by Aimen Dean
** Legislation introducing control orders was passed the same month. Less restrictive ‘TPIMs’ replaced the control order system in 2012.15
* The degree to which al-Qaeda’s senior leadership in the Afghanistan–Pakistan region had grown dependent on Zarqawi for funding was made clear in a letter Zawahiri sent al-Zarqawi in July 2005: ‘Many of the lines have been cut off. Because of this, we need a payment while new lines are being opened. So, if you’re capable of sending a payment of approximately one hundred thousand, we’ll be very grateful to you.’17
** According to a classified June 2006 US government report, insurgent groups in Iraq relied in part on funds coming into the country from foreign donors and other sources until 2004, but in the years that followed became self-sustaining financially. The report stated that by 2006 insurgent groups were raising up to $200 million a year from oil smuggling, kidnapping and other forms of criminal activity in Iraq, potentially providing them with ‘surplus funds with which to support other terrorist organizations outside of Iraq’.18
** Al-Rigi was later captured and executed.19
* Al-Suri was detained in the Pakistani city of Quetta in October 2005. He was held in secret by the CIA and then transferred into the custody of the Assad regime in Syria. His current status is unknown.22
* It was of little consolation that the account provided to Suskind by his source or sources contained several factual inaccuracies. Firstly, I worked for British intelligence not the CIA. Secondly, Western intelligence was first alerted to the poison gas plot against New York by me weeks before the blueprints were found on Bokhowa’s computer. Thirdly, Zawahiri had already called off the plot by the time Bokhowa was arrested and those blueprints were found. Fourthly, I had been told in some detail about the reasons why Zawahiri called off the plot, and provided this information to my handlers.
* He would later be convicted of obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements, but would serve no jail time after President George W. Bush commuted his sentence.
My Ninth Life: A Graveyard in Syria
2006–2015
For two years I lived in limbo, a vagrant of the spy world. I changed all my contact details and stayed away from jihadi circles in the UK, leaving the impression that I was coming under suspicion and needed to lie low. I spent hours walking besides the Thames, watching the pleasure boats and the dredgers churn through the tea-brown waters. Yet a stay of execution is no more than that. Late in 2008, on one of those November days when it seems impossible that the sun will ever reappear, I received a call from Oliver, a former Controller at MI6. The service needed to talk to me.
I was invited to a quiet café near Trafalgar Square to meet a senior MI6 officer named Rachel, who had supervised my handlers at MI6. I knew it had to be bad news; she didn’t leave the office for routine chats. As I walked up Whitehall, mist draped the buildings of government in a hazy grey.
Rachel was accompanied by a junior male MI6 officer who was presumably a note-taker. They were sitting at a corner table looking awkward. I had met Rachel once before and she never failed to make an impression. In her mid-forties, she had intelligent eyes and high cheek bones and reminded me of Vanessa Redgrave. Her patrician tone conveyed authority. The welcome was warm, almost sympathetic, which only confirmed my suspicion that I was not about to hear glad tidings.
‘Tea, Aimen?’ she asked. I wondered whether the wheels of British foreign policy would ever move without it.
Amid the chink of cups, she readjusted her Hermès scarf, took a briefing note from her handbag and cleared her throat.
‘This isn’t easy,’ she began. ‘The Americans have intercepted a message. From Abu Yahya al-Libi.’
Her voice was almost a whisper.
Al-Libi, a Libyan, as his fighting name suggested, was a star inside al-Qaeda, his reputation burnished by a spectacular escape from the US detention facility at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan three years before.1
‘Its circulation seems limited,’ Rachel continued. ‘It’s gone to AQ individuals in Saudi, Kuwait and Bahrain. Basically, it says you have betrayed the cause, as it were, and that anyone who encounters you should kill you.’
‘As simple as that,’ I replied with a hint of irritation.
‘But it doesn’t order people to hunt you down and kill you,’ Rachel added, looking for a silver lining.
‘It’s a comforting but fine distinction,’ I said with a wry smile.
