The Exile

by Adrian Levy

  The Al Qaeda brothers laid carpets out in the yard to create an impromptu majlis, while Osama’s daughters moved mattresses and rearranged furniture inside to make space for the Mauritanian’s family.67

  Saif al-Adel began to recount. After his arrest in Shiraz in April 2003, he, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, Abu Mohammed, and Abu al-Khayr had been incarcerated in “secret underground prisons” run by the intelligence ministry. They had been allowed to maintain some communication.

  After twenty months, Saad and Hamzah, who had been separated from the women on the day that they were discovered in Zabol, had joined them. Khairiah, Fatima and Iman, and Saad’s wife and children had spent two years in detention at a large housing complex in Tehran that the Iranian guards referred to as Block Six.68

  Mohammed and Othman, who had accompanied their father at Tora Bora and Kunar, explained how they had joined their brothers and the military council members at the underground prison after entering Iran in late 2003.

  In December 2005, all of them had been brought to the Quds Force training center, where initially they were penned inside Block 200. They had watched the Mauritanian and his family “playing ball, strolling in the garden, and enjoying the sun.” But the windows were soundproofed and sealed, so even though they had banged repeatedly it became obvious that they could not be heard.

  The conditions had been bleak. To see one’s friends and not be able to talk to them had been frustrating, Saif said. At one stage, the families had found listening devices in their bedrooms, which horrified those who were married. After months of complaining, in June 2006 they had been shifted to Block 300.

  The Mauritanian felt ashamed that he had not pressed harder and earlier to chase down rumors of other prisoners. How had he missed them waving behind the thick glass? Osama’s caravan and the army council had been under his nose all this time.

  He entered his new quarters on the ground floor and saw that his family had been allocated two rooms on either side of a corridor, the last free space in the compound. Sensing the Mauritanian’s discomfort—he had two unmarried daughters—Hamzah bin Laden offered to switch apartments as his was far larger.

  “He had seen since he was a child the strong brotherly relationship that I had with his father,” reported the delighted Mauritanian. When he eventually got to bed, his mind wandered. He began to think about Osama’s daughter Fatima. She must be twenty, he thought, and she had lived without husband for six years. Although his death had never been confirmed, she needed to remarry.69

  After the residents of Block 300 appointed the Mauritanian as their official spokesman, an Iranian emissary arrived to meet him. The visitor explained that the welfare of Osama’s family was the personal responsibility of General Qassem Suleimani, the commander of Quds Force. Osama’s sons, who had met him a few times already and called him “Hajji Qassem,” said he was “very dynamic and positive.” They had much in common, Hajji Qassem had told them, given that the United States had designated him as a terrorist two years previously and the United Nations had sanctioned him for supporting terrorist activity.

  Now the emissary assured the Mauritanian that their mission was to “correct all the mistakes made over the past years.”

  The compound’s residents listened with interest to news that the United States and Europe were ganging up on Iran with President Bush talking of a third world war, while the French foreign minister warned: “We have to prepare for the worst.”

  President Ahmadinejad, seen by Western powers as a dangerous demagogue and a holocaust denier, compounded the country’s building sense of panic with ever more antagonistic outbursts. The Quds Force was flexing its muscles and Al Qaeda was becoming useful once more, the Mauritanian calculated, either as collateral or as a bargaining tool.

  Qassem assigned two senior Quds Force officers to Block 300. Their job was to provide “the guests with whatever they needed.” Furniture, kitchen appliances, new fridges, and wide-screen televisions arrived. The Mauritanian was given an “unlimited budget” with which to furnish a new religious library. To show they were serious, the Iranians announced day trips for the families. Gone were the opaque windows, blindfolds, and circuitous car journeys. Now they were taken aboard luxury coaches to visit “green orchards, flowing rivers, high mountains, beautiful parks and zoos”—even the most famous landmarks in Tehran, where they mingled with American tourists. When Saad tried to practice his rudimentary English, his younger brothers had to physically restrain him.

  Then came gym memberships. Once a week, the families were taken to a sports complex in Elahieh, where Saif al-Adel, who had a $5 million bounty on his head, swam in lanes alongside foreign diplomats.

