Agent Storm: My Life Inside al-Qaeda (12 page)

I saved enough cash to begin renting a nondescript terraced house; by the end of 2003 my rare bout of self-discipline had paid off. Karima, Osama and Sarah arrived and settled into an anonymous existence on Connaught Road among the backstreets of Luton. It was a tightly packed street of post-war homes crammed with cars and vans. None had any sort of front garden; just a few paving slabs decorated with dustbins. Karima, to start with, was happier. Dressed in the full veil she was like hundreds of women in Luton. But, for that very reason, the town was also beginning to attract far-right parties, and racial assaults were not uncommon.

In Luton I quickly fell in with like-minded brothers. We would hang out, eat chicken and chips and talk jihad. I developed a following because I had met some of the best-known radical figures in the Arab world. The Islamist insurgency in Iraq had emboldened us and provided a platform for a radical preacher called Omar Bakri Mohammed – a man who could whip up a crowd.

I first heard him speak in the spring of 2004 at a small community
centre on Woodland Avenue, where some of the most militant Muslims in Luton congregated.

It was packed for the occasion – rows of young bearded men wearing Taliban-style salwar kameez. Women shrouded completely in black stood in a segregated section at the back of the hall.

A hush went around the room when the cleric, a large and portly figure, climbed up on stage, supporting his girth with a walking stick. He had oversized spectacles and a thick beard.

‘Brothers, I carry important news. The mujahideen in Iraq are fighting back and they are winning. They are striking fear into the Americans,’ he roared in an accent that was a cross between his native Syria and East London.

The resistance of one city had given jihadis cause for hope. Fallujah, fifty miles west of Baghdad, was a Sunni stronghold whose people had never welcomed the Americans. Within days of their arriving and commandeering a school there were protests which turned violent. US forces
opened fire
on rioters, killing several. The Americans had just launched
an offensive in the city after the charred bodies of four US. security contractors were strung up on a bridge by insurgents. But the Americans had run into stiff resistance, and around the world jihadis were looking to Fallujah as the defining battle to save Iraq from the apostates. Emboldened by the failure of the Americans to capture the city, the jihadists had declared an Islamic emirate, and started implementing Sharia law
.

‘
Subhan’Allah, Allahu Akbar
[Glory be to God, God is Great]
!
’ Bakri Mohammed bellowed. ‘I just received greetings from brothers in Iraq from Fallujah saying the fight is going well. They ask us to keep on working for our Deen. Sheikh Abu Musab al-Zarqawi himself gives us his greetings,’ he thundered.

Zarqawi, a Jordanian building a new al-Qaeda franchise, was winning growing fame in extremist circles as the standard bearer for resistance against the American occupation.

The audience lapped up Omar Bakri’s remarks. He was not a man wracked by self-doubt. While his Arabic rendition of the Koran left something to be desired, he had charisma and answers to the questions of the day and remarkable contacts. What particularly appealed to me
was the way he marshalled the Koran,
Hadith
and centuries-old Islamic law to justify bin Laden’s war.

Omar Bakri led the group al-Muhajiroun, a radical UK outfit that was the cheerleader for al-Qaeda, and walked a thin line between freedom of speech and incitement to terrorism. He had called the 9/11 hijackers the ‘
magnificent nineteen
’ and his online sermons – followed by hundreds of young militants – justified jihad against those he called the ‘crusaders’ in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At the next few lectures I attended his message was inflammatory. Omar Bakri said the United States was massacring Muslims and it was the duty of all Muslims to fight back. He was fond of quoting one verse from the Koran:

‘
The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Prophet and strive to make mischief in the land is only this: that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides, or they should be imprisoned.
’

His acolytes would sometimes set up a projector, flashing images of Iraqis allegedly killed by the Americans. There were also photos of the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, which had just been made public. Such humiliation of Muslims made me seethe with anger.

