The Black Banners

by Soufan, Ali H.

  Getting information on the hijackers and al-Qaeda in general was a top priority for the U.S. government. The U.S. military was preparing to invade Afghanistan to go after al-Qaeda, and the government was trying to build an international coalition to support its efforts. All U.S. intelligence, military, and law enforcement personnel were under pressure to learn as much as they could about the enemy’s capabilities, plans, locations, and numbers to help the military prepare for war. We were also asked to find evidence to show conclusively that al-Qaeda was behind the attack.

  Several world leaders whom the United States wanted to include in its coalition, including Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Pakistan’s General Musharraf, were not convinced that al-Qaeda was responsible. Musharraf was particularly important given Pakistan’s proximity to Afghanistan. Abu Jandal was the best lead the United States had so far; we hoped to obtain information from him that might remove these leaders’ doubts and give our military information on the enemy we were about to attack.

  We knew of Bahri—born in Saudi Arabia and of Yemeni descent—by his fearsome reputation. In a famous picture of bin Laden walking with his bodyguards, all of the bodyguards have their faces covered to protect their identities except Abu Jandal, who wanted to show he had no fear. Our anonymous source had spoken of Abu Jandal as someone fiercely dedicated to, and trusted by, bin Laden, and someone whom other al-Qaeda members both feared and respected.

  He had been arrested by the Yemenis at Sanaa International Airport in February 2001 as he was trying to leave the country to return to Afghanistan. Initially the Yemenis wouldn’t let us question him; they were only letting us interrogate those we could prove were connected to the Cole attack. Although Abu Jandal was a known al-Qaeda member, nothing linked him to the Cole bombing. The Yemenis were holding him because they knew his connection to bin Laden and were suspicious as to why he had been traveling into and out of the country. It was only because Quso had provisionally linked Abu Jandal to 9/11 that we now had access to him.

  Bob and I settled into chairs on one side of the table and waited for Abu Jandal to be brought in. We were glad that our usual Yemeni interrogation partners, Colonel Yassir and Major Mahmoud, were with us. We had been working well with them in the Cole investigation. They were talented law enforcement operatives, and we knew that they shared our commitment to justice.

  About ten minutes later guards knocked on the door. The door opened and Abu Jandal walked in, very much at ease. He had a thick black beard, closely cropped black hair, balding on top, and piercing brown eyes—which at that moment were glaring at us, as if he wanted to know how we dared to interrogate him.

  He wasn’t wearing shackles, handcuffs, or even a prison uniform. Instead he wore a blue thawb and slippers. He didn’t act or dress like a prisoner. He looked healthy and well-rested, and it was clear that he had been treated well during his several months in prison.

  Abu Jandal held his head high, and his body language displayed confidence and control. Our Yemeni partners had asked that their names not be said out loud—they didn’t want Abu Jandal to know who they were. They were apparently afraid of him.

  When he had taken his seat across the table from Bob and me, with Yassir and Mahmoud against the wall, we began the interrogation. “Hello, Nasser,” I said in Arabic, using his first name to emphasize my familiarity with him. “My name is Ali Soufan, and I’m with the FBI.” I took out my FBI credentials and placed them in front of him on the table.

  I wanted to take him out of his comfort zone: he was used to being feared and having deferential Yemeni guards. I wanted him to know that things were different now: he was with Americans and we weren’t scared. “And this is my colleague Bob McFadden, from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service,” I continued, pointing to Bob, who nodded, “and we’d like to ask you some questions. But first I want to advise you of your rights, which I will now read to you.”

  Before I could continue, in one quick movement Abu Jandal stood up, swung his chair so that it faced away from us, and sat back down. Now he had his back to us. He turned his head to the side toward Yassir and Mahmoud, and told them, his brown eyes still glaring: “I will not talk directly to them. If there are any questions, you ask me, not these Americans. They can’t talk to me. You know the rules.” For the next few minutes he lectured them about how they should not allow Americans to question him.

