The Exile
Page 72
5. This was Abu Faraj al-Libi’s wife; see note 6.
6. Abu Faraj had first lived there in 1991, sent by Al Qaeda to study Islamic law at a private university. Afterward he had become a well-regarded instructor at the first Al Farouk camp and by 9/11 was trusted enough to watch the Twin Towers burning with Abu Hafs the Commander. During the turmoil that followed, Abu Faraj had helped manage the Al Qaeda exodus, and he returned to Peshawar in October 2002 to embrace a new role as facilitator, helping organize the purchase of medicine, lights, batteries, food, and clothing for fighters gathering in Shakai.
7. Samira Abdullah, the widow of Abdullah Azzam, told the authors that she had visited this house several times. Author interview, Amman, Jordan, December 2016.
8. Author interviews with former ISI officer, Brigadier (Ret.) Shaukat Qadir, Islamabad and Rawalpindi, 2014 and 2015.
9. Born in Mosul in 1961, Abdul Hadi had risen to the rank of major in Saddam Hussein’s army before falling afoul of the regime and fleeing to Afghanistan, where he fought with the mujahideen against the Soviet Union, gaining a reputation for being a skilled and intelligent operative. After joining Al Qaeda, he had commanded numerous terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, helped Zarqawi establish his camp near Herat, and fought in the final battle for Kandahar airport before being evacuated through Birmal.
10. Author interviews with several ISI officers who wish to remain anonymous, plus Syed Saleem Shahzad (in 2010), Rahimullah Yusufzai (2014–2015), General Perez Musharraf (Karachi, February 2015), and Hamid Gul (2015).
11. The agenda was recalled by others present who later were caught and transferred to Guantánamo Bay.
12. In Pakistan, relentless raids had crippled Al Qaeda. Kashmiri and Abdul Hadi’s logic struck home: if they created domestic chaos, the Pakistani security agencies would be preoccupied and spend less time searching for them.
13. General Taj would later also be rewarded with the post of director general of the ISI.
14. Author interview with General Musharraf.
15. Ibid. Also Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006).
16. Multiple author interviews with several senior generals in Musharraf’s administration (anonymous) and friends of Musharraf including Ehsan ul-Haq, Ali Jan Aurakzai, Masood Aslam, and Jehangir Karamat. Also author interview with General Musharraf.
17. Author interview with General Musharraf. This reconstruction took place at the Combined Military Hospital in Rawalpindi.
18. Salman Masood, “Pakistani Leader Escapes Attempt at Assassination,” New York Times, December 26, 2003.
19. The minivans were packed with potassium chlorate, easily obtained from the textile dyeing industry of the Punjab—where the purchase of dangerous chemicals and precursors went unregistered.
20. According to the ISI’s Peshawar station, Abu Faraj was not Number Three in Al Qaeda but a middle-ranking fixer. Commander Abdul Hadi was far senior: a veteran fighter who was running a staging post for all ongoing Al Qaeda operations from Shakai. Both men were placed on the suspect list for the twin assassination attempts on Musharraf. But for the Pakistani leader, Abu Faraj was the primary target.
21. Description of what he typically carried comes from several detainees at Guantánamo Bay.
22. Author interviews with Nada Bakos, Seattle, October 2014. Statements by her on Ghul were given to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for what became the Senate Torture Report.
23. Urs Gehriger, “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: From Green Man to Guru,” a three-part series originally published in German by Die Weltwoche, October 6, 2005. An English translation is available at www.signandsight.com/features/449.html.
24. According to an interview with Iyad al-Toubasi, Zarqawi’s hairdresser friend from Zarqa, conducted by Fuad Hussein in his 2004 documentary on Zarqawi for the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation, The Next Generation of Al Qaeda.
25. Described by Hassan Ghul and quoted in the Senate Torture Report.
26. For more details on this episode see Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark, Nuclear Deception: The Dangerous Relationship between the United States and Pakistan (New York: Walker, 2010).
27. Abdul Qadeer Khan, “I Seek Your Pardon,” Guardian, February 5, 2004.
28. Author interview with Dr. Khan’s wife, Henny Khan, Islamabad, June 2014.
29. Account of this meeting comes from author interviews with General Musharraf and Ehsan ul-Haq, Islamabad, June 2014; see also Mark Mazzetti, The Way of the Knife (New York: Penguin, 2013).