Omar Bakri also told us that in this war there was no distinction between civilians and non-civilians, innocents and non-innocents. The only real distinction was between Muslims and disbelievers and the life of a disbeliever was worthless. Bakri had formed al-Muhajiroun in Britain in 1996 and had steadily become more radical, especially after 9/11. Though he was dismissed by many as a loudmouth, his followers, many of whom only had a superficial knowledge of Islam, hung on his every word and sometimes gravitated towards violence.
Several of his acolytes had become involved in terrorist plots – including one sponsored by al-Qaeda to set off large fertilizer-based bombs in crowded spaces, such as the Ministry of Sound nightclub in London
. He had a remarkable record of mentoring and teaching young militants who subsequently plotted violence – but of never being involved in, nor aware of, their plans.

After two British men carried out a suicide attack against a bar in Tel Aviv, he boasted that one of them had taken a course he had run on
Islamic law, but insisted he was unaware of their plot
. He also spoke of a ‘Covenant of Security’ – which held that Muslims living in Britain should not commit acts of jihad there, but could wage jihad overseas. He told a story about the companions of the Prophet Mohammed who were given protection and hospitality in Christian-ruled Abyssinia. This had brought about the concept in the Koran of a covenant, whereby Muslims are not allowed to attack the inhabitants of a country where they find refuge. It was a cunning way to avoid getting into trouble with the UK’s tough terrorism legislation.

At Omar Bakri’s lectures a quiet British-Pakistani called Abdul Waheed Majeed sat at the back, taking the official minutes of the proceedings. He lived in Crawley, a sleepy market town south of London, but drove up for the talks. He had been one of a group of young men mentored by Omar Bakri in Crawley, several of whom had planned to blow up the Ministry of Sound nightclub in London. Majeed was not implicated in the plot but years later would himself make the
ultimate sacrifice
for al-Qaeda.

Soon I was attending Omar Bakri’s ‘VIP’ lectures, which were open to only a few of his closest followers like Abdul Majeed. Omar Bakri was impressed by the fact I had spent time in Yemen and by the name I had given my son. He liked to call me Abu Osama (the father of Osama).

These sessions were held at least once a week in followers’ houses in Luton with six to ten of us. They were followed by a large dinner of lamb or chicken offered by the host. Omar Bakri liked his food.

Behind closed doors his message was very different. On one occasion he said he was issuing a fatwa that allowed for the killing of the disbelievers – the
kuffar
– in England because in his view they were part of a larger conflict. Asked by one of the group – a red-bearded optician of Pakistani origin from Birmingham – whether it was permissible to stab
kuffar
on the street, he confirmed that it was.

Omar Bakri had come to the UK to escape prosecution in Saudi Arabia, but was quietly giving his blessing to followers to kill people on the streets of the country he now called home.

I was among a small group of his followers who tore down advertising posters showing scantily clad women and maintained a stall in
Luton town centre to distribute leaflets and proselytize with mega-phones. For me, it was belonging to another gang. But the fractious atmosphere – including a growing number of assaults on Muslim women – gave us a real sense of purpose in defending our community. It was not Fallujah, but it was a much smaller part of the same struggle.

We would beat up drunkards who were harassing veiled women. On one occasion a fellow al-Muhajiroun member and I chased two men through the Arndale Shopping Centre after they had abused Muslim women. I caught up with one in a Boots chemist’s store and dragged him to the ground among the shelves of cosmetics, punching him repeatedly before escaping as the police arrived. When Luton Town football club played home matches, which attracted groups of neo-Nazi skinheads, I would carry a baseball bat or hammer with me. And my little circle rejected attempts by other Muslims to engage politically in England, regarding such efforts as useless and against Islam.

I felt Islamophobia at first hand, especially when subjected to ‘additional screening’ at airports on a regular basis. On one trip from Denmark, I was held up for two hours at customs at Luton airport while they checked through my luggage and asked me the usual questions.

‘Are you doing this because you hate Muslims? That’s the reason, isn’t it?’ I asked accusingly. They looked offended. One went to fetch a colleague, a British-Pakistani woman wearing a hijab.

‘I’m a Muslim too and I can assure you this is nothing to do with our religion,’ she said.

‘You’re not a Muslim. You’re just pretending to be one. What you actually are is a hypocrite,’ I snapped.

Jihadi-Salafism was not exactly an inclusive creed.

Omar Bakri designated me the ‘Emir of training’ for the group because of my boxing background. I instructed a small group of al-Muhajiroun in boxing in the gym. And I began leading expeditions of young British extremists to Barton Hills, a nature reserve north of Luton, where we conducted paramilitary exercises without weapons.

