Nine Lives: My time as the West's top spy inside al-Qaeda

by Aimen Dean

  Paul Cruickshank and Tim Lister

  Thank you, Aimen Dean, for working with us to tell your extraordinary story, and for your kind hospitality and good humour over these past few years. We’ve learned so much from you. We admire your bravery during your days as a spy and your sangfroid in the years since. Thanks for your forbearance as we stepped into the shoes of your intelligence handlers and went over each of your lives again and again. It was difficult to tell your story in only nine acts. There are very few who have lived a life as full as one of yours.

  Huge thanks to Alex Christofi, our amazing editor at Oneworld. Your editorial vision and feedback made the book immeasurably better. Thanks also to the entire transatlantic Oneworld team, including Jon Bentley-Smith, Paul Nash, Kate Bland, Caitriona Row, Thanhmai Bui-Van, Becky Kraemer, Mark Rusher, James Jones and Hayley Warnham.

  Thanks to copy-editor Richard Collins and proofreader David Inglesfield. Proper copy-editing and proofing still matters.

  We are very grateful to Oneworld’s visionary founders Juliet Mabey and Novin Doostdar for making this project possible.

  We’d also like to thank our literary agent Richard Pine and Eliza Rothstein, Lyndsey Blessing and the whole team at Inkwell Management in New York, as well as Euan Thorneycroft and his team at AM Heath in London. We deeply appreciate your continued efforts on our behalf.

  We are grateful to those who provided us with invaluable feedback on the manuscript and those whose scholarship and insights have illuminated our understanding of the threat posed by jihadi terrorism. Special thanks in this regard to Lawrence Wright, Ali Soufan, Richard Walton, Bruce Hoffman, Magnus Ranstorp, Raffaello Pantucci, Anne Stenersen, Sidney Alford, Hamish de Bretton-Gordon and Vince Houghton.

  We’d also like to thank Bryan Price, Brian Dodwell, Muhammad al-Ubaydi and Don Rassler at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point for sharing their deep insights on the evolution of al-Qaeda. Big thanks to our CNN colleagues Christiane Amanpour, Ken Shiffman, Matt Scheibner and Kimberly Babbit-Arp. Special thanks as always to Nic and Penny Robertson for their counsel and support.

  Most importantly we’d like to acknowledge the patience, feedback and support of our families as we plunged into another real-life spy story. In Paul’s case, his parents and his wife and their wonderful family on both sides of the Atlantic. And in Tim’s, three generations: father Michael, wife Helena and children Archie, Sam, Verity and Rafaella.

  Notes

  My First Life: The Unlit Candle

  1. This book also cites hadith from Tirmidhi, Abu Dawood, Ibn Majah, Ahmed, Tabbarani, Ibn Majah, Tabbarani, Said bin Mansour, Ibn Hajar and Albani.

  2. Vahid Brown, ‘Foreign Fighters in Historical Perspective: The Case of Afghanistan’, in Brian Fishman eds, ‘Bombers, Bank Accounts, and Bleedout: Al-Qa-ida’s Road in and Out of Iraq’, Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, 2008, p. 25.

  3. Thomas Hegghammer, Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979 (Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 25.

  4. Sayyid Qutb, In the Shade of the Koran. For an English translation of this section see Roxanne L. Euben and Muhammad Qasim Zaman (eds), Princeton Readings in Islamist Thought: Texts and Contexts from al-Banna to Bin Laden (Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 147.

  5. John Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism (Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 260.

  6. Ayman al-Zawahiri, ‘Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner’ (2001); Peter Bergen, The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America and al-Qaeda (Free Press, 2011), p. 23; For a succinct account of how Qutb’s ideas influenced the jihadi movement see Trevor Stanley, ‘The Evolution of Al-Qaeda: Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’, The Review, April 2005.

