A Kidnapping in Milan: The CIA on Trial

by Hendricks, Steve

  On September 6, Abu Saleh’s Tunisian apprentice, Adel Ben Soltane, who was by then in jail on terrorism charges, received in the mail an envelope containing nothing but a wrapper from a stick of Brooklyn gum. Ben Soltane’s jailers were puzzled about the wrapper’s significance—until five days later, when they understood that he had been told the attacks in New York were imminent. That same week, a prominent priest in northern Italy named Jean-Marie Benjamin was warned by a Muslim acquaintance that the United States and Great Britain would soon be attacked with hijacked airplanes. Benjamin told the authorities, but since his acquaintance had named neither cities nor dates, the claim was hard to assess.

  That so many of Milan’s terrorists knew in advance about the attacks of September 11 beforehand was a testimony to the city’s importance in al-Qaeda’s network. After the attacks, the U.S. Treasury Department, whose responsibility it was to freeze terrorists’ assets, declared Viale Jenner “the main al-Qaeda station house in Europe.”

  A month or two before September 11, Abu Saleh left Italy and traveled to Iran, then on to Afghanistan, apparently to prepare for the American invasion. He is believed to have been killed in that invasion. (His Yemeni friend Abdulrahman fared only slightly better. He disappeared on a trip to Cairo shortly after September 11 and turned up again many months later at Guantánamo, having, it seems, spent an unpleasant interim in a U.S. “black site.”) After Abu Saleh’s disappearance, the Milanese police arrested many of his colleagues, but others carried on. One of them was Abu Omar.

  Chapter 4

  Beloved by God

  AMADEUS VI, the fourteenth-century Count of Savoy, was overfond of dressing his person and his retinue in green and so came to be called Conte Verde. At the urging of Pope Urban V, the Green Count gathered a force of holy warriors and sailed to Byzantium to save Christendom from the Turks. He drove them from Gallipoli and returned home to a victor’s due, which, in time, included the naming of a street for him on the northern rim of Milan. Six centuries later, a portion of his street was taken over by the spiritual heirs of his opponents, who had come to his homeland on a violent religious mission of their own. History’s revenge is slow but sweet.

  The men who ran the mosque on Viale Jenner kept a flat on Via Conte Verde for use as a kind of extended-stay quarters for their extremist guests. Abu Saleh stayed there while looking for a residence, and Abu Omar followed him by a year or so, in the summer of 2000, and eventually decided to make the flat his permanent home. He was helped in his transition to Milan by the imam of Viale Jenner, Abu Imad, formally Arman Ahmed El Hissini Helmy, whom he knew from his imprisonment in Egypt, and by Abu Saleh, whom he had perhaps met in previous trips to Milan. Abu Imad apparently gave Abu Omar work in the mosque’s library and in the small market the mosque ran to help pay its overhead. Eventually, however, Abu Omar shifted his spiritual and professional home to the mosque of Abu Saleh on Via Quaranta, where he was named deputy chief imam. Abu Saleh had great confidence in Abu Omar. “If you have need of anything,” he advised two terrorist followers, “go to Abu Omar.” One of the followers referred to Abu Omar as either a qaid or a dabet—a qaid being a high commander, a dabet a lesser one.

  Abu Omar earned a reputation as a passionate parson. “He gives some very spicy lessons,” one terrorist said; “they’re nuclear bombs.” Said another terrorist, “I and all the other people in the group I hung out with were indoctrinated above all by the Egyptian imams of the mosques of Viale Jenner and Via Quaranta—that is, Abu Imad, Abu Saleh, Abu Omar. Thanks to these lectures, we were convinced to give our willingness to die dragging our enemies down with us, … to take even suicidal actions… . I believe the most dangerous people known to me before my arrest were Abu Saleh and Abu Omar because they had the capacity to inculcate extremist thought.” Abu Omar’s sermons are not preserved, but their themes were the sins of the West, of the sycophantic Arab governments that did the West’s bidding, and of the Muslims who did not submit to the one true Islam.

