by Michael Ross
We exchanged cellphone numbers and I returned to my hotel, where I put a call through to HQ and gave them what details I could over the phone. (I could have gone over to the Israeli Embassy on Izmir Street and sent a secure cable, but I didn’t want to arouse anyone’s suspicions.) I took some Acamol—Israel’s answer to Tylenol—and got into bed.
I was fast asleep, shivering through my fever, when the masterminds of the Africa bombings were arrested. When the call informing me of their arrest came through to my room, I was totally disoriented. Jason asked me to meet him again at the same hotel lobby. Without changing clothes or bothering to do anything about my haggard appearance, I ran downstairs and tumbled into a beat-up taxi.
When I arrived, Jason saw that I was a wreck, but I brushed off his concerns and asked for a recap. He said that Ihab Saqr, Ahmed Salama Mabrouk, and another al-Jihad activist named Essam Marzouk were in custody after being apprehended in a lightning-fast raid on their hotel by the Azeri security forces. (Our SIGINT later picked up a few calls from al-Jihad activists and a very pissed-off Ayman al-Zawahiri, who wondered where in the hell his men had disappeared to. The Azeri arrest team had bagged them so quickly that none were able to alert their masters.) They offered no resistance and, given my understanding of the Azeri methods, to put up any kind of fight would have resulted in a lot of physical pain for the al-Qaeda terrorists.
Apparently, the MOIS officer never showed up or, having been stood up, ran back to Tehran. Who the Iranian was and what happened to him remains a mystery to this day. None of us ever figured out why he was a no-show.
In a strange twist of fate, it turned out that Essam Marzouk recently had been part of an al-Qaeda cell based in Vancouver, Canada—less than two hours from my hometown. Marzouk had been a radical from a young age. When he was nineteen, he left Egypt and made his way to the Wild West terrorist frontier of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, where he fell in with al-Qaeda. In 1993, he fled to Vancouver with a suitcase full of fake ID, and duped Canadian authorities into giving him permanent residence status with a view to full citizenship. But in 1998, he returned to Afghanistan to serve bin Laden and Zawahiri. They promptly dispatched him to Baku, where he’d been coordinating terrorist operations ever since—including the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Tanzania.
Jason took me to the Baku security services’ holding cells and interrogation center located in a building not far from my hotel. It was a dank affair and a crumbling relic from the Soviet days. There I was introduced to a fellow named Ayaz, who referred to me as “Mr. Bob.” Ayaz was clearly in charge—and he projected it unapologetically, as only a third world alpha male can. He was squat, with gold teeth and a black moustache that would make Saddam Hussein and his onetime entourage envious. He smiled as we were introduced, and I experienced a waft of garlic breath that could strip paint. He looked very pleased with the day’s developments. As Ayaz took us to the cells, he barked commands to his underlings in a language that sounded like something between Russian and Farsi to my ear.
I needed to have a look so that I could confirm their arrest for the benefit of Mossad HQ. Sure enough, there they were—each sitting in his little holding cell—as a direct result of my intelligence gathering and some pretty fast manoeuvring by the Mossad’s counterterrorism department. Because of our initiative, three of the highest-ranking masterminds behind the murder of Kenyans and Americans were locked away in an Azeri jail. They looked dazed and roughed up, but I didn’t have any sympathy for them. In my flu-induced delirium, I was thinking about the poor old African man pulled from the Nairobi bombing in his Sunday best. Like a drunkard, I blurted out “You are fucking pricks.”
I must have seemed a fool, as Jason looked embarrassed for me. We don’t get personal in this business, because it’s pointless to take the world on your shoulders—you’ll only end up drinking too much or sucking on the end of a pistol. Jack told me to go get some rest. There was to be no questioning for now and the three were to remain on ice for the time being. I returned to my hotel feeling a real sense of accomplishment and knowing that I would make some terrorism analysts very happy once the questioning began. I was imagining the wealth of leads and insights this would open up into the shadowy and murky world of al-Qaeda terrorist operations for all of us waging the battle against them.
