Other plans concerned things like simply repeating the Mumbai attack in a large European city, causing the most damage possible. It was cheap, and it would work.

  Documents containing these plans were found in 2011 on a memory card that a twenty-two-year-old Austrian citizen had smuggled to Germany from Pakistan, hidden in his underpants. In a file containing a pornographic film by the name of “Kick Ass,” there was embedded an encrypted file called “Sexy Tanja.” When the German intelligence service succeeded in cracking the encryption, they gained access to a wealth of information concerning concrete terrorism plans.

  Al-Qaeda planned all its attacks based on an analysis of the most likely reactions in Western media. It wasn’t just about killing. It was about making the attacks so violent and savage that TV broadcasts and front pages of newspapers would be devoid of anything else for weeks. The goal was to scare the Western countries’ citizens into demanding their militaries return home. The Western troops would crawl out of the Middle East and never return.

  Kashmiri had been thinking along the same lines for the attack in Copenhagen.

  Jyllands-Posten’s employees couldn’t just be killed and left dead in their offices. When they had been shot or stabbed to death, their heads would be cut off, and the severed heads would be thrown out of the windows onto the street in front of Kongens Nytorv, King’s New Square.

  Kashmiri predicted that this macabre detail would draw the greatest possible “attention” from the authorities, and likely millions of Western TV viewers who would follow the attack live as breaking news.

  Danish special forces would presumably be superior to their Indian counterparts, so during planning and execution, everyone had to be aware that they would surely not have three full days to fight, as they had in Mumbai. There might only be twenty minutes for the operation.

  Kashmiri reasoned that the severed heads would force the special forces to storm the building. The Western self-image simply could not tolerate the killing of hostages and the defacing of their bodies while their elite soldiers looked on from a safe distance and tried to negotiate with the hostage takers over the phone.

  They would be forced to attack—which would result in a violent bloodbath in which the Muslim suicide soldiers would emerge as true martyrs.

  The beheading of the Jyllands-Posten employees spoke to Headley. That was the right way to kill people, he thought.

  Ilyas Kashmiri himself had decapitated an Indian soldier, an act that had brought him great honor. Omar Sheikh’s killing of the journalist Daniel Pearl had brought him great honor too.

  Headley recalled an episode a month earlier when a forty-two-year-old Polish geologist by the name of Piotr Stańczak was kidnapped in the Pakistani city of Attock. The kidnappers guaranteed that they would send Piotr Stańczak back to Poland alive if the Pakistani authorities freed a number of Taliban prisoners. But that didn’t happen, so they beheaded Stańczak, broadcasted the video recordings of the killing, and threw his body into the street.

  The killing of the Pole was a hot topic among Headley’s Pakistani friends, the majority of whom earnestly distanced themselves from both the result and the method.

  But not Headley.

  He maintained that it was “great” that the man had been killed, as nobody could know if the man had really been a spy, an engineer, or a journalist from the Wall Street Journal.

  “After all a Mossad or RAW agent is not going to be wearing a name tag stating his rank in that organization,” Headley explained. “So in the absence of this information you need to be balanced in your comments,” Headley wrote to a colleague who had denounced the beheading.

  “If innocence or guilt is irrelevant to you, and it’s the violence that is abhorrent to you, than please feel free to also vent your outrage on other atrocities as well, like the recent Gaza massacre. Let us know how you feel, when you see little limbless children lying in hospitals or fathers burying their kids with tears in their eyes, or old folks sitting under the sky next to their demolished houses,” he wrote.

  Headley went on to make reference to his detailed insight into the local conditions, arguing that the presence of 1,400 Polish NATO troops in Afghanistan had created a situation in which traditional Muslim hospitality couldn’t be expended on “Poles or other Europeans.” He explained that the many spies in the area who were identifying targets for drone strikes or exchanging other information for cash justified the slaughter. “So when your brothers catch these gentlemen, they cut their throats open and air the videos to discourage this behavior. Is that so hard to understand?

  “As far as beheadings go, this is a punishment reserved for those who help Predators with Target Acquisition and relay the whereabouts of the Mujahideen to the Occupying Crusaders and their Murtadd allies. These folks have a lot of blood on their hands. It seems appropriate.”

  Headley claimed that, in reality, beheading wasn’t barbaric at all; it was a rather fine method of killing people.

  “Execution by beheading is our culture and really is less painful and more respectful than hanging or electrocution. The lethal injection method is really appropriate for a dog or a horse or a cat by ‘putting them to sleep’ but, in my opinion, it is demeaning to kill a human being that way. The best way for a man to die is with the sword. Our beloved Prophet SAW preferred this method himself.”