  Abu Jandal apparently had been told by sympathetic PSO officials that the Yemenis were meant to be intermediaries between us and any Yemenis we questioned. It was what we had agreed to during the Cole investigation. But the practice had been dropped: to Yassir and Mahmoud and most of the other Yemenis we worked with, it was seen as a waste of time. Why have them repeat, in Arabic, what I had just asked in Arabic? It made little sense and even made them look foolish, and so they had begun to let us speak directly in Arabic to the suspects.

  When Abu Jandal finished his rant, I turned to Mahmoud and said dismissively in Arabic, “Go ahead, repeat what I said. If Nasser wants to waste his own time by hearing the same thing twice, that’s fine with me.” I wanted to show Abu Jandal that I wasn’t intimidated; nor did it matter to me if Mahmoud or Yassir had to repeat things. If he was trying to score any psychological points, he had failed. Abu Jandal was silent.

  “His name is Ali Soufan, and he’s with the FBI. He wants to ask you some questions, but first he will read you your rights,” Mahmoud said.

  “Okay,” Abu Jandal replied, looking at Mahmoud.

  “Right,” I said. “Nasser al-Bahri, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law . . .” I continued reading from the form in Arabic. After I had finished, I said: “Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?” Silence from Abu Jandal. I nodded to Mahmoud.

  “Nasser al-Bahri, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say . . . ,” Mahmoud began, and he repeated verbatim in Arabic what I had just said in Arabic.

  “I don’t need a lawyer, I can answer any question. I’m not afraid. I’ve done nothing wrong. I’ll answer your questions,” Abu Jandal replied, full of confidence.

  “Will you sign a declaration saying you understand yours rights?” I asked.

  Abu Jandal was silent. He still had his back to Bob and me and he stared at Mahmoud. Again Mahmoud repeated what I had said: “Will you sign a declaration saying that you understand your rights?”

  “I won’t sign, but I verbally tell you it’s okay,” Abu Jandal replied.

  “Okay,” I said. “So, Abu Jandal, how are you today?”

  Silence. I nodded to Mahmoud. “How are you today?” Mahmoud repeated.

  “Good,” Abu Jandal replied to him.

  “Good,” Mahmoud told me. I noticed Abu Jandal smirking to himself; the skit amused him. “So you are Abu Jandal, bin Laden’s personal bodyguard?” I asked.

  Silence. Mahmoud repeated the question.

  “Yes,” he said, “I can’t deny that, because there is only one Abu Jandal, and I am Abu Jandal.” He couldn’t help grinning as he said this. Abu Jandal was clearly proud of his reputation and status in al-Qaeda.

  “And you were bin Laden’s personal bodyguard?” I asked. Mahmoud repeated my question.

  “Yes,” Abu Jandal replied, “I was, but I left al-Qaeda and am now being held for no reason.”

  “How did you join al-Qaeda?” I asked. Mahmoud repeated the question.

  “I first went to Bosnia to protect Muslims from Serb brutality, then I went to Afghanistan, where I met bin Laden,” he told Mahmoud, who repeated it to me. We went through a series of basic questions—covering his identity and his role in al-Qaeda—and he answered all our questions, through Mahmoud and Yassir.

  While it appeared that Abu Jandal was cooperating, he was in fact practicing a classic counterinterrogation technique. He knew that we were fully aware of who he was, his position in al-Qaeda, and other basic information about him. He knew there was no point denying it, so he rea
dily admitted it in order to appear to be cooperating. But in reality he wasn’t giving us any new information, only basic stuff that he assumed we knew. This made it difficult for us to accuse him of not cooperating.

  To get Abu Jandal to cooperate properly and gain new intelligence, we first had to get him to talk directly to us, rather than through the Yemenis. A key to a successful interrogation is to establish rapport with the detainee—a nearly impossible task if he won’t even talk to you. Bob and I began to ask Abu Jandal a series of seemingly irrelevant questions. While they wouldn’t necessarily give us any actual intelligence, they would, importantly, encourage him to open up and talk.

