Agent Storm: My Life Inside al-Qaeda (67 page)

1
Hartaba had been captured by the Jordanians after fleeing Afghanistan at the end of 2001. He had been extradited to Yemen but escaped from jail in 2006 with Wuhayshi and other al-Qaeda members.

2
Hartaba also said Awlaki had been devastated by the death of bin Laden. Hartaba had tried to cheer him up with practical jokes.

3
Al-Asiri was all the more dangerous
for his knowledge of chemistry, which he had studied at King Saud University in Riyadh and was now passing on to apprentice bomb-makers. Like hundreds of other young Saudis, he had been determined to fight in Iraq against the US occupation. He was arrested by Saudi security forces as he tried to cross the border into Iraq, but was released after a brief time in prison, which further radicalized him. After his militant cell in Riyadh was broken up by the Saudi security services, al-Asiri and his brother had fled to Yemen.

4
Later that year fighters in the tribal areas beheaded a Yemeni woman they accused of sorcery and paraded her severed head. Her crime had been to work as a healer using natural herbs. In late 2012 Amnesty International documented the horrific human rights violations perpetrated by the group in Jaar on those it judged to have flouted ‘Islamic law’, including public summary killings, amputation and flogging.

1
Jehad Serwan Mostafa may have played a role in forging the February 2012 alliance between al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab. In October 2011 he had appeared in an al-Shabaab video stating he had been sent as an envoy by Zawahiri to Somalia to help distribute food aid to famine victims. It seems likely he would have carried messages between the two leaderships at the time they were negotiating the merger.

2
As of April 2014, Lewthwaite was still on the run.

3
Ikrimah added that money had grown tight after intelligence services increased their monitoring of the hawala money transfer system in Kenya, which had been used by jihadis there to transfer money to jihadis in Somalia.

4
Ikrimah asked me whether he might be able to send his wife and children to Dammaj in Yemen or a similar religious institution. ‘I am thinking of the future of the children i want them to have proper islamic education … anything can happen any time,’ he wrote in an email in March 2012.

5
Scharf’s tenure at the head of PET was to become embroiled in scandal. But at this stage he had been in the job nearly five years and was a powerful figure with deep connections throughout the Danish establishment. Before being appointed as Director-General of the Intelligence Service he had been Deputy Commissioner of Denmark’s national police service.

6
The man had infiltrated the group in early 2012 after being recruited by Saudi counter-terrorism the previous year. Before switching sides he had lived in the UK for a long time and had moved in radical circles there – just like me. His background had given him credibility and his British passport had enhanced his appeal, because it allowed him to travel without a visa to the US.

1
According to the Central Business Registry of Denmark, Mola Consult was dissolved on 31 August 2012.

2
On 3 October 2011, three days after Awlaki was killed in a drone strike, Helle Thorning-Schmidt of the Social Democrats took over as Prime Minister from Lars Løkke Rasmussen, of the Venstre party, who served from 2009 to 2011. Prior to that Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Venstre held the top job.

3
Ikrimah had worked to build up a network in Kenya to plot attacks. According to a 2013
Kenyan government report
he dispatched an operative to Kenya in July 2013 ‘to train youth, lay down the infrastructure for a major attack and await instructions’.

4
Before Kenyan police made arrests in late 2011 the planners had trained the operatives designated to carry out the attack,
acquired safe houses
in Nairobi and Mombasa, transported explosives from Somalia and begun to construct bombs. The ‘White Widow’, Samantha Lewthwaite, was believed to be connected to the cell, but escaped capture in Mombasa. The green light for the plot from al-Qaeda in Pakistan may have been communicated to Ikrimah by our mutual American friend, Jehad Serwan Mostafa, if he did indeed meet with Zawahiri in Pakistan a few months before.

5
The recipe entitled ‘How to Build a Bomb in Your Mom’s Kitchen’ featured in the first issue of
Inspire
magazine, published in June 2010, and was found on one of the Boston bombers’ computers.

6
Awlaki’s death triggered a New York extremist, Jose Pimentel, to plot a bombing in the city in late 2011 to
avenge the cleric’s death
.