Things didn’t go quite as we’d planned.
Before I left Baku, Jason and I had another powwow, and I brought up the question of keeping the three amigos on ice for a while longer, because I knew the Mossad’s counterterrorism department, and possibly the ISA, would want to send some interrogators to Baku to question them. Jason said that would be fine, and we agreed to let our respective HQs work out the details.
And then ... that was it. Nobody from the Mossad, myself included, ever saw the trio again.
I later found out, through Arab media reports, that the three men had been handed over to Egyptian authorities and prosecuted as terrorists. In other words, they’d become early victims of the process now commonly known as “extraordinary rendition.” Since 9/11, the CIA has reportedly dealt with hundreds of terror suspects in this manner—essentially creating their own mini-airline for purposes of getting jihadists out of Western jurisdictions and into the hands of countries like Egypt, where men in the mold of Ayaz know how to make people talk.
I’m not a strong proponent of renditions—not because I’m a human rights purist, but because they lead to the sort of scandals that recently have plagued the CIA. Hawks typically sneer at the idea that terrorism can be treated as a criminal justice problem, and in many cases, they’re right. But there really was no reason these three terrorists couldn’t have been tried in a U.S. Federal court. If Zacarias Moussaoui could stand trial for his peripheral role in the 9/11 attacks, why couldn’t this trio be treated in the same way?19
In an interview with the London-based Al Hayat newspaper, Ahmed Salama Mabrouk said his group had drafted a plan for “carrying out 100 attacks against U.S. and Israeli targets and public figures in different parts of the world.” These plans, Mabrouk claimed, were frustrated when the CIA arrested him and seized a computer disk containing details of the attacks.
When I was in Azerbaijan, I never heard anything about a computer disk. But I have little doubt that Mabrouk and Saqr were guilty, ditto Marzouk. In late 2001 and early 2002, U.S. forces sifting through the materials left by al-Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan safe houses came across business cards for a certain Canadian company called 4-U Enterprises. Marzouk was one of the company’s directors.
The Egyptians sentenced Mabrouk to life in prison. At the time, he was number three in the al-Qaeda hierarchy, and probably ranks as the most significant al-Qaeda leader ever taken alive—at least until 9/11 mastermind Khaled Shaikh Mohammed, al-Qaeda’s chief of operations, was captured in 2003. Marzouk got fifteen years—so I guess I won’t be running into him at my local Starbucks. As for Saqr, his fate is unknown. Personally, I hope he was hanged.
We never received a word about the fate of these men from the Agency—we had to read it in the media and subsequent communications intercepts. Andy was apologetic, but it was clear he wouldn’t tell us anything. He’d apparently received instructions from his superiors at Langley to shrug a lot and remain quiet behind his Ray-Bans when queried.
Though I was disappointed we’d never had the chance to interrogate the trio, I was told by Itzik to leave the matter alone. Etai got the same instructions before he flew to Washington a few months later for bilateral talks on al-Qaeda activities. Both of us were awarded a director general’s commendation for the operation. But the Americans never gave us so much as a thank-you for handing them three al-Qaeda heavyweights.
17
OUT OF ZIMBABWE
For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.
NELSON MANDELA
The disappointing conclusion of the Baku operation coupled with two years of sleepless ni
ghts and interagency office politics were enough to convince me that I’d had enough of my liaison job. My desk job at Tevel definitely had its perks and even a few glamorous moments, but a promotion to running counterterrorism operations in Southeast Asia and Africa seemed better suited to my abilities. It was the kind of job I had been looking for after the white-collar environment that was making me restless and fidgety. Truth be told, I missed the excitement of life undercover.
Although going back into the field would mean spending less time with my family in Israel, Dahlia and the kids knew it was something I needed to do in order to avoid falling into the sort of ennui-driven rut I’d found myself in two years previous. And so, in December of 1998, I finally put in for a transfer.