30. Author interview with General Ehsan ul-Haq, Islamabad, June 2014.
31. Bob Drogin and Greg Miller, “CIA Chief Saw No Imminent Threat in Iraq,” Los Angeles Times, February 6, 2004.
32. Author interview with General Ehsan ul-Haq, Islamabad, June 2014.
33. Umer Nangiana, “2004 Religious Ruling: Lal Masjid Had Declared Soldiers as ‘Not Martyrs,’” Express Tribune (Pakistan), November 14, 2013. For the original fatwa wording see archive.org/details/PakistanUlamasFatwaOnWanaOperation2004.
34. The ID card was numbered CH 9613-753-20. Details from the unpublished Abbottabad Commission report, Al Jazeera Investigation Unit, “Document: Pakistan’s Bin Laden Dossier,” Al Jazeera, July 8, 2013, www.aljazeera.com/indepth/spotlight/binladenfiles/.
35. This neighbor was Dr. Qazi Mahfooz ul-Haq.
36. The plans were signed by “Mohammed Arshad” and stamped by Younis. His son said later that they never met the buyer but dealt with him through a property agent. Author copy of plans. Shaukat Qadir claimed that the ISI showed him a draft plan of the house layout drawn and signed by Osama. Author interview with former staff member of Junaid Younis’s office who wishes to remain anonymous, Abbottabad, February 2015.
37. The builder was called Gul Mohammad; author interview with Gul Mohammad, Abbottabad, February 2015.
38. Some locals dubbed the Kuwaiti brothers as Chota (Little) and Bara (Big) in Pashtun.
39. Author interviews with Pervez Musharraf and Ehsan ul-Haq, Islamabad, June 2014.
40. General Safdar Hussain was the commander sent up by Musharraf.
41. Abu Zubaydah’s prison diary was obtained by the authors from his lawyer Joseph Margulies, who applied to have it declassified. The diary amplifies the International Committee for the Red Cross file on the prisoner’s treatment and is reprinted here with his authorization. Author copies. Zubaydah was sent to Rabat on March 27, 2004. Full details of his renditions can be found at the Rendition Project, www.therenditionproject.org.uk/prisoners/zubaydah.html.
42. Mazzetti, The Way of the Knife.
43. Alice K. Ross, “Ten Years On: Eyewitnesses Describe the Aftermath of Pakistan’s First Drone Strike,” Bureau of Investigative Journalism, June 17, 2014.
44. Seham had been living anonymously in Shakai with her fifteen-year-old son, Khalid, and daughters Miriam, fourteen, and Sumaiya, twelve, for months. Author interviews with bin Laden family members.
45. The Pashtun wife has never been named, although after relocating to Pakistan, al-Zawahiri also married the widow of Tariq Anwar Sayyid Ahmad, who was described as the “Commander of Special Operations for the [Egyptian Islamic] Jihad group.” Ahmad had been killed in Kandahar in December 2001. His wife’s name was Omayma. Bill Roggio, “Al-Zawahiri’s Brother-in-Law Killed in Afghanistan,” Long War Journal, April 19, 2011.
46. The authority of the Pakistani government was constitutionally limited to civil buildings, the roads, and a narrow strip just ten yards wide on either side of the roads.
&nb
sp; 47. Seham in an undated letter to the mother of Karima, the proposed fiancée for Khalid, declassified and released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence [hereafter ODNI] in May 2015, www.dni.gov/index.php/resources/bin-laden-bookshelf.
48. Robert Windrem, “Hunt on for bin Laden’s Latest No. 3 Man,” NBC News, July 9, 2004.
49. He fled after the ISI raided his house in Nawan Shehr, Abbottabad, finding no one at home except a driver. They had been eavesdropping on a phone number provided by the CIA Counterterrorism Center in Langley and picked up an Al Qaeda courier in the Punjabi city of Gujranwala. Under torture, he had admitted to hiring a house in Abbottabad on behalf of Abu Faraj and installing his own family there to look after him. During a second operation in Abbottabad, they shot and killed one of Abu Faraj’s outriders without even realizing his connection to the fugitive Al Qaeda facilitator. After interrogating Abu Faraj’s driver, the ISI extracted two more locations. Author interview with General Musharraf.