I looked out into the street; a gaggle of schoolchildren on an outing were chatting excitedly. I yearned for their innocent, untroubled life.
For the rest of my life I would need to look over my shoulder, and trust to providence that I would not run into the wrong people at the wrong time. As I felt my chest tighten I told myself not to panic. There were steps I could take to reduce the risk.
‘Yes, well, clearly we will stay across this,’ she continued. ‘It does suggest they think you are in the Gulf, which is some comfort. But obviously exercise caution, and I wouldn’t think about going home for birthdays or funerals.’ The British never could resist a line of understatement.
‘I’ll obviously need to move again,’ I told her, dreading having to return to my apartment in Canary Wharf and pack my life up yet another time.
‘Yes, I’m so sorry about that,’ she replied.
I feared it would be only a matter of time before the fatwah was spread more widely. With Islamists who had known me still spread out across London, living too long in any one location would be risky.
‘How did they work it out?’ I asked.
‘Someone read the Suskind book, though I’d love to know how they got hold of it in the tribal territories of Pakistan. Not al-Libi, obviously. We are guessing it may have been Adam Gadahn who worked it out.’
Gadahn: the young self-assured Californian I had escorted from Peshawar into Afghanistan exactly ten years earlier. Then barely out of his teens, now he was forging a role as al-Qaeda’s mouthpiece, thanks to his perfect English and communications skills.2
Not for the first time I felt a stab of anger towards the leaker or leakers who had briefed Ron Suskind. The British still suspected that at least one had been in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. With two terms nearly completed, many senior officials in the Bush administration were looking forward to lucrative jobs in the private sector or six-figure book deals. I, on the other hand, was on al-Qaeda’s list of things to do, thanks to some loose lips in Washington.
The message from al-Libi was delivered to the man who had organized the memorial for my friend Khalid al-Hajj back in 2004 – a Bahraini al-Qaeda operative called Mohammed.* And it was followed by a fatwah issued by someone else who’d been at that meeting: none other than the firebrand cleric Turki Binali. I’d never understood why someone so openly militant and supportive of al-Qaeda had evaded a long jail sentence in Bahrain.
The first thing I did that night was to shave off my beard. When the condensation cleared from the bathroom mirror, the person looking back at me seemed stressed but at least he looked different, maybe even younger.
In the weeks that followed, all my senses were on alert whenever I travelled around London. I deployed my counter-surveillance training as I walked the streets, sometimes abruptly changing route if I noticed the same person behind me for too long. I carried on using the Underground but avoided the stops and routes I had taken during my Londonistan years. The sense of liberation I had once felt taking public transport was replaced by anxiety. The Tube line south from Waterloo towards Tooting was now out of bounds, as were several lines leading into northern and eastern reaches of the capital. Whenever I was on the Tube I carefully examined the faces around me, watching out for anybody staring my way too intently.
One afternoon, I jumped onto a packed train at High Street Kensington. A heavily bearded Pakistani-looking man boarded the same carriage. I recognized him immediately; he had been one of Babar Ahmad’s disciples in the Tooting Circle. I turned away quickly, hoping he hadn’t seen
me, but when I glanced back he was staring right at me. His momentary puzzlement had turned to anger and he began barging aside passengers to get to me.
I slid out of the train just before the doors closed and hurried down the platform. When I reached the top of the stairs – out of breath – I heard him shouting at me from below. My attempt to lose him had failed. My pulse was racing. At the exit I inserted my travel card into the reader but it spat it out without letting me through. It was like being in a Hitchcock film, my pursuer closing in as I fumbled with my card. I tried again. This time the barrier opened. I surged forward into the arcade and darted into a Boots pharmacy. My training was kicking in; I took cover in the furthest aisle and studied the reflection in the window. I waited there for ten minutes praying he’d not seen me enter the store. It seemed unlikely he’d have a weapon, but there was always the chance he would call up reinforcements.