  General Suleimani also arranged shopping trips for the Al Qaeda women, who took along their younger children and walked around the markets and bazaars freely.70

  The Mauritanian could not get over the strange idea of shopping, something he had never really done before. “We had an unnatural lust to buy, just buying to buy, rather than needing what we bought.” Mostly it was toys for the children, he said, noting that it was “as if we wanted to compensate them for the loss of freedom.”

  A clinic was installed at the compound fitted with imported diagnostic equipment and a specialist dentistry section staffed by foreign-trained doctors. Khairiah was in there almost weekly. Anyone needing more advanced treatment was taken to a prestigious private hospital in Tehran for Iran’s religious and political leaders.

  Where, the Mauritanian wondered, was all this largesse leading? Being courted by the Quds Force would not preclude Hajji Qassem from giving them up if the price was right. Staying one step ahead of this Machiavellian officer bothered him daily and he was not privy to the regular discussions Qassem had with Saif.

  Mahfouz tested the waters, asking for access to the Internet. When Qassem’s agents agreed, he was stunned. “After all those years of harassment and deprivation I had not believed I will be allowed to sit in front of a computer ever again,” he said. But a few days later, he was duly escorted out of the complex to a nearby cyber café, where “the staff turned on a computer and handed me the mouse.”

  He sat there, transfixed by it. What should he search for first? He felt sick with excitement and also fearful of what he might discover.71

  To begin, he followed the escort’s rules, reading “public sites” and not sending e-mails. He was also barred from social media, which his escort pointed out was restricted for Iranians, too. However, when the escort turned away to check his own messages, the Mauritanian took his chance, accessing forums and news sites that reported on Al Qaeda, reading, incredulously, behind-the-scenes material about the demise of Zarqawi and about Dr. al-Zawahiri’s support for Islamic State of Iraq, which had officially formed in October 2006 under the leadership of Abu Umar al-Baghdadi, with the hated Abu Ayyub, made his deputy.

  There was too much to take in: mounting attacks against the security establishment in Pakistan and an Al Qaeda–backed Taliban offensive in Afghanistan. He would share it all with the rest of the compound. Was Al Qaeda making a mistake in backing the Islamic State? he pondered. Or was jihad marching toward its final goal?

  A group of senior Iranian officials arrived at Block 300 to discuss Al Qaeda’s “future cooperation.” The meeting took place at the Mauritanian’s apartment, with the discussion focusing on “the issue of the war in Iraq”—especially the fact that a movement endorsed by Osama was conducting a sectarian war against Shias.

  Tehran was “extremely involved in the support of the government regime in Baghdad,” they continued, and was funding militias battling Abu Umar al-Baghdadi’s forces. They were on opposing sides of the war from Al Qaeda. When one of al-Zawahiri’s recent speeches came up for discussion, the Iranians made no effort to disguise their displeasure. The conversation turned to Al Qaeda’s “mistaken” endorsement of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s successor. Could Al Qaeda be brought around?

  The Mauritanian turned the tables on his visitors. When he had
been at Evin prison, Zarqawi had also been jailed there before the Iranians arranged “special” passports for him and his fighters “to slip into Iraq without a visa.” He knew that the Quds Force had also supplied Zarqawi with weapons, false documents, even money. If Osama was responsible for financing the butchers of Baghdad, so was Tehran. Both of them had been wrong, he ventured. There was no shared vision between Osama and the Jordanian. While Zarqawi had considered it legitimate to slaughter Shias, this was “not the opinion of Al Qaeda and Sheikh Osama,” he said.

  The officials nodded. One of them, Hajji Ali Akbari, stood up. He wanted to invite the Mauritanian on “an entertaining cultural visit” to Qom, the exclusively Shia city, and the next day he was shown around the shrine of Fatima and a huge new mosque President Ahmadinejad was building around a sacred well. They went shopping, again, the Mauritanian buying religious books, Arab clothes and perfume for the women, sweets for the children. On the way back to Tehran, they talked about the schism between Shias and Sunnis and how Iran and Al Qaeda could help each other.

  The meetings would continue, some argumentative, others agreeable, and when Ramadan came in October, the shura and Osama’s sons invited Qassem’s officials to break their fast with them, with Sulaiman Abu Ghaith supervising preparations for the feast. “We put our best carpets and mattresses in the yard and laid the tables. We prepared different types of food, beverages, and fruit,” the Mauritanian recalled.