  7. Abu Dawood: 3462.

  8. Sheikh al-Hawali said in a 1991 sermon: ‘What is happening in the [Arabian] Gulf is part of a larger Western design to dominate the whole Arab and Muslim world.’ Peter Bergen, Holy War Inc: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden (Free Press, 2002), p. 81.

  9. Biography of Ibn Taymiyyah, Sunnahonline.com.

  10. Tirmidhi: 2701.

  11. Tirmidhi: 1663.

  12. David S. Hilzenrath and John Mintz, ‘More Assets on Hold in Anti-Terror Effort’, Washington Post, 13 October 2001; ‘The World Almanac of Islamism 2014’, American Foreign Policy Council (2014), p. 516; Evan Kohlmann, ‘The Afghan-Bosnian Mujahideen Network in Europe’, Paper Presented at CATs, Swedish National Defence College, May 2006, p. 13.

  13. Mark Urban, ‘Bosnia: Cradle of modern jihadism?’ BBC News, 2 July 2015.

  14. What is left of al-Sadiq camp can be seen in this BBC Newsnight report (time code 9.00): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6QIopgwuIU.

  15. Sayyid Qutb, Milestones (1964), p. 63.

  16. Ibid., p. 62.

  17. ‘The Abolition of the Caliphate’, The Economist, 8 March 1924.

  18. For an enlightening commentary on Qutb, see Paul Berman, ‘The philosopher of Islamic terror’, New York Times, 23 March 2003.

  19. For more detail on the battles, see Evan Kohlmann, Al-Qaida’s Jihad in Europe: The Afghan Bosnian Network (Berg, 2004), pp. 125–47; Kohlmann (2004), op. cit., p. 129.

  20. For more details on the Battle of Vozuc?a, see the transcripts in the Rasim Delic case, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, 24–25 September 2007. http://www.icty.org/x/cases/delic/trans/en/070924IT.htm; http://www.icty.org/x/cases/delic/trans/en/070925IT.htm; and the judgement http://www.icty.org/x/cases/delic/tjug/en/080915.pdf.

  21. Tom Downey, ‘The Insurgent’s Tale: A Veteran Foot Soldier Reveals His Role in Jihad’, Rolling Stone, 5 December 2005.

  22. Mitrovic?, ‘Crimes on Ozren had all elements of a genocide’, SRNA, 27 August 2015.

  23. Some of the images contained in videos circulated by the group can be seen in this local media report: http://arhiv.slobodnadalmacija.hr/20010927/temedana.htm.

  24. Case information Sheet, Indictment and Judgement: Trial of of Rasim Delic, Communications Service of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. http://www.icty.org/x/cases/mucic/cis/en/cis_mucic_al_en.pdf; http://www.icty.org/x/cases/delic/ind/en/del-ind060714e.pdf; http://www.icty.org/x/cases/delic/tjug/en/080915.pdf.

  25. One hadith states that near the end of time: ‘You will fight in Arabia, and God will grant you victory, then against Persia, and God will grant you victory, and then against the Romans [Europeans], and God will grant you victory, and then against the Anti-Christ, and God will grant you victory’ (Muslim: 2900). Another states Rome will be conquered after Istanbul. (Ahmed: 6468).

  26. A translation of al-Ayeri’s biography posted in the first two issues of Sawt al-Jihad magazine can be found at https://uleemaulhaqq.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/shaykh-yusuf-al-uyayris-biography.

  27. See 9/11 Commission Report (2004), pp. 145–8; Yosri Fouda and Nick Fielding, Masterminds of Terror: The Truth Behind the Most Devastating Terrorist Attack the World Has Ever Seen (Arcade, 2003).

