by Aimen Dean
‘Of course,’ I replied immediately.
I did not need to feign excitement. This was a plot that could potentially reveal a much bigger network running high into the al-Qaeda leadership. But at the same time the word ‘chemicals’ screamed at me. Would I never escape the shadow of the mubtakkar?
‘Yasser, I just need to ask one thing. This is to target military personnel, right? We would try to avoid civilian casualties. I know I am in a minority, but I still struggle with the religious justification for killing civilians, especially our brothers and sisters.’
It might seem counter-intuitive, but I felt that it sometimes helped to show a little independent spirit.
‘That is our plan,’ he said.
‘Then you can rely on my help.’
Kamal stepped forward and hugged me.
‘Wait here,’ he said, walking back to the vehicle.
He returned with a Koran and asked me to swear on it that I would manufacture the devices for their plot and swear obedience to him as our local leader. I complied without hesitation. I had no problem making the devices. Whether they would work was an entirely different question.
When I got back to my apartment, I encrypted a note requesting a meeting with Freddie and Kevin in Dubai.
‘It’s never good news when you summon us to Dubai,’ said Kevin, giving me a hug as we met in my hotel room.
I explained Kamal’s plan, stressing the possibility that chemicals might be involved and warning that although Kamal had spoken about an attack on New Year’s Eve it might be fast-tracked. I also revealed al-Rabia’s role and the likelihood that he was now based in Iran.
‘Wow,’ said Freddie. ‘I think that trumps your Swift Sword ID.’ I thought for a moment he was going to do a Simpsons impression.*
‘We thought we might at least get a swim in this time,’ Kevin said drily. ‘But you keep sending us scuttling back to London with your latest discoveries. I can’t imagine how the Americans are going to react,’ he sighed. ‘Probably overreact.’
We talked about the Iranian dimension. There was growing apprehension that Iran was becoming a logistical hub for al-Qaeda, even though it seemed illogical that a Shia Islamic Republic should shelter a Sunni extremist group. Regional enmities could make for strange bedfellows.60
MI6 saw the value of spinning out the line and showing patience. The controllers at Vauxhall Cross felt that as the plot was not imminent and I was the bomb-maker there was a measure of insurance. Letting the conspiracy play out could reap a rich crop of intelligence, especially if al-Rabia’s envoy were detained when he arrived in Bahrain. Western intelligence might then be able to get crucial information not only on al-Rabia but even on the location of others in al-Qaeda’s leadership. The unspoken hope was that some breadcrumb might fall about bin Laden’s whereabouts.
It was a relief to spend forty-eight hours in Dubai. It felt like weekend parole. Bahrain was suffocating, emotionally and literally. It was so small that I constantly expected to meet people I would rather avoid. The thousands of concrete buildings held the heat and humidity; their drab uniformity was in stark contrast to the glittering towers of Dubai. And it had been months since I had seen my handlers. I needed reinforcement and encouragement; the stress of being alone and undercover was beginning to weigh on me. Whereas in Afghanistan I had been able to walk alone among the hills to renew my spirits and my sense of self – my true self – working undercover in Bahrain was like being a spy in a goldfish bowl.
As I wandered around one of the Emirate’s glitzy air-conditioned malls, it also occurred to me that living on the floor above my brother was making things worse. Even with him – especially with him – I had to be careful never to let my guard drop. The constant need to deceive him and other family members was gnawing at me.
My brother had a growing brood of children. Every weekend his wife came with them across the causeway from Khobar to Bahrain. I had grown close to their third oldest, Ibrahim, who was a lively and generous spirit. Often there would be an impatient knock at the door followed by an excited stream of high-pitched chatter about events at school or his heroics in a game of street football. I indulged his passion for playing hide-and-seek and answered his torrents of questions.
Ibrahim was always inquisitive about the wider world. Even at the age of nine, he was talking about events in Afghanistan and Iraq and begging me to tell stories about my time with the mujahideen. I told him those would have to wait for another day. Given the broiling anger in the region, I feared he might be vulnerable to taking the same path I had, but I was helpless to tell him that the jihadis were now distorting our religion.
I entered a multiplex cinema inside the mall and bought a huge bag of popcorn. I had started to stress-eat without realizing it. For a few glorious hours I watched one movie after another. The tension drained from my body. But after the last credits rolled and my thoughts turned to the early morning flight to Manama, my nerves began to jangle again.
Through the spring of 2004, Kamal introduced me to the other members of the cell. There were about half a dozen in total. His brothers were going to be the suicide bombers. When I asked them over tea after Friday prayers whether they were ready, the older of them said serenely: ‘It’s our dearest wish.’
Events in Iraq were deepening their yearning to die for their faith.
‘Who can deny Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s jihad is but a fulfilment of the prophecies?’ Kamal said one day. He quoted the hadith I heard many times in the camps of Afghanistan.
‘There will come a time when three armies of Islam shall simultaneously rise, one in the Levant, one in Yemen and one in Iraq.’61
‘Next will be Syria and then Yemen,’* he said, matter-of-factly. I was reminded of the same utter certainty of Abu Abdullah al-Maki when we were listening to Sheikh al-Muhajir speak about how prophecies were being fulfilled.