The new unit I’d joined, Bitsur, was mandated with recruiting locally based assets (helpers who are either recruited or inherited by predecessors to provide intelligence, background information, and logistical support, conducting covert operations, and helping out other overstretched operational divisions. One of its primary missions was helping Jews in countries where they faced persecution. Shortly after the Mossad was founded in 1951, in fact, it was Bitsur that helped secretly exfiltrate some of Israel’s first immigrants from North Africa, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and even Ethiopia. I was proud of my new division’s lineage: because the very purpose of Israel’s creation was to provide a home for endangered Jews, I wistfully regarded Bitsur as the Mossad’s soul.
One factor that helped my working conditions with Bitsur was that an irritant from my 1990s-era combatant days, Charles, wasn’t in the picture. Nor was any partner, for that matter. Because Mossad manpower was so scarce, backwaters in places like Africa were all but ignored, and I was required to operate solo. From 1998 to 2001, I was the Mossad’s only agent in all of subequatorial Africa except for liaison stations in Nairobi and Pretoria.
My new boss, Michel, was originally from France. At the time I joined Bitsur, he’d just taken over as head of the unit following a posting in Europe. Michel was in his early fifties, a clinical psychologist by training and a pretty decent guy (although, truth be told, I never really wanted to spend much time with him because he was such a heavy smoker). Like many Mossad officers, he looked the farthest thing from a Hollywood spy. Michel was short and bald, and taken with wearing the kind of vest favored by sports fisherman. “I love zee pockets,” he would say. “Zey are, ’ow you say, ideal for zis kind of work.” (Michel actually did talk like this.)
The unit Michel inherited in 1998 was rundown and regarded as something of a joke by the Mossad’s other operational divisions. But in just two years, he turned it around by recruiting choice manpower from other parts of the Mossad. (Michel was on pretty close terms with Director General Ephraim Halevy, and this helped get him the support he needed when other division heads complained about his poaching. To Halevy’s credit, he understood the importance of helping out fellow Jews in trouble—even if, like him, they weren’t Israeli-born sabras.) It wasn’t long before circumstances in Africa renewed Bitsur’s traditional role as rescuers of threatened Diaspora communities.
Perhaps no country epitomizes the lost potential of sub-Saharan Africa more perfectly than Zimbabwe. Here is a nation of thirteen million people that, by rights, should be one of the economic tigers of the developing world. Its soil is among the most fertile on the continent and, until recently, its farms the most productive—in large part thanks to the corps of experienced white farmers who stuck around after the country shed colonialism in 1980.
But all this ended in 2000 when long-time ruler Robert Mugabe, feeling the heat from a democratic opposition campaign led by Morgan Tsvangirai, launched a series of pogroms against the country’s tiny white population, who he claimed were supporting his political opponents. Armies of thugs loyal to Mugabe’s ZANU-PF movement occupied the choicest white-owned farms, which were carved up and doled out to the president’s gangster cronies. Most of the farmers relocated to neighboring African countries. Their land, which once produced bumper crops of corn, wheat, cotton, coffee, sugar cane, and peanuts for export, now yields only weeds.
But Mugabe’s crude tactics had the desired effect: he managed to hold off Tsvangirai and his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party. In the process, Zimbabwe’s democracy was transformed into a dictatorship, with the government shutting down independent media outlets and effectively criminalizing political dissent. The country’s economy has also been decimated. A nation once called Africa’s breadbasket is now reliant on foreign handouts to feed much of its AIDS-ravaged population.
It was in the midst of this sad transformation that I arrived at Harare’s new, garishly furnished airport in the spring of 2000. Unlike the other foreigners on my plane, I didn’t come for a safari or a chance to gaze on Victoria Falls. I was there on a mission to help Zimbabwean Jews threatened by the Mugabe regime flee the country. It was my third visit to the country in as many months. My previous trips consisted mostly of reconnaissance. But now it was time for action.
In preparation for my Zimbabwe trip, I’d been working closely with my assets in the region. My “man in Harare,” a former member of a now defunct Rhodesian special forces regiment named Larry, was particularly useful.