  In February of 2001 Italy granted Abu Omar’s request for asylum, although it is not clear why. Probably the left hand of the Italian government that gave sanctuary did not know what the right hand that investigated terrorism was learning. The photograph on his asylum papers showed a change of aspect from his days in Albania. From his once-smooth chin, a beard of several pious inches now hung. In place of Western attire, he wore a galabia. His zabiba, or raisin—the endearing name for the forehead callus that devout Muslims earn from thousands of salaams to Mecca—seemed more pronounced, although that might have been due to the near disappearance of his hairline, which had been merely recessive in Albania. Asylum did not propel him to assimilation. In nearly four years in Italy, he had not learned more than a few words of Italian, and never would. His ignorance might be construed a declaration of sorts: his home was in the mosques, not the great wasteland around them.

  A few months after acquiring asylum, he acquired a wife. Officially speaking, he was still not divorced from his first wife, but Islam allows a man more than one of these useful appurtenances, and the second marriage proceeded. His bride, Nabila Ghali, was a fellow Egyptian who had been in Italy for about a decade and who taught an Egyptian curriculum in the Quranic school at the mosque on Via Quaranta. The Egyptian consulate helped design the curriculum to ensure that Egyptian children abroad retained their culture—which was ironic, since many of the Egyptians who worshipped at Via Quaranta thought their government should be destroyed. Ghali’s customary dress was a head-to-toe draping of black and gray, with the merest slits for her eyes. It is possible Abu Omar did not see a square centimeter of her during their courtship. They were married at Via Quaranta.

  After it became clear to the counterterrorists of DIGOS that Abu Omar was a leader of some kind, they endeavored to put a bug in his office at Via Quaranta. Doing so took some time, perhaps until the late winter or early spring of 2002. The bug that was eventually emplaced was by one account a sliver of a thing, thin as a pin, and slipped inside a religious text—by whom is not known. Like every bug in the history of espionage, it recorded much banality, but amid hundreds of hours of conversational emptiness, there were minutes of interest.

  IN THE FIRST week of April, a brother named Hammadi came to Abu Omar in a furor and said that one of the directors of the mosque was stealing money that was supposed to be used for jihad. He was ready to do violence to the director.

  “Hammadi!” Abu Omar cried. “I don’t understand you. I don’t understand your hatred against the brothers. Why not use it against the Jews? Or the enemies of God? … Stay calm.”

  “How can I stay calm?” Hammadi said. “He is a thief, because the charitable money is needed for the mujahidin brothers.”

  “How is he stealing the money for the mujahidin brothers?”

  “He changes the collection box too much.”

  “You’re not the manager of this. This is my job… . You can’t blame people just because they change the bins. Maybe they’re full and they’re changing them because they’re full. I have it all under control.”

  “Where are the donations from last Friday?”

  “Half is here, and the other is already on the road,” Abu Omar reassured him. “We all have the same objective and the same cause. Our desire is to leave these cursed countries… . The wish is that we will all die martyrs.”

  Hammadi left, somewhat mollified, and returned a few days later. He had come from a meeting with, it seemed, another terrorist, and he said to Abu Omar, “I am supposed to tell you that he could use some blank documents.”

  “It’s difficult to get them blank!” Abu Omar said. “You ought to be satisfied with some duplicates.”

  “Will you give them to me now?”

  “There aren’t any in this area!”

  “He asked me for Libyan papers.”

  “For who?”

  “For Hassan.”

  “I’ll bring you a duplicate soon.”

  “Original?” Hammadi asked in Frenc
h.

  “Don’t be so fast.”

  A little later Hammadi said, “I have good news for you. This morning in Tunisia they made an attack and several people were killed.” He was referring to a bombing of an ancient synagogue in Ghriba that left twenty-one dead.

  “The authors of this attack,” said Abu Omar, “are beloved by God.”

