Agent Storm: My Life Inside al-Qaeda (30 page)

Aminah’s real name was Irena Horak. I would get to know her well. Dozens of emails and Facebook exchanges would follow. She sent many long notes about her life for me to pass on to Awlaki.

Irena came from Bjelovar, a small town surrounded by farmland
east of Croatia’s capital, Zagreb. In one of her subsequent messages for Awlaki, Aminah described coming from a loving home and being brought up, like most Croats, as a Catholic with ‘family values and high moral standards’. She was particularly close to her twin sister, Helena, her only sibling.

As a teenager Irena
excelled in athletics. Such was her dedication that she became a champion junior 100-metre sprinter. There were pictures of her in the local newspaper ducking at the finishing line, her arms flung out in victory. She was driven, throwing herself headlong into her sprinting in the hope she might one day represent Croatia in the Olympics.

The twin sisters both enrolled at the Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences at Zagreb University. Irena wanted to work with people with special needs. By then her dreams of athletic glory had faded. She devoted herself to her studies. By night, like many of her fellow students, she hit Zagreb’s nightclubs, drinking and dancing till the early hours.

Much later I discovered that during this time she
posted photos
on social media showing herself in a variety of uninhibited poses in which she sported various figure-hugging outfits, low tops, knee-high lace-up boots, and even a sleeveless black-leather catsuit.

After graduating, Irena found work at a residential centre for children without parental care. The centre housed around fifty kids between the ages of seven and eighteen, many of them with behavioural problems.

Later, Aminah recognized the diffident streak in her own character. In one of her messages for Awlaki she wrote:

‘People say about me I am strong character but actually this is my shield, I am strong but I am very emotional, sensitive and I hate injustice. I like to work, I am not lazy, people describe me as a empathic, kind, open to new people.’

She had found Islam by accident, at a wedding ceremony in Zagreb. One of the guests was Sage, a handsome lawyer with long dreadlocks and a broad smile. He was a Muslim and worked in London. A few days later she was on a plane to London, having unceremoniously dumped her boyfriend. The two started a long-distance relationship.

Sage saw himself as a believer and spoke to her fondly about Islam, but he wore his religion lightly. He enjoyed going out for drinks, and by all accounts she was thrilled to be on his arm in the bars of London and Zagreb. She told a friend she hoped they would get married.

Later, she would write to Awlaki about Sage:

‘He talked about Islam so nicely and peacefully and he discovers to me a lot of different thing I didn’t know before. I was curious … so I start to explore by myself.’

She connected with a group of Muslim women in Bosnia who in turn introduced her to others in Zagreb. She began to spend time with them in the mosque.

‘When I saw description of God – Allah in Quran I said to myself – this is a God I always thought it should be,’ she would tell Awlaki in one message.

‘It was always a nonsense to me that God have a son, everything I discover in Islam was logical and simple, but yet very frustrated and hard to accept, in that period of my searching.’

I was reminded of my own sense of discovery in the library at Korsør.

After six months her relationship with Sage soured. It seemed Islam had become more important to Irena than the relationship. She began sending him hostile emails, criticizing him for not praying five times a day and for drinking alcohol.

Irena’s faith may have been reinforced by a bout with cancer. She said she had treatment and made a recovery, but it ended her dream of having children. She threw herself into Islam, began learning Arabic, and changed her habits, the way she dressed – wrapping herself in long skirts and a headscarf. She lost touch with her former friends. Irena became Aminah.

She told Awlaki about this turbulent time in her life:

‘After a period of ang[er] and frustration I find peace in my heart I never felt before … I was so happy for learning new things about Islam … I was very emotional about everything due to Islam, I crying during prayers, I cried when I heard Azan [the call to prayer].’

And just like me, she felt a surge of energy, a liberation, when she
formally converted to Islam in May 2009 by saying the
Shahada
– the profession of faith.

One of Aminah’s longtime friends would later describe how she was consumed by her new faith. All she could talk about was Islam and she tried repeatedly to get her friends to convert.

