Agent Storm: My Life Inside al-Qaeda (25 page)

There were no windows in the back so I had no idea where we were going. Forty minutes later we arrived. It could have been round the corner for all I knew.

I heard a chain and then a mechanical grind – perhaps a garage door being raised. The driver, hidden from me, gunned the engine and we drove in. The door rattled down behind us.

‘Clear!’ I heard Sunshine say on her walkie-talkie up front. A man opened the door. It was Kevin, another of Andy’s MI5 team. Kevin looked like he was in his twenties and might have been a presenter on one of those outdoor adventure shows, building fires out of dung and coaxing deadly snakes out of holes in trees. I would not have messed with him.

We seemed to be in a large warehouse – one of MI5’s operations centres.

It looked like a printing press that had been turned into an architect’s office. There were posters on the wall and rows of workshop tables lit by lamps hanging from the high ceiling. It was hardly high
tech. There was an internet connection, and a few PCs, and that was about it.

In the corner was a small glass-walled office with chairs set around a table. Andy was waiting for me. Sunshine and Kevin let him take the lead. I told him about my encounter with Saheer.

‘You need to keep talking to him,’ Andy said, after hearing me out. It was the first of several debriefing sessions as Saheer’s intent became clearer.

Saheer was extremely security-conscious. In many ways he was MI5’s worst nightmare: a savvy career criminal who was morphing into a jihadi with a death wish. He only spoke to me about his plans when we were alone and outdoors. We used to take long walks in a park in Alum Rock. He insisted that I not carry my mobile, and each time we went out he patted me down for any devices.

‘Just a precaution, brother,’ he said.

‘He’s really dangerous, a total psycho,’ I told Andy at my next debriefing. ‘What the hell am I supposed to do? I’m the only one he’s telling this stuff to.’

‘Just keep talking to him,’ Andy replied, with concern in his voice.

Given Saheer’s intended target, I was not surprised to see my Danish handlers make an appearance.

‘The Minister has been briefed on this,’ Klang told me. ‘The bosses really appreciate what you are doing.’

For once, Klang was being serious.

But as I saw it we still had a problem. There was no evidence beyond Saheer’s less than coherent plan to take out the Danish newspaper, a plan that he had confided only to me and of which there was no record. There was certainly nothing to warrant his arrest or charges. It was all hearsay and I might be accused of entrapment. So I improvised, taking advantage of his doubts about raising money for the guns and planning.

‘You know Sheikh Anwar agrees to the selling of drugs as long as we support the brothers for jihad,’ I said to him during our next walk in the park. ‘First of all you’re destroying the
kuffar
, you’re ruining their society. Secondly you’re getting money you can send to the mujahideen.’

Saheer looked interested.

‘And you get to keep a fifth of the proceeds yourself as war booty,
Inshallah
.’

‘Murad, are you sure about this?’ he said, his eyes widening.

‘Yes. He gave me a fatwa,’ I replied, knowing a similar story was now most likely circulating in extremist Danish circles if he should ever check.

My attempt to have Saheer return to the world of crime was not well received by Andy at MI5.

‘We can’t encourage people to commit crimes. What the hell were you thinking? You can’t just do this sort of thing without checking with us,’ he said.

‘I was improvising – how else are we going to arrest this guy?’ I replied.

Andy disappeared into the glass office with Kevin and Sunshine and made several phone calls.

When he came out his mood had brightened. He was still irritated, but seemed to recognize the opportunity.

‘All right, all right, you said it so it’s too late now. There’s not much we can do about it.’

Not long afterwards, Saheer came calling – in a silver Lexus. Drugs money, I thought: he must be wanting to enjoy his last days on earth.

We reached the park. As we walked in the rain towards the duck pond, I realized that we must make for a strange sight.

‘I’ve got hold of the money – can you make sure about the weapons,’ he said.