  ON ANOTHER DAY in April, an Egyptian rushed into Abu Omar’s office shouting about the need to attack Israelis.

  “So are these attacks going to be made or not going to be made?!”

  “What?” Abu Omar said.

  “I’ll explain it to you clearly. I want us to hit inside, outside—in whatever part of the world, all the establishments, … Israeli interests, … everything that concerns the Jews in the entire world.”

  Abu Omar laughed. “Use your head—ah, ah!”

  “Listen, we’ll make an attack that will teach them what force is… . These armed groups—don’t they exist? It’s a duty for every one of us.”

  “Every attack has its rules,” Abu Omar counseled, “and there are also instructions that come from afar.”

  “Listen, I don’t believe anyone from there… . Even these cassettes that you see from there are all bullshit, lies.”

  “They will do them”—by which Abu Omar seemed to mean the attacks. “They will do them.”

  “When—when? Who—who?”

  “Those who are based there… . That brother from London—”

  “For the operation?”

  “Ah, ah,” Abu Omar affirmed.

  “You are certain?”

  “Ah, ah!”

  “How many people are they?”

  “I don’t know!”

  MAY BROUGHT ANOTHER Egyptian (or perhaps the same), who discussed with Abu Omar, in general terms, how the struggle in Europe was going.

  “The work shouldn’t be done this way,” Abu Omar said. “Above all, the work of the groups isn’t going well, because it’s impossible—because everyone is discovered, and then there are problems.”

  “And if the work is done by a single person [instead]?”

  “It depends if this person isn’t arrested. It depends on the results he gets.”

  “Certainly it must be a job well done. It must be an artist’s work.”

  “If he makes a mistake,” Abu Omar said, “he’s no longer an artist, and then he becomes a danger to everyone. Even if the work is done by a single person, there is always someone who supports it, and if he falls, the whole group falls.”

  “The person who carries out this work ought to be aware of not staying alive.”

  “It depends on what [evidence] he leaves behind him.”

  “We’ll make like the New Yorkers,” the visitor said, probably meaning the murderers of September 11, who had struck eight months earlier and had, in one sense, left no evidence.

  “It’s not an easy thing,” Abu Omar said. “You’re dreaming. You can’t just say, Do like this or like that.”

  “We have a plan.”

  “All of you give me pleasure, but say to Abu Albana to stay at his post. To do something, you must have results because at the moment anyone who moves will be immediately arrested, and it’s better they stay there.”

  “And Abu Jalal?” the visitor said. “And his forces?”

  “God will see to this… . God knows how to eliminate them, and God also knows how to save them.”

  The visitor returned to fantasies of grandiose violence, and Abu Omar said: “I see you’re living the memories of the airplanes. Don’t think this way. You must be realistic. You must be reasonable. You must be aware of the moment we’re living in… . For recruitment, there is nobody. I haven’t seen anything like this in a long time.”

  “Someone is slitting throats somewhere. If I were there, you would see me doing it.”

  “Listen to me! I will teach you the experience of the jihad with time. Even if you don’t make it outside, there are brothers inside prison who make jihad. Everyone who has made jihad in the world is now in prison. This is a strange thing, and it is a dreadful and dangerous moment. If you want to go to prison for nothing, go.”

  ALI ABDEL AL ALI, known as Ali Sharif, came to Abu Omar in June. An administrator of the mosque, he had been arrested seven years earlier in Operation Sphinx but had been released for want of evidence.

  “I fear for you,” he told Abu Omar, “because you are certainly inside ‘the issue.’ ”

  “We are all inside,” Abu Omar said. “Listen, the enemies of God just have terrorism fever.”

  “It’s better that you don’t talk like this. Otherwise you’ll reach the same end as the imprisoned Tunisians, the Moroccans—ultimately the institute will. But I repeat to you, there are great problems, above all with the means of communication, because all those who were arrested were arrested because of the means of communication. You ought to completely avoid talking on the phone. Even if you call your brother, know that you are already inside the circle. You are already sold. Sold, you are finished.”

