Agent Storm: My Life Inside al-Qaeda (5 page)

It wasn’t easy to find work after my release from prison. I had two convictions, no qualifications, few skills – but I also had some useful contacts. During my time inside I had met a senior member of the Bandidos biker gang, Michael Rosenvold. I think he liked me because I was the only inmate who wasn’t scared of him.

Denmark had thriving motorbike gangs, and the Bandidos were locked in a violent struggle with the Hell’s Angels. The Bandido motto was: ‘We are the people our parents warned us about.’ I would surely fit in perfectly.

Across Scandinavia, the ‘Great Nordic Biker War’ had been raging for more than a year. At least ten people had been murdered and many more seriously injured. In Sweden an anti-tank rocket was fired at a Hell’s Angels clubhouse. The conflict was fuelled by the trade in drugs coming from southern Europe.

Rosenvold introduced me to other gang members as ‘Denmark’s youngest psychopath’. It was meant in jest but I certainly cut a formidable figure, tall with broad shoulders and thick biceps. I quickly warmed to the camaraderie, the supply of drugs and girls. By then I had got my first tattoo, on my right bicep: ‘STORM’. It did not take me long to become accepted: reliable in a fight, ready to party. The Bandidos were the Raiders on steroids.

Despite my time inside, Vibeke had stuck with me. In a town where thrills were few and far between, she found my links to the underworld
exciting and liked how I mimicked the life of a high-roller. Even so she was taken aback by some aspects of the lifestyle. At one party in Korsør she turned up in a black turtleneck with her hair neatly tied back. Most Bandidos women were pneumatic (if not natural) blondes, who wore minimalist outfits of tiger and leopard prints.

When Vibeke found a sports bag full of guns, explosives, hashish and speed that I had hidden under her bed, she erupted in anger. She threw the bag out of the window and yelled at me to get out of her apartment and never come back.

In March 1996, Hell’s Angels gang members opened fire on a group of Bandidos outside Copenhagen airport with machine guns and other weapons,
killing one
.

Rosenvold called me.

‘I want you to organize a group in Korsør, people we can rely on, who can hold territory,’ he said. ‘And I’m going to need you as one of the guys around me. I’m a target now.’

At twenty I was the youngest chapter leader for the Bandidos in Denmark. It was like I had found a family. Loyalty to the cause was everything.

For the next few months I was Rosenvold’s bodyguard and we ‘held’ Korsør and its surroundings. There were street battles, nightclub brawls. An evening would not be complete without a fight and we knew how to pick them, whether the Angels were down the street or nowhere to be seen.

To begin with, I relished the adrenalin rush and the sense of importance. But as 1996 drew to a close, I worried that the lifestyle was making me an addict – to a cycle of drugs, gratuitous violence and hardcore partying. There was no space left for relationships, for peace of mind.

Two episodes crystallized my unease. On a freezing night shortly before New Year’s Eve, a fight broke out between two big guys and some Bandidos at a Korsør dive. It was normal enough. But this time a bouncer intervened, dragged one of the Bandidos out on to the street and pummelled him. We were not about to let it pass.

The next morning, along with another member of the gang, I paid a visit to the bouncer. The icy grey was giving way to darker gloom when we arrived. I had a baseball bat hidden in my jacket. We donned
balaclavas and knocked at his door, pushing him to the floor as he answered. Wielding the bat I swung it at his hips and knees.

In the days after the beating I couldn’t get the sound of his moaning out of my head. I could still hear the crack of his knee fracturing and see his limp broken arm. I began to feel ashamed. Perhaps Rosenvold was right and I was a psychopath.

Occasionally I would look at other young men turning twenty-one, studying for a degree, starting a job, owning a car, going steady. I knew I couldn’t handle routine, but I was beginning to worry that the constant fixes of violence and drugs could kill me. And that made me start questioning the purpose of my life and what might come after it. Deep down I didn’t like the person I was turning into. Was I becoming an even more vicious version of my stepfather?