It was around this time that Aminah came across Awlaki’s English-language sermons – by now all over the internet. His call for followers to live the simple life of the Prophet, uncorrupted by Western modernity, seduced her. He might not have movie-star good looks, but she came to admire his sincerity and intellect and his quiet charisma. And she began to daydream about being his wife; he could teach her a lot about Islam.

By the time we connected on Facebook, Aminah told me she was being ostracized in Zagreb. At work, her manager complained about the way she dressed. She felt cut off from society and even from Croatia’s mainstream Muslim community.

‘I live in a country of kuffar. I really want to get out of this place,’ she later told Awlaki in one of her messages. Again I was able to recognize the sentiment, recalling that grim day I had washed the lifeless body of the old man who had collapsed outside Regent’s Park’s mosque.

‘I was rejected a lot of proposal cause brothers weren’t serious about marriage or they are not on the same ideology.’

Aminah could not bring herself to tell her father about her conversion, but her mother had reluctantly accepted it. By the time that first Facebook message reached me, she seemed shrouded in sadness. She felt she had few meaningful relationships beside her family. How familiar it was.

But I realized that in this lost, impressionable woman I had an opportunity.

‘Aminah can lead us to Awlaki,’ I told my MI5 handlers – Sunshine, Andy and Kevin – soon after our conversations started on Facebook.

‘We understand your logic but we’ll have to take this up the chain of command,’ Andy said.

The British shared my concern that sending Aminah to the wilder
parts of a volatile country might put her at risk. The Americans, supported by the Danes, were more enthusiastic.

‘We like the idea,’ Jed said when we met in Copenhagen. There was excitement in his eyes as he contemplated the mother of all honeytraps. The gloves had come off in the days since Fort Hood, and in Washington discussions had already begun on whether Awlaki – as an American citizen – could legally be targeted for assassination. Jed realized Aminah represented a golden opportunity to target the terrorist cleric.

The CIA was officially entering the matchmaking business.

At their bidding I sent word to Awlaki that I had found him a possible wife, and on 11 December 2009 he got in touch, asking that she write a brief description of herself.

She sent me this reply for the cleric:

‘I am 32 years old, never married, no kids. I am tall (1,73cm) slim-athletic build, I am not sure is it permissible for me to describe my hair. Anyway, ppl say I am good looking, atractive, I look much younger, everybody giving me 23–25 year.’

On 15 December, Awlaki sent me another encrypted message to pass on to her:

‘There are two things that I would like to stress. The first is that I do not live in a fixed location. Therefore my living conditions vary widely. Sometimes I even live in a tent. Second, because of my security situation I sometimes have to seclude myself which means me and my family would not meet with any persons for extended periods. If you can live in difficult conditions, do not mind loneleness and can live with restrictions on your communications with others then alhamdulillah that is great. I have no problems with both of my wives and we get along well. Nevertheless they both chose to live in a city because they could not handle village life with me. I do not want this to happen again with another wife. What I need is someone who could bear with me the difficulties of this path.

‘One more thing. Can you please send me a photo of yours? Please send it as an attachment.’

With the ‘underwear plot’ in the pipeline, Anwar must have suspected he was about to shoot up the US wanted list; perhaps that is
why he emphasized the hardships of life in hiding for any future Mrs Awlaki.

In mid-December Aminah asked me to pass a new message to Awlaki, laying down some ground rules.

‘I do not want a husband just on paper, I want to be with him and live in Islam cause I can’t do it here. I am not housewife type, I can cook and do all other house duties but this is not all with what I will be pleased. I started to translate your lectures on my native language so I can help brothers and sisters on this part of the world.’

She also asked Awlaki whether she would be able to travel in and out of Yemen. ‘My biggest concern are my parents, I know it will be a great shock to them if I say I will go there,’ she wrote. ‘If I can’t see them ever again I am afraid I can’t accept that condition.’

Her naivety at times was worrying.

I encrypted her message through the Mujahideen Secrets software and sent it to Awlaki. He replied on 18 December:

‘I forsee that if you come in the country you come in for good and if you leave the country you also leave for good … the country is heading towards war. Only Allah knows what implications that would bring,’ he wrote.