  Kashmiri thought they could use for three or four armed men to keep the whole second floor of the Jyllands-Posten office in Copenhagen under control. Headley agreed.

  They needed to move quickly, Kashmiri said. He let on that “the elders”—the leaders of al-Qaeda, among them Osama bin Laden—had been fully briefed on the plans and had approved of the method in a secret meeting.

  “The elders” were very impatient, though, and required from Headley that the attack must take place “as quickly as possible.”

  Headley received about 85,000 Pakistani rupees, the equivalent of around 800 US dollars, along with the message to go to Copenhagen and make new video recordings, draw up new plans, and collect new details.

  Now it was Headley’s mission.

  14

  THE EUROPEAN CELLS

  Derby, England

  July 2009

  The British intelligence service had been keeping an eye on two Muslim men in the city of Derby for some time. These men had connections to several fundamentalist groups in the city, so their telephones and Internet activities were monitored.

  In early summer 2009,
agents discovered that the men were expecting a guest from the United States. There wasn’t much information on the guest, though, other than that the Muslims called him David, and he was apparently American.

  The intelligence service shared this information with the FBI, but there wasn’t enough information to be of use to them. There are over three million Americans with the first name David.

  Based on the profile the men in Derby had, the American intelligence officers thought that the man must have contacts in Pakistani terrorist groups, perhaps Lashkar, perhaps Ilyas Kashmiri’s Brigade 313, perhaps al-Qaeda. But they weren’t sure about anything.

  On July 23, the FBI requested the help of US Customs in identifying the man. Besides the details of his name and nationality, they knew that he was traveling from the United States to Europe soon. There weren’t many tracks to follow, but they had access to one effective tool not known to many in 2009.

  After the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC, on September 11, 2001, European countries—more or less against their will—gave American intelligence services access to data on all passengers buying tickets for flights to and from the United States.

  Regardless of whether a transatlantic ticket was purchased on the Internet, by telephone, or through a travel agency, the system automatically created a so-called Passenger Name Record to be logged in a special registry, which is today managed by the Department of Homeland Security. The registry contains data on several million people’s planned and canceled trips and can be used to sniff out suspicious travel activity—both before and perhaps after a terrorist attack. Sorted by airline and booking method, each and every search of the database can give access to an array of sensitive personal information concerning passports, credit cards, and private addresses.

  US Customs typed in the sparse details they had: David, American, traveling across the Atlantic—and immediately received several hundred possible candidates. That would take far too long to sort through.

  Shortly thereafter, though, British intelligence officers were able to supply the Americans with yet another otherwise innocent detail: the guest would be flying Lufthansa.

  That was the missing piece of the puzzle. Now the analysts had just one name on the screen: David Coleman Headley. American citizen. Passport number 097536400, issued March 10, 2006, in Washington, DC, valid until 2016. Born June 30, 1960, in Washington, DC.

  The man had previously flown in and out of the United States, often headed to the Middle East. Most recently, he had arrived in New York from Pakistan, around June 10. There, he switched to a JetBlue Airlines flight to Chicago, where he landed on June 11. Now he was in possession of a ticket that would take him to Manchester around July 26.

  But who was this Headley? And why would he be meeting with two fundamentalist Muslims in Derby?

  From an office in Chicago, a team including FBI special agent Lorenzo Benedict was put on the case. They called it Operation Black Medallion.

  Derby is like most other central English cities. It’s foggy, industrial jobs are on their way out, and one of the city’s prides is beer. Derby is also the home to the company behind the popular Tomb Raider series of computer games. One of the main streets in the city center is even named Lara Croft Way.

  Derby also has a sizable Muslim population, a portion of whom have ties to the most extremely radicalized circles on the planet.

  One of them was Umrad Javed, who took part in a protest in front of the Danish embassy in London not long after the publication of the Muhammad cartoons.

  Javed was captured on video yelling things like “Denmark, you will pay—with your blood, your blood,” and “Bomb, bomb Denmark.” Several of the more than 450 people who took part in the protest held signs with messages like “What do you do with these people? How do you kill them? Cut their throat!”

  After the protest, the police raided Javed’s residence. There they found a leaflet titled “Kill Them by the Sword Wherever They Are,” which encouraged terrorism. Javed later received a four-year prison sentence for inciting violence.

  Parviz Khan—also from Derby—was convicted in February 2008 of planning the beheading of a British soldier. He was so committed to this that he taught his five- and seven-year-old sons how to carry out the beheading.

  “How do you want to deal with these people? How do you want to kill them? Cut their heads off!” he told his children while his home was under audio surveillance by the British police. When he asked his children who they loved, they answered loudly: “Sheik Osama bin Laden.” For his murder plans, Khan was sentenced to life in prison.