The second thing to feed my doubts was a meeting in one of Korsør’s clubs with a twenty-year-old woman called Samar. After being evicted by Vibeke I badly needed a lover. I soon imagined a relationship with Samar, and not only because she had the exotic looks of a gypsy with wild, dark eyes, full lips and raven-dark hair, and a presence that I found irresistible.

A Palestinian-Christian, Samar came from a large immigrant family. Her mother soon treated me as a son. I felt wanted, and not just because I could tip the balance in a brawl.

It wasn’t long before I proposed, and her family threw an engagement party. It began as a polite affair at a local hall until some Bandidos turned up. Samar’s grandmother looked on as the guys leapt about to Arabic pop songs in their leather jackets and snorted lines of coke among the couscous and baklava.

Samar’s family remained fond of me. The possibility of having her as a partner made me reconsider the Bandidos. Exhaustion had seeped into my soul. For all the highs my life in the gang had become meaningless.

We spent the night of my twenty-first birthday together, and I was happy: a feeling so rare that it almost shocked me. I was frightened of losing it. In the following weeks, when I wasn’t with Samar, I would lie awake at night. I imagined getting into another fight that would land me behind bars again, or overdosing or getting stabbed. There were
plenty of ways to be taken out of circulation. And then Samar would be gone.

On an unusually bright morning a few weeks after my birthday, I found myself in the town’s library. I felt empty and needed sanctuary.

The library, a two-storey building of corrugated steel and concrete, was close to the water’s edge. That morning it provided warmth from the chill breeze that found every corner of Korsør. For a while I stared at the choppy waters and the span of the Great Belt Bridge. I browsed aimlessly among the shelves, vaguely aware of the chatter from the children’s section, but gravitated towards history and religion, subjects that had always fascinated me despite my wasted school days.

I had never felt religious – I had even been expelled from confirmation classes. The priest had told my mother that I was too much of a troublemaker, even for God. But I thought there must be some sort of afterlife. I had had some contact with Islam through my immigrant friends – Palestinians, Iranians and Turks – and had always envied the strength of their families, the way they always had dinner together, the bonds that united them while facing poverty and discrimination.

Perhaps that was why I sat down in an alcove with a book about the life of the Prophet Mohammed. Within minutes I was so absorbed in the story that the world outside evaporated.

The book laid out the tenets of Islam and the life of its founder with seductive simplicity. Mohammed’s father had died before he was born. As his mother, Aminah, gazed at her first son, she heard a voice. ‘The best of mankind has been born, so name him Mohammed.’

She had sent him into the desert to learn self-reliance and to master Arabic as spoken by the Bedouin. But Aminah had died when Mohammed was just seven, and he was passed into the care first of his grandfather and then of his uncle.

What immediately appealed about his life was its dignity and simplicity. As a young man, Mohammed would be called ‘al-Saadiq’ (the Truthful One) and ‘al-Amin’ (the Trustworthy One). He had granted freedom to a slave who had been given to him and declared him his own son.

I learned Mohammed was a successful trader who travelled through Arabia and as far as Syria. But he was also a deeply spiritual man, and in his thirties he would retreat to meditate in a cave on Mount Hira near Mecca. It was there that the Archangel Gabriel visited him and declared he was God’s messenger.

‘
Proclaim in the name of your Lord who created! / Created man from a clot of blood.
’

As the sun slanted across the Scandinavian sky, I became immersed in the events of the seventh century. I imagined Mohammed taking refuge in a cave as his enemies, the Quraish of Mecca, searched for him. By a divine miracle, it was said, a spider had spun its web over the mouth of the cave and a bird had laid eggs nearby, so the place looked undisturbed and was not searched. The episode was recounted in the Koran. ‘When Disbelievers drove him out, he had no more than one companion; they were two in the cave and he said to his companion, “Have no fear, (for)
Allah is with us
.” ’

I did not notice the approach of dusk. Mohammed’s story was one of battling the odds, as he sought to propagate Islam in the face of persecution. Here was a man – with his small band of followers – prepared to fight for his beliefs. In the words of the Koran:

‘Permission to fight is granted to those against whom war is made, because they have been wronged, and God indeed has the power to help them. They are those who have been driven out of their homes unjustly only because they affirmed:
Our Lord is God
.’