It was Larry who picked me up when my plane landed. Larry was an energetic egghead who was well connected through joint commercial ventures to a number of senior people in Mugabe’s regime. Though not Jewish himself, it was he who originally tipped us off that a number of Jews were on Mugabe’s to-do list. Through his dealings with Cabinet members and their staff, he’d heard rumblings about “special treatment” for certain well-known Jews. What exactly was meant by “special treatment” is hard to say. But given Mugabe’s track record, Larry knew the safe bet was on detainment, torture, or worse. And so he thoughtfully handed the information over to one of my primary assets in South Africa, who then passed the information on to me.
Anti-Semitism is not a mainstream form of prejudice in African society; most hotheads are more interested in getting one black tribe riled up against another. But Mugabe saw himself as a great anti-colonial revolutionary and actively sought alliances with others who shared his conceit. These included both Muammar al-Gaddafi and Yasser Arafat, who helped school Mugabe in the basics of Jew hatred. The Palestinian Authority’s representative in Zimbabwe, an odious specimen known as Ali Halimeh, was particularly active in this regard. He was a regular on Zimbabwean television, where he held forth with the sort of anti-Semitic incitement and propaganda you usually get only in the Arab media.
As Larry and I drove to the hotel, I spotted groups of soldiers everywhere. At gas stations, the lines were half a mile long.
“There’s no petrol, no foreign currency reserves, and violence is running rampant,” Larry said, summarizing the situation. “Meanwhile, a good portion of the ZNA [Zimbabwean army] is off diamond mining in the Congo.”
I stared out the Jeep’s window at the people sitting patiently in their cars. If this scene had been taking place in North America, the crowds would have descended into fistfights and screaming matches. But Africans are cursed with patience. They’ll patiently wait out every problem imaginable—war, famine, plague, and whatever the local strongmen throw at them. My experience in Africa is one of the reasons I have little regard for the “poverty equals terrorism” theory, according to which suicide bombers are driven to explode themselves because of the poverty and repression they experience in their societies. If squalor and tyranny inspire self-immolation, then sub-Saharan Africa would be one big fireball.
When I arrived at my hotel, the lobby was full of young men giving a close eye to everyone who came and went. I did my best to avoid their glare. Before I’d left for Zimbabwe, I had received a cable from the Israeli embassy in Harare telling me that Mugabe had been warned of a “Zionist agent” aiding the MDC with arms and instruction in political subversion techniques. Thankfully, the name mentioned in the cable didn’t correspond to the alias I’d adopted for t
he mission, but it made me nervous nonetheless. Outing a fictitious “Zionist” plot—complete with a real-life Israeli seized in a local hotel—was just the sort of demagogic stunt that Mugabe loved.
Later on, Larry and I drove to a restaurant to discuss our forthcoming meeting with local Jews who were on Mugabe’s radar screen. After our meal, one of Larry’s drivers—a short, laconic Shona tribesman named Nelson—picked me up. We drove toward the border with neighboring Mozambique, where I wanted to check out one of our possible exfiltration routes.
After about forty minutes of driving on the Harare-Mutare Highway, we ran into a roadblock manned by two members of the Zimbabwe National Army. These were a common sight. In his paranoia, Mugabe was certain that a coup was imminent, and that the MDC was moving weapons around the country in preparation. But this was the first time we’d been stopped.
One of the soldiers, a tall man with appalling teeth, an AK-47, and a jauntily angled dun-colored hat, approached the vehicle and asked where we were headed. Nelson started to answer but, spotting me in the passenger seat, the soldier interrupted and insisted that I roll down my window. Coming around to my side, he asked in perfect English, “What is your business today?”
“We’re heading to Mutare,” I answered without hesitation. My prepared response was, I thought, entirely credible. Mutare is a lush tourist destination located three hours from Harare, high in the eastern highlands on the border of Mozambique. The mountain streams are teeming with fresh mountain trout. Recalling some ancient advice given to me a lifetime ago by my instructor Oren, I wished I’d brought a fishing rod for cover purposes.