  28. On the numbers see Urban, op. cit., and his BBC Newsnight report.

  29. The term was used by President George H. W. Bush in an address to Congress on 11 September 1990.

  30. For an account of the death of Shaaban, see Kohlmann (2004), op. cit., pp. 168–70.

  31. On 20 October 1995, a suicide bomber in a car attacked a police office in the Croatian town of Rijeka, injuring several. Years later, after I started working for British intelligence, I learned from the Saudi jihadi Abu Zubayr al-Hayali that Shaaban had ordered the attack because of alleged Croatian complicity in the CIA-organized rendition of the leader of the Gama al-Islamiya, Abu Talal al-Qasimi (aka Tala’t Fouad) from Croatia to Egypt. US intelligence also believed Shaaban was behind the Rijeka bombing. See ‘Black Hole: The Fate of Islamists Rendered to Egypt’, Human Rights Watch, 9 May 2005; Kohlmann (2006), op. cit., p. 16.

  32. US intelligence also developed information on this. See Kohlmann (2006), op. cit., p. 16.

  33. Jamie Mc
Intyre, ‘U.S. vows terrorist bomb won’t affect Saudi relationship’, CNN, 13 November 1995.

  34. Bin Mansour: 2197.

  35. Qutb (1964), op. cit., p. 63.

  My Second Life: Jalalabad and the Jungle

  1. ‘Treasury Designates Al Haramain Islamic Foundation’, United States Department of the Treasury, 19 June 2008.

  2. See Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower (Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), pp. 215–16.

  3. The Russian security services later accused Haramain of wiring $1 million to Chechen rebels in 1999 and arranging to buy 500 heavy weapons for them from the Taliban. Russia pressured Azerbaijan to close the Haramain operation in Baku in 2001. See Marc Ginsberg, ‘A Field Guide to Jihadi Dagestan and Chechnya’, Huffington Post, 22 April 2013. And Sharon LaFraniere, ‘How Jihad Made Its Way to Chechnya’, Washington Post, 26 April 2003.

  4. See Andrew Higgins and Alan Cullison, ‘Terrorist Odyssey: Saga of Dr. Zawahiri Sheds Light On the Roots of al-Qaeda Terror’, Wall Street Journal, 2 July 2002; in the 1990s EIJ and al-Qaeda operated an NGO in Baku as a source and conduit for funds and to support Chechen rebels. 9/11 Commission Report pp. 58, 69–70, 471; The Trial Testimony of Fadl, United States vs bin Laden, 6 February, 2001, pp. 301–3.

  5. Ibid.

  6. ‘If the Chechens and other Caucasian mujahideen reach the shores of the oil-rich Caspian Sea the only thing that will separate them from Afghanistan will be the neutral state of Turkmenistan,’ Zawahiri wrote later. ‘This will form a mujahid Islamic belt to the south of Russia that will be connected in the east to Pakistan.’ Wright, The Looming Tower, p. 249.

  7. Zawahiri has written little about his time in Azerbaijan and Russia.

  8. 9/11 Commission Report, p. 148

  9. For more, see Bergen (2006), op. cit., pp. 94, 106.

  10. For more, see Scott Shane, ‘Abu Zubaydah, Tortured Guantánamo Detainee Makes Case for His Release’, New York Times, 23 August 2016.

  11. This is what he told me. Other accounts state he arrived in Afghanistan in 1987.

  12. ‘FBI 100 – First Strike: Global Terror in America’, FBI, 26 February 2008; FBI Transcript of Interview of Abdul Basit Mahmoud Karim (Ramzi Yousef), 14 February 1995, p. 2, cited in Kohlmann (2004), p. 72.

  13. For more details on the bomb, see Jan Hoffman, ‘Trade Center Defendants Encouraged’, New York Times, 16 April 1997.

  14. See Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, ‘Revisiting the Early Al-Qaeda: An Updated Account of its Formative Years’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 35:1 (2012), pp. 1–36.

  15. 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 109–10.

  16. Bergen and Cruickshank, op. cit.; Bergen (2006), op. cit., ch. 3–4.

  17. Ibid.

  18. James Gordon Meek, “Black Hawk Down” Anniversary: Al Qaeda’s Hidden Hand’, ABC News, 4 October 2013.

  19. United States v. Usama bin Laden: Indictment, United States District Court, Southern District of New York, 4 November 1998, p. 20.