  “Why would someone join al-Qaeda?” I asked. Mahmoud repeated the question. It was an open-ended question designed to give Abu Jandal a chance to lecture. Abu Jandal responded by talking about the Islamic tradition of fighting injustice and tyranny, and linked that to the American “occupation” of Muslims lands and Israel’s actions against the Palestinians. I guessed he had spoken about the subject countless times, probably to motivate new al-Qaeda recruits.

  We followed up with a series of similar soft questions, ones that Abu Jandal wouldn’t see as problematic to address—ones he would want to respond to. At the same time, the questions made him more emotional, as these were matters close to his heart, and as a result he lost some of his control and deliberation. I asked him about the “injustices” he referred to, and about what he had seen in Bosnia and Afghanistan.

  As he got increasingly involved in replying—thinking perhaps that he was convincing me, given the earnestness and respectful tone of my questioning—at times he forgot to wait for Mahmoud to repeat the question and responded directly to me.

  We broke in the early hours of the morning, happy to have succeded in getting Abu Jandal to speak and look directly at us. Our first objective had been achieved.

  Bob and I returned to the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa (then our home and office) and started reviewing our conversation with Abu Jandal and preparing for the next evening’s interview. After a few hours we took a break and went to a nearby local supermarket for some food. As we passed the bakery section, Bob pointed to some sugarless cookies and said to me, with a twinkle in his eye: “Let’s get them for him. We’ll give him the message that Americans are good. Habibi, we are good.” “Habibi” is an Arabic word that literally means “my beloved” but is used as a term of friendship and endearment. Bob was being sarcastic.

  During the interrogation we had put some cookies on the table for Abu Jandal, but he hadn’t touched them. We’d asked Yassir why, and he had told us it was because Abu Jandal was diabetic. While I asked more of the questions, Bob focused on manipulating the atmosphere of the interview. Even while taking a break from preparation, he was thinking about how to establish rapport with Abu Jandal.

  The next evening, we returned to PSO headquarters and went back into the interrogation room with Mahmoud and Yassir. As Abu Jandal was escorted into the room by his guards, before he had a chance to sit down I greeted him: “As-Salamu Alaykum.”

  He shook his head and then slowly replied, “Wa Alaykum as-Salam.” In Islamic culture, if someone says “peace be upon you,” you need to respond in kind. Knowing the culture, we used it to our advantage and got him to start off that evening as he had finished the previous one: speaking directly to us.

  I then read Abu Jandal the Miranda warning (we did this every day): “You have the right . . .” Abu Jandal was silent, and he turned his head and glared at Mahmoud, clearly trying to reestablish the boundaries he had had the previous night before he had engaged with us. I nodded to Mahmoud, who repeated the Miranda warning. Abu Jandal again verbally waived his rights, saying he had nothing to hide.

  “How are you today?” I asked him. He was silent and looked at Mahmoud.

  I nodded to Mahmoud and he repeated my question.

  “Good,” Abu Jandal replied.

  “Good,” Mahmoud told me.

  “We know you didn’t eat the cookies we put out for you yesterday because you have a sugar problem. So today we brought you some sugarless cookies that you can eat.”

  Abu Jandal’s face registered surprise. He had been taught to expect cruelty from Americans, not kindness. He seemed at a loss for how to respond.

  “Shukran,” he said slowly, looking at me and again shaking his head. Under Islamic traditions, you need to thank someone for a kindness, and Abu Jandal was well versed in Islamic etiquette. Now he looked at me, rather than Mahmoud, waiting for the next question.

  We started off by asking him light personal questions, ones he’d have no problem answering. The aim was to warm him up. Every detainee is different. Abu Jandal was by nature talkative. He liked to lecture and liked being listened to. He was intelligent and well read, unlike many other al-Qaeda terrorists I had interrogated, so we used leverage on his personality and engaged him intellectually.

  “So you left al-Qaeda in 2000?” I asked, accepting his claim from the previous evening that when he returned to Yemen in 2000 it was because he was leaving al-Qaeda.