50. The tape won hours of airtime in the United States, although some former followers like Noman Benotman, who had split with bin Laden over 9/11, accused him of peddling a naïve argument. “So if you are electing George W. Bush as president, you have to pay—that’s the bottom line. It’s not logical. There are eight million Muslims in America—so they are legitimate targets also?”
51. The strike was over their ongoing separation from their families, who were still being held at a former refugee camp in Arak.
52. With him were Abu Dujana, an Egyptian explosives expert; Abu Miqdad, another Egyptian who sat on Al Qaeda’s shura; and several members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.
53. Younsei brought two advisers, “Mr. Abdullah” and “Mr. Jawad.” Author interviews with Mahfouz.
54. Author interviews with Mahfouz.
55. Those who had moved out included Saif al-Adel’s father-in-law Abu Walid al-Masri (real name Mustafa Hamid), the former Al Jazeera reporter.
56. Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005).
57. Ibid. Also author interviews with several undercover ISI officers who were on the raid.
58. Osama also wrote about Abu Faraj’s arrest in the same draft speech, undated. ODNI documents, Abbottabad, released in March 2016.
59. “English Translation of Ayman al-Zawahiri’s Letter to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,” Weekly Standard, October 11, 2005.
60. Aron Lund, “Who and What Was Abu Khalid al-Suri, Part 1,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Diwan (blog), February 24, 2014, carnegieendowment.org/syriaincrisis/?fa=54618.
61. Ibid. The two Syrians were also later accused of inspiring the July 7, 2005, attacks in London.
62. Ghul had already given valuable information about Shakai camp and about Al Qaeda couriers, naming Abu Musab al-Kuwaiti. Author interviews with Nada Bakos, Seattle, October 2014. Senate Torture Report, 130–31.
63. Ibid; Pavitt memo quoted in the Senate Torture Report, 376, note 2123.
64. See Senate Torture Report for more details of Ghul’s journey.
65. “CIA ‘Secret Prison’ Found in Romania,” BBC, December 8, 2011.
66. This is according to testimony given by Khalid Shaikh Mohammad and cited in the Senate Torture Report, 396.
67. Author interviews with Dr. James Mitchell, Florida, February 2017.
68. Associated Press report, “CIA Let KSM Design Vacuum Cleaner in Detention ‘To Keep Him Sane,’ ” Guardian, July 11, 2013.
69. Author interviews with Mahfouz.
70. Author interviews with bin Laden family members and Maryam’s relatives.
71. Mark Owen [pen name of Matthew Bissonnette] and Kevin Maurer, No Easy Day (New York: Dutton, 2012).
72. “Zarqawi Letter: February 2004 Coalition Provisional Authority English Translation of Terrorist Musab al Zarqawi Letter Obtained by United States Government in Iraq,” U.S. Department of State Archive, 2001-2009.state.gov/p/nea/rls/31694.htm.
73. Translation by Jeffrey Pool, “Zarqawi’s Pledge of Allegiance to Al-Qaeda: From Mu’asker Al-Battar, Issue 21.”
74. Author interview with Maqdisi, Amman, Jordan, December 2016.
75. Author interviews with several former prisoners held with Zarqawi, including Yousuf Rabbaba, Hassan Abu Haniya, and Fuad Hussein, Amman, October–November 2014. Author copies of Zarqawi letters to his mother.
76. Lawrence Wright, “The Master Plan,” New Yorker, September 11, 2006.
77. “Zarqaawi’s Reply to Sheikh Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi,” Al-Hesbah, July 12, 2005, ansarukhilafah.wordpress.com/2015/02/06/zarqaawis-reply-to-sheikh-abu-muhammad-al-maqdisi/.
78. The member of parliament was Dhari al-Fayadh.
79. Letter from Dr. al-Zawahiri to al-Zarqawi, full text available here: www.globalsecurity.org/security/library/report/2005/al-Zawahiri-zarqawi-letter_9jul2005.htm.
80. Raffi Khatchadourian, “Azzam the American: The Making of an Al Qaeda Homegrown,” New Yorker, January 22, 2007.
81. This addition to the building is documented in the Abbottabad Commission report.
82. Author interview with Fazlur Rehman Khalil, Islamabad, February 2015.
83. Ibid. Also multiple author interviews with General Hamid Gul, Rawalpindi, 2006–2015.
84. Ibid. The allegation he met Osama bin Laden to discuss his security arrangements was also confirmed to the authors by several anonymous Pakistani intelligence sources.