After ten minutes I moved slowly into the high street until I was sure I’d lost him. My throat was dry. I went into a café and ordered a large Diet Coke to calm myself down. He had looked at me with naked fury. It was clear the fatwah had reached Londonistan.
Not long afterwards, I learned from a contact in Bahrain that it was Yasser Kamal, the cell leader in the Fifth Fleet plot, who had asked Binali for the fatwah against me. Kamal had served just a few months in jail before terror charges against him had been ruled unconstitutional by Bahrain’s Supreme Court in 2006.* He was furious to discover (thanks to the Suskind book) that I had been the mole inside the plot and had every intention of liquidating me should the opportunity arise.
If Kamal knew I was the informant, he might get to my brother Moheddin. I had no idea whether they were still in touch. Moheddin had heard the accusations that I was ‘Ali’ in Suskind’s book but refused to believe them. His conspiratorial mindset saw it all as a wicked plot to sow dissension in jihadi ranks.
I wanted to tell Moheddin how and why and when I had abandoned al-Qaeda. In fact, I owed him the explanation. Better to forestall his anger and disappointment with a full confession than allow him to find out another way. That meant going to Bahrain, where Yasser Kamal and others would no doubt like to meet me. It was a risk I had to take.
Not long after my tea party with MI6 in the Strand I flew to Bahrain and booked into a hotel with half-decent security. I called my brother and told him I was on a brief stopover. Could we meet for dinner?
His tone seemed relaxed; I deduced word had not reached him. I proposed a fish restaurant I knew well, a discreet place with private tables. I didn’t want flapping ears catching snippets of my confession, nor staring eyes if my brother raised his voice. I also chose a public place because I hoped it would mute his response.
I arrived early and remained out of sight, ready to move fast should my brother bring along someone else who would like to ‘catch up’. Thankfully, he arrived alone and seemed to detect that I was nervous. We talked about family and friends, and then I lowered my voice and recited the lines I had rehearsed.
‘There’s something you have to know and I don’t think it will make you very happy. For several years now I have been an agent for the British government. I lost faith in al-Qaeda. I couldn’t stomach the civilian casualties, nor Zarqawi’s butchery.’
He stared at me; for a few moments I thought he was going to cry. Instead he looked down as if to gather his thoughts, and then looked at me with a mixture of pity and sympathy.
‘I didn’t know, but somehow I thought you had left,’ he said simply.
I wanted to put the best gloss on my spying.
‘Remember that morning in 2004 when we were arrested. I knew they were coming and I got rid of stuff that I feared could have incriminated you.’
He looked both upset and grateful.
‘I don’t know whether to say thank you or tell you to go away,’ he said, almost murmuring. ‘But now it makes sense. Harath told me recently that the night before we were arrested you gave him a big bag of stuff and told him to drop it in a dumpster at least three blocks away.’
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘He was a good boy; he was just doing what his uncle said!’
‘I felt for sure they’d find some grounds to send me to prison again,’ Moheddin said.
‘I had to protect you. I don’t want to boast, but by 2004 I’d been one side or the other in this treacherous game for years. I could smell the danger. The only reason you can sit at dinner with me now is that I knew what was going on.’ I decided to press home the point. ‘Imagine – never seeing the boys grow up. Maybe they’d be very different now without their father around.’
He nodded slowly and stared out of the window for a few moments, as if looking for some emotional anchor. But he also wanted to talk about me – to discover for himself where betrayal, self-preservation and conviction intersected.
‘Was it also . . .’ he began to ask, and hesitated. ‘Was it because al-Qaeda didn’t know how to use your abilities, your leadership potential? Was it the Egyptians? Did you just get bored?’
He was trying to put the best gloss on my confession, trying to recast my actions as a snub to al-Qaeda for not recognizing my talent. He simply could not bring himself to accept my motivation, my firm belief that I was serving God by turning against al-Qaeda. He still believed the movement’s goals were fundamentally sound, even if the likes of Zarqawi had given it a bad name.