I looked around as casually as I could to see if we were being followed. I knew MI5 were now trying to monitor his every step, but it just seemed to be me and him. The ducks were quacking urgently. It was surreal.

‘Brother, let’s go, just me and you, and do this mission. I need you to be there with me in Denmark.’

‘I’m with you, brother,’ I replied, feeling the words sounded less than convincing.

He embraced me. ‘This is the best, Murad, the best. We get to be
shuhada
[martyrs]. There’s nothing better than this, remember that.’

If anyone was looking at us at that moment, they might get the wrong impression.

‘I know. This is paradise. We are mujahideen and this is what we fight for,’ I replied, summoning all the conviction I could manage.

He wants me to die with him, I thought. How am I going to get out of this?

Klang was at the next debrief. He made clear the Danes wanted the plot stopped well before Saheer could get to Denmark.

‘We’ll kill him if he comes to Denmark. We’ll shoot him.’

It was bravado. Danish law would not permit a summary execution.

‘We’ve been following him,’ Kevin from MI5 told me. ‘He’s selling drugs all right. But he isn’t touching the stuff himself.’

‘This is where you’re going to have to trust us,’ Andy said.

‘I want to go to Denmark in two weeks,’ Saheer told me at our next meeting. He asked me to reconnect with my underworld contacts there so that we could buy guns and ammunition.

The day of our departure loomed, but my handlers kept me in the dark.

I had travelled through the wilder reaches of Yemen and driven around with heavily armed fighters in Lebanon, but the idea of travelling to my homeland with this psychopath was giving me sleepless nights.

British police arrested Saheer a week before we were meant to travel, as he sold drugs on the streets of Birmingham. It was not his first offence so he received a lengthy prison sentence. The beauty of the operation was that even after he was jailed he never suspected I was working for intelligence. But even inside he appeared to exercise a chilling effect on other jihadis in Birmingham; none would dare talk about the mysterious Saheer, and I never found out his real name.

With Saheer safely behind bars, my handlers and I could plot my next trip to see Awlaki.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Clerical Terror

Spring–Autumn 2008

In April 2008, I wrote an email to Anwar al-Awlaki, telling him I’d presently be making a short trip to Yemen.

The cleric soon replied and had a special request.

‘Cheese and chocolates please:)’

I knew he liked pralines but I needed to get some guidance first: ‘Sheikh, regarding the chocolate, is it permissible to eat it when it has got like alcohol flavour in it[?]’

The answer came back. ‘No it is not allowed because even though all of the alchohol evaporates it is najasah [impure] and that najasah has mixed with the chocolate.’

The Holy Book had an answer for liqueur chocolates.

I assured him I would bring the non-alcoholic variety and added a little flattery.

‘Went into a shop yesterday in Birmingham, the owner was listening to one of your lectures … he told me, that he only listen to your lectures, as he couldn’t trust anyone else anymore hahahahaha Masha’Allah, I was laughing and so happy, the people here in uk and denmark, really loves you sheikh, you have done a great job and won their hearts, masha’Allah, may Allah reward you.’

On 13 May 2008 Fadia and I landed in Sana’a. Leaving the plane, I inhaled the warm moist air, happy to have escaped the chill dullness of Birmingham. Fadia too was pleased to be away from Alum Rock
and looking forward to seeing her beloved uncle. She also knew I was an admirer of Awlaki and perhaps saw my relationship with him as a stabilizing influence after witnessing my crisis of conscience in Denmark.

Awlaki told us to come down to Aden to meet him. He had decamped to the southern port city from Ataq for a few weeks with his pregnant wife. We met them for lunch in a restaurant near the fish market. I embraced him at the entrance and handed him the chocolates.

He thanked me profusely.

‘Our wives can eat separately. We’ll order for them,’ he said. It was standard procedure.

Fadia and Awlaki’s wife disappeared into the ‘family section’. She was six months pregnant by now.

Anwar and I were digging into grilled white fish when I almost choked. His wife had wandered brazenly into the men’s section.

