Inside the Jihad (1 of 5 free samples)

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COPYRIGHT
Inside the Jihad by Omar Nasiri. Copyright 2006 by Omar Nasiri.
All Rights Reserved. Sharing not permitted.

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INSIDE THE JIHAD
My Life with Al Qaeda

A Spy's Story

Omar Nasiri

INTRODUCTION
http://www.dailylit.com/books/inside-the-jihad/introduction

GLOSSARY
http://www.dailylit.com/books/inside-the-jihad/glossary


PROLOGUE

I heard about the 9/11 attacks on the radio. I was in my car, driving to pick up my wife from work. The reporters had thought an airplane had hit the first tower accidentally. My wife got in the car. She, too, believed the collision had been an accident.

But I knew it was no accident. Even before the second plane hit, I knew. And I knew who had done it. When we got home I turned on CNN. Both towers were burning now, and people were screaming in the streets.

I did the only thing I could: I picked up the phone to call my contact at the German intelligence service. I hadn't spoken to him in a year and a half at this point, and I hated him. But thousands of people were dying and I had no choice.

He answered on the first ring. When I told him who it was he sounded surprised. "I'm calling to offer my help," I said.

"Do you know who did this? Do you know any of the hijackers?"

"No," I replied. "But I know who's behind this. I know why they did it. I know who these people are, and I know how they think."

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I knew these things because I knew Al Qaeda. In Belgium I had lived with members of Al Qaeda for years, although they didn't call themselves that yet. I bought guns for them, which they shipped all over the world. I transported their explosives into Africa, where they were used in Algeria's civil war. I distributed their newsletters. I knew their top leaders in Europe. One of them organized the lethal metro bombings in Paris in 1995. Others were connected to a deadly hijacking. These men lived in my house.

Later, I went to Afghanistan, where I ate and slept and prayed with Al Qaeda in the training camps. I got as close to them as anyone could. I shared their rage and their pain; I shared my guns and my sweat with them. I offered up my blood for them, and more than once I offered up my life. They were my brothers, and I would happily have given them anything I had.

With them I became a mujahid, mastering almost every kind of weapon on the planet, from Kalashnikovs to antiaircraft missiles. I learned how to drive a tank, and how to blow one up. I learned how to lay a minefield, and how to throw a grenade to inflict maximum damage. I learned how to fight in cities, how to stage assassinations and kidnappings, how to resist torture. I learned how to make deadly bombs out of even the simplest ingredients--coffee, Vaseline. I learned how to kill a man with my hands.

I learned about guns and the Ku'ran and world politics from Ibn Al-Sheikh Al-Libi, who ran Osama bin Laden's training camps, and who would later lie to the CIA about bin Laden's links with Saddam Hussein. I met Abu Khabab al-Masri, bin Laden's top explosives expert, who tried to recruit me to bomb an embassy. I met Abu Zubayda, the top recruiter for Al Qaeda, who sent me back to Europe to work as a sleeper, to provide explosives expertise for attacks.

But none of these men knew the truth: that I had turned against them and their killing of innocents. I was a spy. I infiltrated the camps as an agent for the DGSE, the French counterespionage service. I was still working for the DGSE, and then MI5 as well, when I returned to Europe from Afghanistan, though Abu Zubayda continued to think I was working for him. For the services, I infiltrated the radical London mosques of Abu Qatada and Abu Hamza. For Abu Zubayda, I transmitted messages and even sent cash back to Pakistan to support the jihad--cash given to me by British intelligence officers.

Over the course of my journey, I met hundreds of men just like the 9/11 hijackers. Men who had no home. Men reviled in the West because they were not white and Christian, and reviled at home because they no longer dressed and spoke like Muslims. Their shared rage was their only anchor, the only thing that connected them to their faith, to their family, to the earth.

I understood all this because I was one of these men.

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"Do you know who did this? Do you know any of the hijackers?"

"No. But I know who's behind this. I know why they did it. I know who these people are, and I know how they think." I paused. "I want to help."

There was a short silence on the other end of the line, and then a single sentence: "We'll call you back if we need you." Then a click. I never heard from him again.

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