  20. Bergen and Cruickshank, op. cit.; Bergen (2006), op. cit., p. 67.

  21. A further 372 were wounded in the attack. Bruce Riedel, ‘Captured: Mastermind behind the 1996 Khobar Towers attack’, Brookings Institution, 26 August 2015.

  22. Tirmidhi: 2269.

  23. David Kirkpatrick, ‘Saudi Said to Arrest Suspect In 1996 Khobar Towers Bombing’, New York Times, 26 August 2015.

  24. An English translation of the declaration can be read in the primary source section of the website of the 9/11 Memorial Museum.

  25. ‘If you see the black banners approaching from Khurasan, then join them for the Mahdi will be among them’ (Ahmed: 21796); ‘An Army shall rise from the East that will pave the way for the Mahdi’s rule’ (Ibn Majah: 4086).

  26. Michael M. Phillips, ‘Launching the Missile That Made History’, Wall Street Journal, 1 October 2011.

  27. For an excellent account of the rise of the Taliban, see Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (Yale University Press, 2000).

  28. See Rashid, op. cit., ch. 3

  29. See testimony of Vahid Mojdeh in Bergen (2006), op. cit., pp. 162–4.

  30. His cousin, Abu Muaz al-Kuwaiti, had been a senior commander in the Mujahideen Brigade.

  31. Romesh Ratnesar, ‘Confessions Of An Al-Qaeda Terrorist’, Time, 23 September 2002; ‘Terrorism in Southeast Asia’, Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, 7 February 2005; ‘Profile: Omar al-Farouq’, BBC News, 26 September 2006.

  32. Hernel Tocmo, ‘Maute patriarch an ex-MILF member, says military official’, ABS-CBN News, 7 June 2017.

  33. ‘9/11 Commission Report’, pp. 147–8.

  My Third Life: The Pledge

  1. Ibn Assakir: 538. Some theologians have questioned the authenticity of this hadith. But al-Ghamdi told me that events had proven its authenticity. It was an early example to me of the theological elasticity used by hardline jihadis.

  2. The prophecy of the five armies comes from a compilation of hadith: There will come a time when three armies of Islam shall simultaneously rise, one in Syria, one in Yemen and one in Iraq’ (Abu Dawood: 2165; Ahmed 16748). ‘There will come a time when armies will rise simultaneously, one in the Levant, one in the Yemen, one in the East and one in the West [i.e. the Maghreb]’ (Albani: 3090). Al-Qaeda leaders believed the East referred to the armies foretold to march from Khurasan (Afghanistan) around the time of the emergence of the Mahdi to liberate Jerusalem (Ahmed: 21796). Al-Qaeda emphasizes liberating Jerusalem because of this prophetic hadith: ‘If you the caliphate take Jerusalem as its capital then know that the upheavals, wars and great change are at hand and the Day of Judgment is closer than my hand on your head’ (Abu Dawood: 2535).

  3. Ahmed: 21796. See also Ibn Majah: 4086: ‘An Army shall rise from the East that will pave the way for the Mahdi’s rule.’

  4. Ahmed: 11110.

  5. Tabbarani: 638. Much later I discovered that this hadith, as well as a significant number of others quoted by al-Qaeda ideologues on the prophecies, have a weak claim to authenticity.

  6. Al-Qaeda’s self-serving interpretation of the prophecy was that the fight against ‘the Jews’ would help bring about the arrival of the Mahdi. The more common view among Salafi Muslims is the one supplied by the fifteenth-century scholar Imam Ibn Hajar. In his hadith commentary ‘Fateh al-Barri’, Hajar wrote that the hadith refers to a battle after the arrival of the Mahdi against the Antichrist and his Jewish army near the end of time. This interpretation did not suit al-Qaeda’s purposes because it implied believers should wait for divine intervention rather than taking matters into their own hands.