We hung out like a little gang – praying and eating together. Kamal forbade the cell from talking about the plot while we were in the city. He was obsessive about operational security. Being with the cell was exhausting. I knew one slip could expose me, and the mental energy required to match their level of fanaticism was starting to take a toll.
In mid-May Kamal and I drove out to the quiet beach again. This time he had something even more startling to say.
‘Brother, you remember the chemical devices that Yusuf al-Ayeri, God bless his soul, wanted to use?’
‘Yes,’ I replied.
‘What do you need for them?’
‘Cyanide salt and acid,’ I replied before telling him which kinds. I was alarmed but not surprised at the turn. There was no point lying. He knew Bokhowa, who was now out of jail, and it was likely he had viewed the mubtakkar blueprints.
‘The acid will be no problem. And I think I can get you the cyanide,’ he said. ‘What I’m thinking is we set off multiple mubtakkar at the entrances and emergency exits of the bars in the Juffair district and on Exhibition Road. We’ll kill people as they rush away from the fumes at one entrance to the other. When the survivors flood out and the emergency services arrive, that’s when we hit them again – by detonating our explosives on the street. This will maximize the number of Americans we kill, Insha’allah,’ he said.
‘What about Muslims in the area?’ I asked.
He had an answer for everything.
‘No true Muslims will be in such a place on New Year’s Eve.’
His small eyes had darkened, draining them of life, as if anticipating his own death. It was clear he had every intention of being one of the suicide bombers.
It was fortunate that Kamal had come to me. Had I not been in Bahrain he might have asked someone else to build the mubtakkar without Western intelligence ever knowing.
As soon as I got back to my apartment, I updated my handlers with a terse, encrypted email. Stay the course came the reply.
Kamal and I met again on the night of 20 June. By now the Gulf summer was at its worst. Beyond the air-conditioned mall
s, there was scarcely any movement in the daylight hours.
He was unable to contain his excitement. ‘I have two pieces of news,’ he told me. ‘Number one: Hamza al-Rabia’s envoy is arriving this next Sunday to bring us funds and to get clarification on the targets we are going to hit. He’s coming in from Kish.’ Kish was an Iranian island in the Gulf, a short hop by plane from Manama.
I was seized by a sense of urgency. The envoy would likely need to travel back to al-Rabia to get the plans approved. Tracking the unnamed envoy’s movements after he came to Bahrain might lead all the way to al-Qaeda’s top leaders.62
‘Number two: I’ve obtained fifty-five kilograms of cyanide.’
I made an instant calculation: fifty-five kilograms of the cyanide salt I requested would be enough to build ten mubtakkar. The only upside was that I would soon get to test the chemicals. I was still in control of the plot, if I could hold my nerve.
I was too astonished at that moment to ask how he had acquired that amount of cyanide. But above all Kamal was an operator. He combined salesmanship with a vast contact list that included the criminal underworld and jihadis in Bahrain and elsewhere. He kept a tattered notebook full of hundreds of phone numbers, which I itched to borrow and photograph.
‘Make sure you stay at home on Sunday so I can pick you up. No phones, or anything – you have to come completely clean,’ he said. ‘Then you can start testing on the chemicals. What will you need?’
‘I’ll need rabbits and an aquarium. The first thing we’ll need to test is if the cyanide you’ve obtained is poisonous enough. And we do that through digestion,’ I said.
‘You will have what you need,’ he replied with unnerving confidence.
I imagined my encrypted note with the latest information setting off alarm bells in London and probably Washington. Yet it would still be weeks, maybe months, before the plot came to fruition – even if al-Rabia’s emissary approved its outlines. As long as I was entrusted with building the devices, we had time.
That night, I lay on my bed trying to work out ways that the cyanide could be seized and Kamal arrested without tipping off al-Qaeda that I was the mole. Without the cyanide, convictions (especially in Bahrain) were unlikely. I even toyed with the idea that Bahraini authorities could pretend that some of the customers for Kamal’s fish had gone down with cyanide poisoning as a pretext to make arrests.
An email pinged into my inbox. I took out the comms device, copied and pasted the email and decrypted it.
Note received. Try find location cyanide ASAP.
The following day I met Kamal again. I decided that flattery was the smartest approach but expected his well-developed paranoia about security would overcome any fawning.
‘Yasser, I’m really impressed. How on earth did you get that amount of cyanide?’
He smiled.
‘I have a friend at a shop that makes paint for cars. I’m keeping the barrels at a place near the sea where nobody will find them; the smell of fish would fool any sniffer dog.’
He abruptly stopped talking. His expression suggested he had already told me more than he meant to.
But events were about to overtake us all.
I returned to my apartment to find an encrypted email with instructions to call a UK number from a payphone as soon as possible. Kevin took the call.
‘Lawrence, thank goodness.’
‘You sound surprised that I’m alive,’ I replied.
‘No, we needed to let you know something. You and your associates will be getting a visit early tomorrow morning. It’s not going to be a social call. Your brother will also be detained. Obviously, don’t resist. Rest assured, we will be across everything. But you need to make sure that both apartments are clean – no evidence.’