85. Azaz Syed, The Secrets of Pakistan’s War on Al-Qaeda (Islamabad: Al-Abbas International, 2014). Also from Gul directly to the authors.
86. Ibid. See also Lawrence Wright, “Postscript: Hamid Gul, 1936–2015,” New Yorker, August 18, 2015.
87. Author interviews with Hamid Gul.
88. Ibid.
89. Norwegian diplomat Alf Arne Ramslien claimed to have met Mullah Omar in Karachi in 2009. Mujib Mashal, “How Peace between Afghanistan and the Taliban Foundered,” New York Times, December 26, 2016.
90. Author interviews with Khalid Quereshi of the Federal Investigation Agency, Islamabad, June 2014.
91. Author interviews with Tariq Pervez and Tariq Khosa, both former director generals of the Federal Investigation Agency, Lahore and Islamabad, 2010–2015.
92. Undated letter from Osama to Atiyah titled “Lessons Learned.” ODNI documents, Abbottabad, released in May 2015. Akhtar was killed by Afghani security forces in January 2017; see Bill Roggio, “Afghan Intelligence Confirms Top al Qaeda Leader Killed in Raid,” Long War Journal, February 19, 2017.
93. Khalil also brought into the conversation another prominent mujahideen leader who remained at large thanks to his deep ISI connections: Qari Saifullah Akhtar. He led Harkat ul-Jihad al-Islami (the Movement of the Islamic Holy War), which had been formed in the 1980s with CIA cash and ISI muscle, an outfit that like all the others had gone on to fight Pakistan’s proxy war in Kashmir in the 1990s. Akhtar and Osama knew each other well after the former took part in a failed coup against Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto in 1995 and then fled to Afghanistan, where he ran training camps in Kandahar and sometimes acted as a go-between with Mullah Omar. Akhtar’s biggest claim to fame was that in 2001 he had rescued Mullah Omar from the ruins of Kandahar and ridden him across the border into Pakistan on the back of his motorbike. Akhtar had lawyers in Islamabad; homes in Kohat, South Waziristan, and his native Punjab; and a huge army of supporters, both within and outside Pakistan’s military establishment. Declan Walsh, “Pakistan’s Release of Militant Highlights Difficulties for Courts,” Guardian, Jan
uary 10, 2011. See also Declan Walsh, “The Taliban Blowback,” Guardian, April 16, 2008.
94. As well as baby Aisha, she had two sons, Abdallah, aged four, and Osama, age estimated at two or three. “Letter to Mom,” undated. ODNI documents, Abbottabad, released in January 2017.
95. Letter from Hallabi (Daood) to Osama dated July 25, 2006. ODNI documents, Abbottabad, released in March 2016.
96. Khadija letter to her father dated October 24, 2005. ODNI documents, Abbottabad, released in May 2015.
97. His name was Abu Abd al-Rahman al-Masri.
98. Cited in the Senate Torture Report, December 2014.
99. The television reporter was Nasir Dawar.
100. The reporter was Hayatullah Khan.
101. Five days later, news reports that he had died in an American raid in Mosul were denied.
102. “`Atiyah’s Letter to Zarqawi,” www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/atiyahs-letter-to-zarqawi-english-translation-2.
103. His long journey had been facilitated by Yusuf al-Balochi, a distant relative of Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, who smuggled brothers into Zarqawi’s network.
104. Osama references this letter in an undated letter to Abu Uthman, who had taken over as Al Qaeda’s Pakistan operations chief in January 2009. He was killed in November 2010. Abu Anas, trial documents, Government Exhibit 427 al-Libi reference 10-CR-019 (S-4)(RJD).
105. The clerics were Faqir Mohammad and Maulvi Liaqat Ali, who ran an Al Qaeda–supported jihad training school in the village of Chinagai.
106. His name was Shah Zaman.
107. Musharraf also claimed that Al Qaeda’s Pakistan operations chief had been killed, a man who the FBI described as “one of the five or six most capable, most experienced terrorists in the world.”
108. Photographers were encouraged to take pictures of a mud house with its rafters caved in, entombing children’s clothes and schoolbooks. Author interview with Noor Berham, a tribal photographer and journalist who specialized in reporting on drone strikes, Islamabad, February 2011.