  The Iranians responded by taking the Al Qaeda shura on coaches for an iftar meal at a five-star restaurant. A few days later, General Qassem Suleimani turned up in person to celebrate Eid with Osama’s sons, sitting down with the heirs of the world’s most infamous terrorist to break the fast.

  The following Friday, the general sent a car for Osama’s sons that drove them toward Tehran University, where the crowds became so dense they had to stop and walk. They were greeted by a senior Quds Force official and two clerics who guided them through security gates and around the back of a prayer hall into a small waiting area carpeted with prayer mats, a small TV set fixed on the wall.72

  A roar rose up outside, and the TV flickered on, focusing on rows of devotees, scholars, clerics, and officials standing for the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was about to speak. The sons of Osama bin Laden, children of a rabidly anti-Shia terrorist movement, were in a private prayer room behind the Ayatollah’s pulpit, his personal guests at Friday prayers that were being broadcast around the world on Press TV. A man gestured from the door, and the nervous young men got to their feet, transfixed by the screen and the rising roar, as the chanting began: “Marg Bar Amrika—Death to America.” Back in Block 300, Saif received a message from the Syrian courier Yasin: Al Qaeda’s Iran pipeline, sending funds and recruits from the Middle East to Pakistan, was up and running once more.

  December 2007, Bilal Town, Abbottabad

  Osama woke his wife Seham with a new letter delivered by Ibrahim. It concerned family matters, and as he was busy with Khalid in the media center, he asked her to read it first.

  Osama dictated as Khalid wrote. He wanted to promote his favorite deputy, Atiyah, to be Al Qaeda’s general manager and spokesman. Atiyah should take immediate charge of “the preaching, provoking jihad, and supporting the mujahideen in hot spots such as Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and the Islamic Maghreb.”

  He needed to issue statements that “support[ed] the Islamic State of Iraq and defend[ed] it from any disproval and rumors.”73 He also needed to settle a score.

  Osama wanted to quash the “nonsense criticism” being spouted by the son-in-law of Abdullah Azzam, the co-founder of Al Qaeda, a man who had once been his inspiration (although the two had fallen out bitterly after Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri turned up in Peshawar and stole Osama’s attention, leading to some blaming al-Zawahiri for Azzam’s death in a car bombing).74 Son-in-law Abdullah Anas had also once been Osama’s friend, having taken him into the desert outside Jeddah where Osama had first played at being a jihadi. These days Anas lived in northwest London, from where he mounted sporadic attacks on Al Qaeda—and it made Osama’s blood boil.75

  Finally, there was the bookkeeping. Osama was a renowned penny-pincher and kept a close tally on all expenses, but most of the actual cash was banked by Al Qaeda Central into an account in Miram Shah. Atiyah needed to contact Abu Uthman, the head of Pakistan operations, and ask him to withdraw 15,000 rupees from the “mujahideen account” to buy three sacrificial goats. Eid al-Adha was approaching on December 19. Uthman also needed to transfer $10,000 from Osama’s personal account to the “mujahideen account,” and then deposit a new cash donation of €12,000 that had come in from the Gulf. The money was being sent with this letter.76

  Sitting with Amal in another room, Seham opened her letter and froze. It brought the news that her eldest daughter, Khadija, had died in Waziristan giving birth to twins. After suffering a miscarriage three years earlier, doctors had advised Khadija to undergo a dilation and curettage procedure to cleanse her womb. However, as medical facilities in the tribal areas were not suitably equipped and as she was the daughter of Osama bin Laden, she had been unable to travel to a city, so the problem had been left unresolved.77 Although the tragedy had happened three months back, this was the first time anyone had been able to get a message through to Abbottabad. One baby had died. The other, a girl, was critically ill.

  Seham asked to be on her own, reaching for a pen and paper to write a poetic tribute to a child she had not seen for four years. “My precious daughter,” she began, “She is my mature daughter. She is the flower of the field. She is my smile and my wish … O how painful the agony of separation. If only I could be at your side again.”

