Agent Storm: My Life Inside al-Qaeda (14 page)

Abu Hamza al-Masri was a militant Egyptian cleric known in the
racy English tabloids as ‘Captain Hook’ because of his prosthetic hand. He claimed he had sustained the injury while on a de-mining project in Afghanistan. He had been the imam of the Finsbury Park mosque in North London.
²

‘I don’t know much about him,’ I replied, which was the truth. Our paths had never crossed and I had never read his lectures. ‘And I am not going to backbite him just to please you. You are a non-believer and he is a brother Muslim.’

We talked for about two hours, standing by the car outside my house. All the time, I asked myself whether I would be charged with one of the many anti-terrorism charges already on the books. Perhaps MI5 were somehow aware of the diatribe I had drafted to justify jihad, or had identified me from the protest at the US embassy. Or perhaps I had been grassed up by the Islamic Centre in Luton, which saw me and my friends as dangerously radical.

Robert took his leave. We shook hands, both aware that I was now part of the game. What I did not know is that two officers from Danish intelligence had seen everything from a car parked nearby. MI5 and their friends clearly thought I was worth spending time with and were angling for me to share my contacts.

Just three weeks after that conversation, on 6 July 2005, the world’s leaders converged on a Scottish golf resort for the G8 summit, hosted by Tony Blair. After nearly eight years in office, Blair seemed unassailable. He had tied Britain closely to Bush by his support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, where a large chunk of the UK’s armed forces were now deployed. But at home public opinion had turned decisively against the war. The rationale for the invasion had been undermined by allegations that evidence of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction had – at the very least – been embellished.

The wars had also enraged many British Muslims. A few had travelled to Pakistan with the aim of joining al-Qaeda, the Taliban and
other groups. Some had stayed and been killed – or disappeared into the tribal territories, their fate unknown. A few had come home.

On the morning of 7 July Blair and his senior ministers were presenting an ambitious agenda to the summit. An aide passed the British Prime Minister a note. Three suicide bombers had attacked the London Underground system; there were casualties and the capital was paralysed. Shortly afterwards a fourth suicide bomber blew up a London bus.

Blair emerged from the conference looking shaken.

‘It is reasonably clear that there have been a series of terrorist attacks in London,’ he said, before hurrying to a helicopter.

That morning I was oblivious to the carnage some thirty miles to the south; and I had no idea that the bombers had caught a train from Luton on their way to the capital. But my insistence to the MI5 man Robert weeks earlier – that Britain had nothing to worry about from Muslims – was suddenly null and void. And as news spread of the bombings and speculation spiked, I got hostile stares as I walked through Luton in my Muslim garb, still unaware of events in London.

A friend called me to tell me of the attacks and we all hurried to meet at the Woodland Avenue community centre. Everyone was wary of a backlash. By now we knew that some fifty people had been killed and several hundred injured.

Despite the casualties, all of them civilians, I found a way to justify the attack. Brothers in Islam had struck fear into the hearts of the
kuffar
and a blow at the financial heart of a state committed to war against Muslims. The attack would surely cost the British economy tens of millions, money that could not be spent on war.

My adrenalin was pumping. We had all talked about jihad; we had cheered on the brothers in Iraq. Now it was on our doorstep. Was England the next frontline in this war of religions? Anything seemed possible.

As we travelled to London the following day for a Muslim wedding, the tension was palpable. A young white man on the pavement saw us pass and raised his hand as if to take aim with a pistol. I stopped the car and called him over. He saw I was white and may have thought he had an ally in his provocation.

I spat at him and he ran to his car to grab a crowbar. I jumped out, ready for a fight, but others held me back. The last thing this wedding party needed was a brawl on a London street.

There was a spate of assaults on Muslims in Luton; Karima was harassed. Community meetings brought together Muslim sects that usually avoided each other, to discuss a common threat.

Omar Bakri Mohammed saw a dividend out of the 7/7 bombings. He summoned close followers to a meeting in Leyton in East London days later. The situation had changed, he said. The ‘Covenant of Security’ – that British jihadis should not consider attacking targets in Britain – was dead.

‘Now,’ he told us, ‘jihad has come to the UK. You can do whatever you wish.’

Perhaps he knew he was on safe ground. Most of his acolytes were not ready to follow the path of the 7/7 bombers. But it was not for want of permission.

Had it not been for an old Danish associate and a mislaid mobile phone, I would probably have continued listening to Omar Bakri’s bombast and training in the English countryside for the day that jihad would inevitably call.

I had met Nagieb in 2000 – he was a Danish journalism graduate of Afghan descent. He knew of my time in Yemen and wanted to make a film about the mujahideen there. And he wanted me to go with him to open doors.

I was excited by the prospect; my spirit was beginning to stir again and I still wanted to return to a truly Muslim land as Allah had ordained. I felt more in common with my friends there than with the radical blowhards in the UK. The rush that immediately followed the London bombings had worn off and I was worried that MI5 might come calling again as they stepped up their efforts to discover more about UK-based jihadist cells in the wake of the London attack.

I even began to indoctrinate my son, Osama, who was now three. We would play a game of call and response.

‘What do you want to be?’

‘I want to be mujahid.’

‘What do you want to do?’

‘I want to kill
kuffar
.’

I argued to myself that if Western children could kill dark-skinned turbaned figures in computer games, I could teach my son about retribution. Hatred again.

My relationship with Karima had never really recovered. When Karima asked me back, Cindy had come looking for me in my family home in Luton, not realizing Karima would be there. It was the second time I witnessed the full force of Karima’s volcanic temper, as she shouted abuse – angered not so much by the fact that Cindy had slept with me but because she represented the decadence and permissiveness of Western women.