  Derby—which is about the size of Buffalo, New York—was also the home of Albanian-born Krenar Lusha, who in 2008 was caught red-handed in his home downloading instructions on how to prepare a suicide bomb. In his cellar, he had almost twenty gallons of gasoline, together with books and videos about time bombs. And on his computer, police also found several videos of long, graphic recordings of beheadings carried out by Islamist groups. He was later sentenced to seven years in prison and then deported.

  Headley was going to England to visit men like these.

  On July 26, 2009, Headley landed in Manchester and drove the sixty or so miles southwest to the city where Ilyas Kashmiri had his contacts.

  The two Derby men went by Bash and Simon, and at first glance, they lived a life just like that of many other Pakistani immigrants in the area. They attended the local mosque in the city and mostly kept to themselves. They also had connections to people in the city’s fundamentalist circles, which was the reason the intelligence service had them under surveillance.

  But only a small, closed group knew that Bash and Simon were considered friends of one of the world’s most wanted terrorists.

  At this time, there was a $600,000 reward for details on Ilyas Kashmiri, which was later raised to $5 million. It hadn’t been long since Kashmiri showed up at number four on the Pakistani Ministry of the Interior’s list of their most wanted criminals.

  Bash and Simon were born in the Kotli district in northeastern Pakistan, on the border with the part of Kashmir under Indian control. It was there, under the names Basharat and Sufiyaan, that they had come into contact with Kashmiri, who now considered them “his men” in Europe.

  Both Headley and Kashmiri had had problems getting in touch with the sleeper cell in Derby by telephone. But now Headley stood face to face with Bash and Simon.

  Headley told them about the attack. About the possibilities for breaking into the Jyllands-Posten offices. About the importance of the operation. He also passed on Kashmiri’s message that the men were to supply weapons and 10,000 pounds for the plan. And that they were to produce martyr videos.

  They likely wouldn’t survive the mission, Headley explained. That wasn’t part of the plan.

  Bash and Simon replied that Jyllands-Posten and Denmark had earned the black mark of retaliation—of that there was no doubt. But they were lukewarm about the plans for the attack and made Headley aware that their loyalty to Kashmiri was no longer unconditional, which resulted in a heated discussion between Headley and the two men.

  Bash used the harshest words. He claimed that Kashmiri’s son had misused a large sum of money designated for jihad for private purposes. He would not put his life into the hands of such a man.

  Simon was more receptive, but he expressed doubts about the possibility of carrying out the attack. He’d consider it further, but first he had to travel to Pakistan to hear more details from Kashmiri himself before he finally made a decision.

  The men also had to acknowledge that they had no weapons. Nor did they have immediate access to them. Sure, they could help with money, but not 10,000 pounds right there and then. Headley got 2,000 pounds, cash in hand. That would pay for a few plane tickets, but it was hardly enough for a terrorist attack.

  Headley left Derby disappointed and continued to the next person on Ilyas Kashmiri’s contact list.

  The apartment in Stockholm, Sweden, was righ
t by Vanadislunden, one of Stockholm’s largest, nicest parks, and just a minute’s walk from Stefanskyrkan, a hundred-year-old church with a crucified Jesus in relief over the arched window.

  But in the seventh unit on Döbelnsgatan Street, neither the park nor Jesus was of any particular interest. Here lived a forty-seven-year-old Swedish-Moroccan by the name of Farid Lamrabet.

  Headley had heard about Farid a few times through his connections in Pakistan. He knew, among other things, that Farid could be “of great assistance,” since he “happened” to be “in the same branch as us,” and that he had “contacts in the north.”

  Farid was from Casablanca in Morocco and had come to Sweden in 1985, where he first tried his hand in the hospitality industry and then in a variety of different businesses. Among other things, he imported Moroccan artisan crafts, which he sold in central Stockholm.

  Farid Lamrabet had immediately integrated himself into Swedish society, and although he spoke perfectly good Swedish, he politely ended many of his sentences with a “förstår du?” [do you understand?], to make sure that his message had gotten through. In 1993, he became a Swedish citizen.

  In the more radical Muslim circles of Sweden, they knew another side of Farid. Here, he occasionally went under the name of Abu Umar and had close ties to international terrorism, sectarian killings, and brutal violence.

  Among Farid’s friends was Mohamed Moumou, who for several years had had a c/o address at Farid’s apartment on Döbelnsgatan. Like Farid, Moumou was born in Morocco, and he too had come to Sweden in the eighties, later becoming a citizen in the nineties. Moumou was part of the innermost circle tied to a controversial mosque in the suburb of Brandbergen, south of Stockholm, and in March of 2004 he had been detained and questioned by the Swedish Security Service, or Säpo, for potential involvement with the terrorist attack in Madrid that same year.