I made the drills up as I went along, using al-Qaeda training videos I had seen online as inspiration. Getting my trainees to crawl through an
icy stream and then run up a steep bank was a staple. I loved being outdoors and so did my students. They got to play at being mujahideen for the day; shouts of ‘
Allahu Akbar!
’ resounded through the forested hills.

Soon there was so much
demand for the training
that I was leading groups of a dozen into the hills twice a week. They came from as far away as Birmingham to join in.

Among those I encountered in Luton was Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, a young man of Iraqi descent who had spent much of his childhood in Sweden. We bumped into each other in the men’s clothing department at a large store where he worked. Al-Abdaly had deep-brown eyes and luxuriant black hair; he could have been a matinee idol. But he was in Luton, a place that did not scream opportunity. We played football and went to the gym together, and met at Friday prayers.

Occasionally Taimour came along to al-Muhajiroun’s open meetings, more out of curiosity than conviction. He was a quiet character who rarely expressed any views. From time to time we did get into theological debates, and he would gently challenge me on my uncompromising embrace of the
takfiri
position. Like my Danish friends in Vollsmose, he seemed an unlikely candidate for terrorism. His wife did not wear the full veil, or
niqab
, but a modern loose hijab. Years later Taimour would be another to confound my expectations.

For extremists like me, the imprisonment without trial of alleged al-Qaeda members at Guantanamo Bay and the scandal at Abu Ghraib infuriated us. My Luton fraternity would mockingly describe the US President as Sheikh Bush because the Saudi religious establishment was so deferential to the Americans, condemning terrorist attacks in Iraq but never mentioning the deaths of ordinary Iraqis at the hands of US forces.

On 7 May 2004 the American civilian Nick Berg was executed in Iraq by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian jihadi for whom no level of violence or brutality seemed excessive. Zarqawi ensured that Berg’s beheading was filmed
.

At that time Zarqawi was something of a hero to us; he was on the frontline and not cowed by vastly superior forces. He was ready to use
the sword himself and was developing even more of a following than Osama bin Laden among my Luton circle.

The video of Berg’s killing, and others of attacks on US forces in Iraq, became popular among jihadis in Luton and elsewhere in the UK, turning up on DVDs distributed by al-Muhajiroun.

I too watched the video of Berg’s murder, but had no idea until later that the man to his right, restraining him as Zarqawi prepared for the fatal blow, was Mustapha Darwich Ramadan, whom I had spoken with in a Danish prison in 1997.
After his release Ramadan had got into more trouble and fled to Lebanon and then Iraq, where he had adopted a
nom de guerre
, Abu Mohammed Lubnani, and joined the militant Islamist group Ansar al-Islam
.

Lubnani and his sixteen-year-old son were
killed in Fallujah
, fighting with al-Qaeda against US forces.

I was not alienated by the brutality of the videos emerging from Iraq because they represented justifiable retribution for the invasion of Muslim lands. They would instil terror in the enemy. Allah had told Mohammed that in war slaughter was preferable to taking many captives. In the words of the Koran:
‘It is not for any prophet to have captives until he has made slaughter in the land. You desire the lure of this world and Allah desires (for you) the Hereafter, and Allah is Mighty, Wise.’

I could separate these remote acts of war from my everyday surroundings in a way that many of Omar Bakri’s followers could not. To young men like the optician who attended his private lectures, the enemy was everywhere, in uniform and out of uniform, in Baghdad and Birmingham. They had bought into a very simple distinction: it was the disciples of Allah against the disbelievers.

I found it difficult to accept that simplistic formula. Perhaps my basic humanity held me back from seeing the world as a struggle between good and evil, where the evil included ordinary people trying to raise families and hold down jobs. Despite the fatwas that justified the 9/11 attacks, I had begun to feel nagging doubts about the targeting of civilians. Jihad to me was still a defensive action to protect the faith. And on a personal level, I simply liked to be liked – by Muslims and non-Muslims. Whether it was a brief chat with a supermarket cashier
or a bus driver, a conversation about football at the warehouse or helping someone struggling with their shopping, I saw non-Muslims I knew as fellow human beings, albeit misguided ones.