Fighting for a cause appealed to me; it brought a sense of solidarity and loyalty.

I pictured the migration from Mecca to Medina, the desert battles that Mohammed and his few hundred followers waged and his triumphant return to the holy city, where he showed clemency to the Quraish despite their many attempts to stifle the young religion.

I felt I could relate to Mohammed’s struggles as a man better than to some vague deity with a beard. As Allah’s messenger he seemed a more plausible historical figure than Jesus. It seemed ludicrous to me that God should have a son. I was also struck that Mohammed’s words provided for every aspect of life, from marriage to conflict to obligation. Good intentions were recognized and rewarded. The book cited
the Prophet: ‘Certainly, Allah does not look at your shapes [appearance] or wealth. But He only looks at your hearts and deeds.’

Here was a prescription that was both merciful and compassionate and offered absolution for sins. A pathway to a more fulfilling life. Islam could help me rein in my instincts and gain some self-discipline.

I was still reading when a librarian approached me to announce that the library was about to close. I had been sitting in that same alcove for six hours and had read some 300 pages about the life of the Prophet.

The chill wind took my breath away as I stepped out of the library into the cobblestoned streets. Nearby the beacon of a lighthouse rotated. After being steeped in the Arabian desert and consumed by divine revelations, I found it disorientating to be back in the Scandinavian winter. But my mind and my soul were still far away.

CHAPTER THREE

The Convert

Early 1997–Summer 1997

I was far from the only young man in Europe or America at the end of the twentieth century to find meaning in a different way of life and code of conduct, to find faith and fellowship where there had been none.

In the weeks after reading about Mohammed I engaged several of my Muslim friends in debates about Islam, and I read more about the religion and its founding generations. I borrowed another of the library’s few books on Islam and bought a copy of the Koran. At first I found it difficult to understand the Holy Book and felt overwhelmed by the demands of Islamic culture. But I was encouraged by a Turkish friend, Ymit, who was thrilled that for once a Dane wanted to embrace rather than sneer at his religion.

Ymit had been one of the ‘Raiders’ and we had remained friends despite my encounters with the Danish criminal-justice system and graduation to the Bandidos. He had a sharp wit and was intelligent, genuinely interested in the world beyond Korsør. He was knowledgeable about Islam and took it seriously, even if he was also familiar with alcohol and cocaine. Ymit told me that Mohammed’s illiteracy was a blessing and made the faith purer.

‘It meant that everything he said was a revelation from God, untainted by man. It meant the Koran was a miracle.’

‘But if you are a real Muslim, Ymit, how come you drink and do drugs like me?’

‘Because I can still repent if I go to Friday prayers and seek forgiveness for my sins.’

Others tried to dissuade me. A Christian Lebanese friend called Milad, who owned a small grocery across from the library, was stunned.

Morten Storm – biker, boozer and boxer – had found religion, and the wrong religion at that.

‘Why do you want to follow that ignorant pervert? Mohammed was a fool, a Bedouin who could not read or write.’

‘At least he was a human being, someone who really existed and received messages from God. No one pretended he was the Son of God,’ I shot back.

A couple of weeks after my epiphany in Korsør library, Ymit asked me to come to the mosque in a nearby town for Friday prayers. The building was not what I expected – there was no golden dome, nor a minaret from which the muezzin would call the faithful. It was a nondescript bungalow in a side street. But the intensity of the congregation and the warmth of their welcome to me, a stranger, a pale European, was moving.