When I told Karima of my plans to return to Yemen, she shrugged and turned away. There was no discussion, just resignation. She felt abandoned, unwanted.

So perhaps it should not have come as a surprise when one afternoon I picked up her mobile phone as it buzzed – Karima had gone out – and read the following text: ‘Meet me in the hotel. I love you.’

It was not the fact that she had found someone else that bothered me. We had long ceased to love each other; our relationship was more a pact for the sake of the children. It was the fact that she still sheltered in the house I was paying for, still used my name to keep her European residency, and while happy to take another man in Islamic law would not divorce me in civil law.

When she returned home, she was nervous. Had I seen her phone?

I lied. It was in my pocket.

‘I want you out of the house while I look for it.’

She was not very good at keeping her nerve.

I called the number from which the suggestive text had come. A man answered. I found out later that he was a Palestinian living in Luton, whose Moroccan wife was Karima’s best friend. He and Karima had had a secret Islamic wedding.

I went back inside and confronted her.

‘I know exactly what you are up to,’ I told her quietly. ‘I know where you are going and everything. I am just asking you to give me my children.’

She looked at me with spite.

‘You will never see your children again,’ she said. ‘Never.’

She grabbed Osama and Sarah and made for the front door. I held her back and she swung round and hit me in the face. She pulled Osama by the hood of his jacket, nearly throttling him. He was crying.

‘Osama is staying with me,’ I told Karima as he cowered on the floor.

Shortly afterwards I left the house with my three-year-old son, only to find out the following day that the police were looking for me. Karima had told them that I had abducted him. I felt as if I were on the run for a crime I had never committed.

Before any sort of mediation could begin, Karima left for Morocco with Sarah – without telling me or seeing Osama.

Eventually the police tracked me down to a friend’s house in Luton. His mother had been caring for Osama while I was out. Her eyes were red and swollen when I returned.

‘They took Osama,’ she sobbed. ‘They said they were taking him to the police station.’

I summoned fellow militants and nearly a dozen of us converged on the police station. The waiting room was full of beards and robes.

I was blind with anger.

‘Where is my son?’ I demanded loudly. ‘Give me my son back.’

By then Osama was in the care of the social services department and I was redirected to an adjacent building while the rest of the unlikely delegation sat in the police waiting room.

I looked out of a featureless waiting room at a thousand shades of grey. Luton in the approaching British winter was not cheering. There was a knock and a woman brought Osama in.

To my relief, he didn’t say, ‘Kill Bush and the
kuffar
; victory to the mujahideen.’ I might have lost custody of him there and then. Instead he ran to me and wrapped his arms tightly around my neck.

‘Why did you take him?’ I asked the woman.

‘We were told you had kidnapped him,’ she replied.

‘Where is his mum?’ I asked.

‘We don’t know.’

‘Exactly,’ I replied – unable to hide my sense of triumph. ‘That’s
because she is in Morocco, with my daughter. I should report her for kidnapping.’

I walked out of the building, clutching my son’s hand tightly and leading a group of bearded Salafis with angry faces who had come to rescue a child called Osama from Bedfordshire Social Services.

The drizzle began to seep into our clothes.

CHAPTER NINE

Meeting the Sheikh

Late 2005–Late Summer 2006

There is a popular joke in the Arab world. There are different versions but its essence is this. Millennia after creating the earth, God returns to see how things have changed. First He looks down at Egypt. ‘Ah, the industry, the cities, the beautiful buildings; I would never have recognized it,’ He marvels. Then He surveys Syria. ‘The architectural splendour, the sophistication of society,’ He says. Moving south, He then sees something more familiar. ‘Ah, Yemen – same as ever.’

I had that same feeling in the dying days of 2005, when I arrived at Sana’a airport. Yemen was a country that kept drawing me back – despite its poverty, its almost medieval treatment of women and the growing dossier held by the Yemeni security services on one Murad Storm.

I had good reasons for returning – to help Nagieb make his film and reconnect with old friends, or those who were not languishing at the pleasure of the Yemeni state. I felt like a different person this time. I was about to turn thirty and I had my son, Osama, with me. Now he would grow up to be a God-fearing Muslim.

A fresh start: I seemed to need one every eighteen months. Was it boredom? The hope of one day finding the perfect wife? A compulsion to be on the road?

I was still serious about Islam. I enrolled at the al-Iman Islamic
University in Sana’a, which was still being run by Sheikh Abdul Majid al-Zindani. Since our previous encounter seven years before, when I had insolently questioned his Salafist credentials, the Sheikh had attracted the attention of the US government. He was now
designated a ‘global terrorist’
for fundraising on behalf of al-Qaeda. Despite that dubious honour, he was still a public presence at al-Iman. And he welcomed me back, assigning me a special room to study in at the university. Al-Zindani became particularly fond of Osama, who used to tag along with me.

I also caught up with Abdul, the young Yemeni courier who was so proud of his association with Osama bin Laden. His English was more polished and he had recently married. He now had a much bigger home in Sana’a and a relatively new car parked in front of it. Being an al-Qaeda courier clearly had not prevented him from embarking on some promising business ventures.

It was refreshing to be away from the endless circular chatter of
faux-
jihadis in England, and instead in a place where imprisonment and even death were daily risks, a place at the centre of a web that spread to Pakistan and Indonesia in the east, and Somalia to the south. I found out that the jihadist presence had become more intense in my absence, despite the growing scrutiny of the security services.