  7. For a useful commentary on this, see William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State (St. Martin’s Press, 2015), pp. 22–7.

  8. It revealed that bin Laden, whose father hailed from Yemen, came to believe before his death he might be the ‘Qahtani’ – a Yemeni figure foretold to pave the way for the Mahdi. Bin Laden wrote that before 9/11 an al-Qaeda operative told him he had dreamed this. A few al-Qaeda recruits I encountered in Afghanistan thought bin Laden was the actual Mahdi. The hadith about the Qahtani is obscure and considered by most Muslim scholars to be of weak authenticity. Bin Laden’s Abbottabad diary can be viewed at www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/index.html. Also, see ‘Abbottabad documents: Bin Laden paves the way for the emergence of the Mahdi’, al-Arabiya, 15 November 2017.

  9. One hadith foretold ‘Constantinople shall be conquered, blessed be that arm and blessed by its leader’ (Ahmed 18977).

  10. McCants (2015), op. cit., pp. 116–17; Ayman al-Zawahiri, ‘The Islamic Spring Series’ (episode 3), As Sahab, 21 September 2015.

  11. At this time al-Muhajir was al-Qaeda’s second most senior theologian after Abu Hafs al-Mauretani.

  12. Al-Muhajir claimed this had been foretold by Koran: 17:4–7.

  13. Bin Mansour: 2197.

  14. Bergen, ‘The Osama bin Laden I know’ (2006), op. cit., p. 1
73.

  15. 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 111–12.

  16. Ben Farmer, ‘9/11: HQ where bin Laden plotted atrocities’, Daily Telegraph, 5 September 2011.

  17. Exhibit 941, ‘Substitution for the Testimony of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’, United States vs Moussaoui, p. 4; 9/11 Commission Report, p. 235.

  18. See Bergen and Cruickshank, op. cit.

  19. Andrea Galli, ‘Arrestato il tunisino Fezzani, leader di Isis reclutatore in Italia’, Corriere della Sera, 14 November 2016.

  20. Cesare Giuzzi, ‘Isis, caccia alla rete di Milano: “Rischio terroristi tra i profughi”’, Corriere della Sera, 14 August 2016; Cesare Giuzzi, ‘Libia, “Arrestato Abu Nassim” Era reclutatore di jihadisti in Italia’, Corriere della Sera, 18 August 2016.

  21. https://www.cdc.gov/botulism/general.html.

  22. ‘The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction’, Report to the President of the United States, 31 March 2005, p. 269.

  23. A book published by a French terrorism researcher in 2002 contained an extract of a letter addressed to Abu Khabab listing certain types of waste from a nuclear reactor which could be weaponised to contaminate an area. However nothing he ever said to me suggested he had any real interest in developing ‘dirty bombs’. See Roland Jacquard, L’Archive Secretès d’al Qaida (Jean Picollec, 2002), p. 291.

  24. Scott Stewart, ‘The Biggest Threat Dirty Bombs Pose is Panic’, Forbes, 11 September 2014.

  25. George Tenet, who was CIA director between 1997 and 2004 later wrote that al-Qaeda operatives acting under the supervision of Ayman al-Zawahiri had at some point in the 1999–2001 period set up a small anthrax lab in Kandahar and that efforts to isolate anthrax had proceeded in parallel with planning for 9/11, according to intelligence that reached the CIA after the attacks. I was never told about these efforts during my time in al-Qaeda in Afghanistan between 1997 and 2001. I am deeply sceptical it ever came close to weaponizing anthrax. Tenet claimed the arrest of two operatives involved in the programme and other actions in the months after 9/11 had ‘neutralized the anthrax threat, at least temporarily’. See George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm: The CIA at America’s Time of Crisis (HarperCollins, 2007), pp. 278–9.