And then he responded to her request for more personal details.

‘I am a quiet person. I do not interfere alot in the affairs of my family but when i do it must go my way. I do not tolerate disobedience from my wives. With my kids its the opposite especially my girls. I am very flexible with them so it is the mother who needs to dicipline them because I don’t. I love reading. I spend some time with my family when they are with me but my committments pull me away … My work takes priority over family therefore I would love to have a wife that is lightweight and part of my work. Having lived most of my life in the West I would like to be in company of a Muslim from the West.’

Awlaki asked for Aminah’s email address so he could ask her some ‘private questions’ directly. Given his obsession with operational security, and the fact the ‘underwear plot’ was only days away, it was a remarkable risk to take. Lust had again got the better of him.

On Christmas Eve, after the missile strike against al-Qaeda in Shabwa province, Aminah again got in touch with me.

‘Do you have news from brother, there is a rumour he is dead or prisoned? Is it true?’ she asked.

As soon as I found out that Awlaki was unharmed, I wrote to her, using our agreed name of Sami for Awlaki.

‘Sami is fine and well Alhamdolillah … just have some patience sister, he is under huge pressure, are you sure you can handle this huge test?’

Despite his brush with death, Anwar was still thinking of the Croatian blonde when he wrote to me just four days after his brush with mortality. I let her know this:

‘Sami sends u his greetings, and cannot contact u directly again, however I will pass on his message to u and u can reply to him via me. he is fine and well. He is still interested and ask when we can arrange the travel etc.’

After the Christmas Eve missile strike, the disquiet of British intelligence became outright opposition. They wanted nothing to do with a plan that could send an innocent European woman to her death. I sympathized with their position. I wanted to be sure that Aminah would not be seen as expendable, ‘collateral damage’ in the pursuit of Awlaki.

The British bid to prise me away from the Americans began a few weeks earlier at a secret facility straight out of 007’s playbook.

Fort Monckton had been built to protect the naval harbour of Portsmouth towards the end of the eighteenth century and retains its bastions, casemates and drawbridge. It also boasts high razor-wire fences, floodlighting and CCTV cameras and is nowadays referred to by the army as the No. 1 Training Establishment.

It is in fact the main field-training centre for the Secret Intelligence Services. For close to a century Britain’s top agents have been trained there.

Emma, my MI6 handler, picked me up in London for the drive down to Fort Monckton. She was dressed all in black with her brunette hair tied tightly in a bun. As she weaved through traffic on the motor-way she opened up about her background. She had attended Oxford
University but afterwards needed some quick cash and had become what might politely be described as an exotic dancer.

I was pleased that she felt she could confide in me. But later I wondered whether it was part of a routine, a confidence-building measure to make me feel closer to my British team.

When we neared the gates, Emma handed me a scarf.

‘Put this on your head – we don’t want the guards on the outer perimeter to see you,’ she said.

Fort Monckton was old school in every sense. At dinner, elderly butlers in formal attire waited on the MI6 officers assembled in the wood-panelled banqueting hall. I stayed in the private quarters of Sir Mansfield Cumming, the legendary early-twentieth-century British intelligence chief who in signing his letters ‘C’ provided the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s
spymaster, ‘M’
.

‘Who on earth are you?’ I was asked by Steve, a veteran instructor. He was in his fifties and had led MI6 attempts to hunt down Uday Hussein, the sadistic son of the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein after the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

‘They don’t let civilians into this facility, period. And I’ve never been allowed to sleep in the Colonel’s bedroom,’ he added.

‘Well, my name’s Morten Storm …’ I replied, immediately realizing my mistake. Emma had told me not to talk about myself during my stay.

‘It’s okay, don’t worry,’ she said.

During the day MI6 agents and I did role-playing games. I would be handed a scenario and given fifteen minutes to prepare. Cameras fed my responses to a team in another room. In the debrief Steve told me I was a natural problem-solver and had passed the tests. I couldn’t be sure whether he was being serious or if it was part of a charm offensive.