  Abu Omar said he was worried about being betrayed in other ways. “I’ve noticed several people who run around here who are employed by the consulate, including a Palestinian.”

  “You shouldn’t worry about this person, because you see him. Preoccupy yourself with those who are invisible. You must have your head about you. We don’t want you to end up inside. I should explain to you: I agree with you on one part, if there is a wedding or something else. But answer my question: If you end up in prison, how do you serve Islam? How do you serve it? Serving Islam and Muslims and others is good, but if you end up in prison, you cannot do anything.”

  “I’m not doing anything.”

  “I’m speaking about the phone. Maybe you are talking of things, like this. Be very careful how you talk on the phone. Maybe you are talking of one thing and they learn about another.”

  “I’m not talking at all about chemicals,” Abu Omar said. The Tunisians whom Ali Sharif mentioned had been arrested for plotting chemical attacks.

  They discussed another man, an Israeli, who Ali Sharif believed was helping the Italians translate tapped conversations.

  “God curses him,” Abu Omar said.

  “All that has been translated has been written by his hands, from Arabic to Italian. I’m one hundred percent certain that all the translations were made by a Jew—be careful. I’m not the only one to know this. There are several others who know. Several people have informed me that his name is Sherif.”

  “He is Israeli and works with the Italians? That Palestinian also seems to me a Jew.”

  “Listen, I have told you he is a Jew called Sherif.”

  “I cannot stomach the word ‘Sherif,’ ” Abu Omar said, not minding his guest’s honorific.

  “Maybe it’s a false name. He could be called Muhammad.”

  “There’s also a swine here called Muhammad, and I know where he lives.”

  “There are many people who will pass themselves off as Palestinian, then they take information. But as I told you earlier, you should worry only about the invisible ones. I have so many memories, even of the group of Sheikh Anwar [Shaaban], peace upon his soul—”

  “Peace upon his soul.”

  “Once he told me that he was coming with his group through Switzerland, but they were all arrested. It’s a very dangerous situation. Even if you say the opposite thing or speak in code, they understand you. They know everything.”

  The listeners of DIGOS must have been flattered.

  ON ANOTHER DAY in June, an Algerian arrived from Rome and told Abu Omar that the Roman Carabinieri had taken him to their headquarters and made him look at pictures of Islamists.

  “They asked me,” the man said, “if I knew these people. I answered that I didn’t know them. I’ve prayed they won’t make me go back and ask me everything. They asked me if I know a Syrian, if I know the sheikh Mahmoud, if I know Sheikh Tahar. Later another carabiniere came who told me to be careful because they
have recorded everything. They have a conversation in which there was talk of killing a carabiniere because he was a Jew—and do you know who it is [who’s to do the killing]? It’s me. ‘What do you have against the Jews?’ And I answered that I had nothing to do with it. They have hundreds of photos, including many of you.”

  “And you,” Abu Omar said, “what did you say to them?”

  “I said, what do you want from me? What have I got to do with it?”

  “Do they have many photos of me?”

  “Yes. There are many of them, particularly of you and of Sheikh Abdurahim, and hundreds of photos that show the brothers in different places. From what I understand from the photos, they have a telecamera in the Great Mosque [of Rome].”

  “Oh!!! But my photos—where did they photograph me?”

  “In several places. They photographed you close to home, near the mosque, and you were together with Sheikh Nabil.”

  “And what did they ask you about me?”

  “I told them that I don’t know you very well, that I know you as imam.”

  “Is that all?”

  The man said he knew nothing more. He did, however, have other news. Brothers in London were going to set up charities across Europe to aid Muslim orphans, and one of the charities (which the Italians believed to be fronts, at least in part) was almost ready to open in Holland.

  “But opening offices here,” Abu Omar said, “is very delicate, because they’ve already come under surveillance in Holland. They’re seen as offices for recruiting and supporting terrorism.”