I found out from my other brothers in the following months that Moheddin agonized about my decision. He continued to believe that al-Qaeda had simply not understood how to use my talents or keep me busy. He knew better than most that I was quickly bored and given to impulse. He seemed to gloss over or reject the notion that the East Africa bombings and the growing civilian casualties had alienated me from al-Qaeda. I had a ‘mistaken’ sense of compassion and humanity, in Moheddin’s eyes, that had led me to defect to the British.
Moheddin abruptly rejected the fatwah against me, saying it was a political ploy by my enemies. Such was his faith in me – or his immense capacity for denial – that he continued telling me about developments in Gulf jihadi circles.
Al-Qaeda had certainly done a poor job of making the case for the prosecution. Al-Libi’s denunciation had a very small circulation and was very sparse; it did not set out a case against me using the evidence of Suskind’s book. To some who moved in al-Qaeda’s orbit, it seemed I was the victim of an internal power struggle. And Binali was not the most popular figure within al-Qaeda, where he was regarded as an ambitious blowhard.
Even Abu Hafs al-Baluchi had doubts about the fatwah, telling my brother that al-Qaeda had never given me a chance to defend myself. I met him for the final time early in 2009. He had come to Bahrain quite openly and I felt reasonably sure he wouldn’t kill me. We took a walk along the shore of the Gulf.
It was a rare blustery day; the normally placid Gulf was choppy, with whitecaps chasing along the shore.
‘I’ve never been so busy,’ he said. I privately lamented, not for the first time, that I was no longer on MI6’s books. ‘I have twenty people helping jihadis from Iraq get to Afghanistan and Pakistan. They are all foreign fighters; there is no place for them in Iraq now these Awakening Councils have turned against the Islamic State.’*
The US surge in Iraq, and powerful Sunni tribes turning against the Islamic State, had disturbed the hornet’s nest.
By al-Baluchi’s reckoning, his group had helped more than a thousand individuals make the perilous trip across Iran. Some had joined the Taliban in its fight against the US-backed government in Afghanistan. It had taken a million dollars, much of it paid out as bribes in Iran and Pakistan, and an intricate logistical chain to move them.
Many of al-Qaeda’s best and brightest – or at least its best survivors – were now all conveniently gathered in one area just as the incoming Obama administration escalated the drone campaign.
Thankfully, al-Baluchi didn’t mention recipes for poisons again. Some months earlier he had complained to my brother tha
t the nicotine formula hadn’t worked.
‘Tell Ali that I send my best wishes – and that the rabbits are still alive,’ he had joked.
Despite George’s support, I had struggled to adapt to life after active service. There was a perverse addiction to the work that made normal life utterly deflating. I was like one of those soldiers who spend months in some remote outpost being fired upon every day or trekking through the jungle behind enemy lines and who later hanker for the danger, hardship and camaraderie of bitter endurance. Occasionally, I would meet former handlers, especially if al-Baluchi had news, but British intelligence liked to keep ex-informants at arm’s length.
I also needed to work. I had received a substantial one-off ‘pension’ when the American leak ended my career, but I was working through it rapidly given the cost of living in London.
In the end, a combination of George, my book-keeping abilities and my knowledge of how al-Qaeda was raising and moving money came to the rescue. A controller at MI6 – one of the most senior officials in the service – had left government to take up a job at a big international bank, which had substantial business in the Middle East. Part of his remit was to analyse political risk in countries where the bank did business (and that was most) and to help it avoid being an unwitting conduit for terrorist cash. He needed help and asked me to become a consultant.
I was almost pathetically grateful for the opportunity. But the deal was nearly unstitched in a moment of absurd theatre. During the due diligence, a woman from MI5’s personnel department was gathering information to ensure my suitability for such a role.
At the end of their conversation, one of my handlers added casually, ‘Oh, he’s diabetic and addicted to Coke.’
Some part of the remark did not register. The woman looked surprised.
‘Really? For how long?’
‘For as long as we’ve known him.’
‘Did you try to help him kick it?’
‘Not really – how he looks after his health is his own affair. It didn’t affect his work.’