  Seham, too, had suffered a premature birth in her youth: her second daughter, Miriam, had almost died. But that was when they had lived in Jeddah, and Osama had driven in his gold Mercedes at breakneck speed to the city’s most exclusive private clinic. Khadija’s delivery had taken place in a mud-walled compound with no medical treatment available. Her husband, Daood, had been far away on the front lines.

  Seham called Amal back and asked her to help compose a letter to Karima’s mother, who had arranged Khadija’s funeral.78 “My dear sister, I love you,” she wrote. “We cannot say thank you enough for the effort you gave in washing, preparing, and covering the body. God was wise to make sure that I did not attend or see her.” Referring to the surviving baby, she thanked her for “explaining to me the trying details of the little girl.”

  As for Khadija’s three older children, they could not travel to Abbottabad as Daood wished since the house was full and Ibrahim and his brother were at their wit’s end. Perhaps Osama’s elder brother Bakr would have them. He lived in Jeddah, where he ran the family’s multibillion-dollar construction empire and paid the rent for aunties and cousins who occupied neighboring villas in an exclusive housing complex. But he had disowned Osama years earlier.

  Seham had another worry. Khadija’s shocking death would cause problems for Khalid, too. His marriage would have to be put on hold while everyone decided on the fate of her four surviving children. Karima, his intended, was still young and could wait. The only way to speed things up would be for Khalid to travel to Waziristan. But Osama would not allow that unless someone came to replace him in the media office.

  A few days later, Seham received a letter from Daood.79 Khadija had been the “best wife and the best mother,” he said. The three months since her death had “passed by as thirty years.” The worst for him was that his youngest son, also called Osama, barely knew him because he had spent so much time away from the family and even now was insisting on calling him uncle.

  “If it wasn’t for my religious restrictions, I would have worn her clothes and jewelry,” he said, wanting to wrap himself up in his wife’s memory. The best he could do for the children was to find a new wife as soon as possible. “Dear Mother,” he continued, “pass on your valuable advice.”

  When Seham and Amal broke the new
s about Khadija’s death to Osama, he showed no emotion but offered a practical suggestion. Miriam, Seham’s second daughter, was old enough to marry the widower Daood in Waziristan. She could take her dead sister’s place.80

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “We will get you, CIA team, inshallah, we will bring you down.”

  —DR. HUMAM AL-BALAWI, SPEAKING IN A VIDEO RECORDED AHEAD OF HIS SUICIDE ATTACK ON U.S. FORWARD OPERATING BASE CHAPMAN1

  December 2007, Mir Ali, North Waziristan, Pakistan

  Daood was frantic. The missile strikes were relentless, his Al Qaeda duties were mounting, and he was struggling to cope with three young children on his own. Khadija’s surviving baby was in the care of a wet nurse, but things had come to a head during Eid when five-year-old Aisha would not stop crying for her dead mother. He could not find the right words to comfort her. As a hard-bitten mujahid, he had spent so little time with his children to date he barely knew them.

  He wrote to the children’s grandfather, Osama. “Most of the time I remain in the house and it is very difficult for me and for them,” he noted.2 During the holiday, he had taken them to their old home, where they had lived with their mother, and he had bathed and dressed them in their holiday clothes. He attached a photo—three mournful children with plastered-down hair.

  He hoped the image would spur Osama into action. “They are your grandchildren,” he pleaded. “God knows that I understand that all of you miss them dearly.”

  Abdallah, the oldest boy, had another semester to complete in the madrassa, and the baby “still has a year of breast-feeding.” While he waited for Osama’s reply, he would try to find a temporary solution: marrying another woman so she could at least enter the house and help him. “I decided to begin searching for any widow so that I wouldn’t be living in sin for the sake of my children.”

  Seham called a family summit. The situation in Waziristan was deplorable. The grandchildren should come to them. Osama reluctantly agreed on the condition that Miriam marry Daood. He dispatched instructions to his Pakistan operations chief to get the children ready.3 Daood should bring them up to the Kohat Tunnel, a strategically important mile-long stretch under the mountains, where Miriam and her brother Khalid would wait in another vehicle. Located three quarters of the way from Mir Ali to Peshawar, it was one of the few places where U.S. drones could not spy. Entering in one car as a tribal family on their way to the city, they would emerge at the other end in another vehicle as urban travelers returning to Peshawar from a sightseeing trip.4