  “Yes,” he replied directly to me. “Although the fact that I’m here talking to you shows that you can’t really leave,” he said in a sarcastic tone.

  “In fact,” he continued, “Abu Mohammed al-Masri told me, ‘If you think by leaving Afghanistan they [the Americans] will leave you alone, you are wrong. This is a war. Either we will win or die. There is no place for turning back.’” He had used an alias for Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, the al-Qaeda shura council member and mastermind of the East African embassy bombings. He paused, as if for effect, and then continued with a shrug and a half-smile, “And he’s right, here I am with you, even though I left.”

  “Why did you leave al-Qaeda?” I asked, ignoring Abu Jandal’s comment and sticking to our plan of having him talk about comfortable topics.

  “For many reasons,” he replied. “First of all, because of my wife and children . . .” He explained that his son Habib had a bone condition and that they couldn’t get adequate treatment in Afghanistan. Another reason for leaving, he told us, was because his wife was unhappy in Afghanistan.

  “Why was she unhappy?” I asked.

  “Because Bin Laden had given me money to bring to someone in Yemen, which turned out to be for a new bride for bin Laden himself. She was very young, and the other wives resented me for bringing her, and in turn were mean to my wife.” Abu Jandal told us that he thought he was being sent with the funds for what he termed a “martyrdom operation” and was upset to learn that he was simply being used as a courier for wedding arrangements.

  “So it was only for those personal reasons that you left al-Qaeda?” I asked. “There were no ideological reasons?” If there were ideological differences, it would be a good basis upon which to tease information out of Abu Jandal, Bob and I had calculated.

  “No, there were,” he replied. “I also didn’t agree with some things bin Laden did.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Like when he pledged bayat to Mullah Omar.”

  “Why did you object to that?” I asked. Our conversation was a steady back-and-forth at this point.

  “It meant that all al-Qaeda members who had pledged bayat to bin Laden were obligated to follow Mullah Omar. To me that’s not what al-Qaeda is meant to be, and not what I signed up for. I didn’t sign up to join the Taliban.”

  “What is al-Qaeda meant to be?” I asked. Abu Jandal gave his views, which were based on bin Laden’s 1996 declaration of war and liberating the holy lands and the Arabian Peninsula from the presence of crusaders and Jews. From this topic, Bob and I steered the conversation toward his religious justifications for joining al-Qaeda. I gently challenged those religious justifications, citing passages from the Quran that appeared not to square with his view. I wanted to test Abu Jandal’s knowledge and see how firmly committed he was to his religious views, and to impress on him that I, too, was well versed in Islamic theology.

  Abu Jandal co
untered by citing Islamic scholars who supported his position, and I replied by citing scholars who disagreed with his scholars. We had a spirited yet friendly debate, quoting authorities and passages from the Quran between us. Abu Jandal seemed to be enjoying himself, and enjoying the challenge. He voiced his wonder at one point, saying: “It’s fascinating to me how you can be a Muslim, know so much about Islam, and yet have such a radically different view from mine about America, al-Qaeda, and jihad.”

  “I hope this leads you to rethink some of your stands,” I told him with a smile.

  Our conversation veered into revolutions, which we had learned, the night before, was a favorite topic of Abu Jandal’s. After telling us about the Islamic tradition of revolutions for the sake of justice, he told us, “Revolutions don’t only happen in the Islamic world because of injustice. Non-Muslims also have revolutions.”

  “Oh?” I asked.

  “It’s true. In fact a revolution in Scotland started because the British general ruling the country insisted on sleeping with every woman before she got married, and one man refused. As a punishment they killed his wife, and in response he declared war on the British and . . .”

  “Hold on,” I said, interrupting him, “are you talking about a movie? It’s Braveheart, right?” I recognized his description of the Mel Gibson movie.

  “Yes, yes,” he said excitedly, grinning broadly. When he smiles, Abu Jandal’s face lights up, and the gaps in his front teeth become visible. “I saw it with my wife. I loved that film.” We agreed that it was a great movie, and for a few minutes we discussed it and compared our favorite scenes.