Nine Lives: My time as the West's top spy inside al-Qaeda by Aimen Dean & Paul Cruickshank & Tim Lister

Author:Aimen Dean & Paul Cruickshank & Tim Lister
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Published: 2018-06-06T22:00:00+00:00

MY SEVENTH LIFE: SOMETHING BIG

2001–2004

In June 2001, I received an unusual summons. At the time I was at al-Qaeda’s Tarnak Farms complex near the airport in Kandahar and was due to leave for the UK within days. The summons came from Abu Hafs al-Masri, bin Laden’s right-hand man, which made me distinctly uneasy. Did the leadership somehow suspect I was working for the British? I couldn’t imagine how, but ahead of the meeting I spent hours trying to work out whether and where I might have slipped up.

Al-Masri had a way of pursing his lips that only underscored his severity. One of the Egyptian group around bin Laden, he was not given to levity.

He was sitting behind a desk in a library that doubled as an office.

‘When exactly are you travelling to England?’ he asked.

‘In four days,’ I replied.

He did not invite me to sit down but stared at me for a few seconds in a way that turned my stomach.

‘I want you to take a message to some of our brothers,’ he said. He spelled out the four names slowly and clearly, as if I was an imbecile.

‘They must leave the country and come here before the end of August. Something big is going to happen and we expect the Americans to come to Afghanistan.’

I failed to find words to respond as I tried to take in the enormity of what he was suggesting.

‘Do not be tempted to come back to fight alongside us here. Stay in England; do not leave your post. We will contact you.’

It was clear the meeting was over. It had lasted two minutes, but set my nerves jangling and sent my brain into overdrive. Why these four men? Why now? What was ‘something big’?

I was not stupid enough to ask. Al-Masri was obsessive about operational secrecy. He had literally drafted a ‘need-to-know’ policy and posted it prominently in the camps.

At least I was beyond suspicion; he would not hint at ‘something big’ unless he had complete confidence in me. It seemed that to al-Qaeda’s leadership my ability to travel, apparently unsuspected, continued to make me a precious commodity. On several occasions I had been given letters for al-Qaeda supporters then in the UK – letters expertly unsealed and resealed by MI6 before reaching their recipients. But this time the message was simple, verbal and direct: get out.*

I knew three of the four individuals well. One was Mohammed al-Madani, who had introduced me to Abu Qatada’s circle in London. The second was ‘Abu Hudhaifa al-Britani’,** who had been in Afghanistan and knew Abu Khabab and many others within al-Qaeda. The British intelligence services had Abu Hudhaifa under surveillance but were frustrated by his expert navigation of the line between militant free speech and explicit involvement in a terrorist organization. I knew just how closely he had been involved with al-Qaeda because I had seen him in the camps, but that was hardly admissible in court.

The third was Abu Walid al-Filistini, the Palestinian cleric close to Abu Qatada who had almost blocked me from applying for a British passport.

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