‘Where’s my fish?’ she demanded, through her niqab.

Awlaki smiled knowingly at me.

Throughout lunch I kept the conversation away from his plans. I saw the encounter as a confidence-building measure. He seemed more relaxed than when he had emerged from prison. He was careful to be discreet, but not exactly in hiding. It seemed typical of the way Yemen worked: there were understandings, coded warnings, limits. In Aden, Anwar was being protected and housed by a wealthy businessman.

‘Brother, I have been doing a lot of writing, a lot of thinking,’ he offered, leaning back and looking across the very harbour where the USS
Cole
had been attacked.

That writing and thinking were coming to fruition. As the boiling summer approached, Awlaki recorded a brace of lectures for followers in the West.

In one, ‘
Battle of the Hearts and Minds
’, he railed against attempts by the US government to empower ‘moderate’ Islam.

The other,
‘The Dust Will Never Settle Down’,
was given live over Paltalk, an online voice chat forum, and directly addressed the continuing cartoons controversy. Awlaki challenged Muslims the world over:

‘How concerned are you? How concerned are we when it comes to
the honor of the Rasool [the messenger], when it comes to the honor of Islam, when it comes to the book of Allah? How seriously do we take it?’ he asked.

‘We are not followers of Gandhi … [as] Ibn Taymiyah says it is mandatory to kill the one who curses the Messenger of Allah,’ he said.

The cleric could not have chosen a more hot-button issue. A Swedish artist had poured fuel on the fire by depicting the Prophet
as a dog
. Awlaki’s calmly articulated outrage struck a deep chord with extremists in the West. The talk was widely circulated online.

Anwar al-Awlaki had reached the Islamist stratosphere. And Western intelligence services were beginning to notice just how often his lectures were cropping up in terrorism trials in Europe and North America.
¹

For those seeking to contribute financially to the cause, looking for moral justification for their actions or the terrorists’ equivalent of a changing-room pep-talk, Awlaki’s online output had become essential reading. Awlaki could harness the power of ideas. But it was soon apparent that he wanted to do more to restore the honour of the Rasool.

In the early autumn of 2008, I was back in Birmingham, helping MI5 keep tabs on the burgeoning militant scene in England’s second city, when Awlaki left a draft email in our shared account. After the customary greetings and praise to Allah, he got down to business. He wanted supplies for the mujahideen: solar panels, night-vision goggles, water purification equipment and more. And he wanted money. He suggested I collect funds from mosques in Europe and said $20,000 would be greatly appreciated. Awlaki was smart enough not to ask for anything that could be obviously used in combat, but was evidently aware of what al-Qaeda lacked in infrastructure. I wondered who had helped compile the shopping list. My handlers were surprised and alarmed by the request. Awlaki was then regarded by the more complacent analysts as a blowhard, and few if any of the intelligence officers I knew imagined him becoming more than a rhetorical outlet for jihad.

‘Didn’t I warn you he was dangerous?’ I reminded Jed when we met to discuss the request.

Jed was clear about what needed to be done. Deliver some $5,000 in cash and several items of the equipment requested. My Danish handlers told me this had caused further friction between Big Brother and the British. Senior UK intelligence officials had baulked at such a large cash handover, nervous they would later be accused of funding terrorism should the media find out. Solar panels were all very well; cash (and hammocks) were not. MI6 made clear their limit would be £500.

Jed was intolerant of such finer points. At a meeting in Copenhagen which the British did not attend, he handed me the money in $100 notes.

‘Just take it.’

Once the supplies were organized I contacted Awlaki by writing a draft email.

‘I have gifts.’

On 23 October 2008 Fadia and I waited in line at customs and immigration at Sana’a airport. I was apprehensive. Inside my large suitcase, which was sealed with a rigid, heavy-duty plastic strap, was a sports bag. And inside the bag were the small solar panels, night-vision goggles, portable water purification units and a laptop.