‘I don’t understand. I know we can’t discuss this now, but it just makes no sense.’
There was a pause at the other end.
‘Nor do we, to be honest. Just hang in there, get rid of everything, we’ll figure out what’s next.’
And that was it. They were less than reassuring words. To be told to ‘hang in there’ as the Bahraini security services moved to arrest us was hardly a plan, and clearly my handlers were at odds with the decision. So was I: why arrest the cell just days before Hamza al-Rabia’s envoy was due in Bahrain? And before I could get access to the cyanide?
The answer to both questions was many thousands of miles away, in the office of the vice president of the United States. Ever since taking office, Cheney had run a parallel intelligence operation to the professionals at the CIA and National Security Agency. He ensured that almost anything related to terrorism, post-9/11, came across his desk.
Informed that a terror cell was plotting an attack against US military personnel in Bahrain, Cheney had personally called the King to demand arrests.* What he apparently did not know was that the British had an informant inside the plot.**
I walked home in the stultifying heat, at first dazed by the message I had just received, and then focused – almost manically – on what I must do next. Fortunately, Moheddin was not in his apartment. I let myself in with my key and gathered up all the USBs and CD-ROMs I could find. I was reminded as I crept around of my conversation with the MI5 psychologist George. Family or the Firm? Thankfully, my handlers’ instructions had resolved the dilemma.
I ran upstairs and extracted the hard drive from my computer, found the comms device with the encryption software and smashed all the electronics into small pieces. I put everything in refuse bags and then went downstairs. Harath, one of Moheddin’s young sons, was at home.
‘Harath,’ I said, trying to sound casual. ‘Ice cream if you help your uncle. Take these bags to the garbage dumpster.’ I thrust the bags into his hands. ‘And don’t put them all in the same dumpster.’
He looked somewhat puzzled but didn’t complain.
I showered and changed and then brooded, glancing out of the window for signs of police activity. What if the Bahrainis detained me indefinitely and the British were unable or unwilling to persuade them to let me go? I worried, too, about Moheddin: would he be caught up in this dragnet? He had hated his prison spell in Saudi Arabia so much I was concerned he might resist arrest and be shot.
I dozed fitfully through the night, the orange sodium light of the streets printed on the ceiling of my bedroom, the comforting whirr of the air-conditioning drowning out any noise below. Before dawn I wandered into the kitchen and grabbed a large bottle of Coke from the fridge. I might as well have a last drink of something other than water before being arrested.
Something told me that the police operation was imminent. I wandered to the balcony to see about a dozen SUVs swing into the parking area of the apartment complex and disgorge some fifty heavily armed men wearing Kevlar protection and helmets.
But there’s just one of me, I thought – this is all a bit excessive. That gentle mockery gave way to a more perturbing thought. Perhaps they wanted to stage a gun battle in which I was finally brought to justice. In turn, that anxiety gave way to incredulity as the police began demolishing the ground-floor apartment.
What followed was (in retrospect) almost comical. A police captain caught sight of me leaning out of the window and started shouting at me.
‘Stay inside! We’re arresting dangerous people!’
I was tempted to yell back: ‘You’ve got the wrong apartment! It’s me you want.’ But I resisted the temptation to humiliate them and instead opened my door so that when eventually they figured out who they wanted they wouldn’t need to break it down.
Next I heard a commotion downstairs. It seemed like they were arresting Moheddin. A minute or two later, the same police captain walked in, his hand resting on a revolver in its holster. He asked me to confirm my name. There was no point lying.
‘You’re under arrest,’ he said cuffing me. ’You’re going to have to wait outside while we search your apartment.’
To add insult to injury, one of his subordinates had the nerve
to say: ‘He looks harmless enough.’
Moheddin had been forced to wait further down the stairwell. We exchanged glances of bewilderment. As he had no role in the plot perhaps it was a case of guilt by family association.
For three hours I sat in the stairwell while they ransacked the entire apartment, opening up the sofa and mattress with knives. I knew they’d find nothing.
‘Where is your evidence?’ I shouted loudly at the senior police officer, playing the part of an angry fundamentalist, though the anger did not demand much acting.
The Bahraini security services had made six arrests.64 Yasser and his brother Omar were among them. Also caught up in the sweep was the IT engineer Bassam Bokhowa. We were placed in separate cells to await interrogation. Yasser and Bokhowa were in my prison cell. Bokhowa, like my brother, had not been involved in the plot. Round up the usual suspects, I thought to myself.
Yasser Kamal was staring at me.
‘You look pale and you’re really sweating. Are you okay?’
I realized I was soaked with perspiration. I felt a terrible thirst and was overcome by drowsiness. The room started spinning.
The next thing I heard was a loud banging. I was lying on the ground and Yasser Kamal was kicking at the door.
‘We need a medic urgently!’ he was shouting.
I came round in a hospital bed. My arm hurt; I looked and saw it was connected to an IV drip. My other arm also hurt: it was handcuffed to the bed. I still felt terribly weak. When the room came into focus, I saw no fewer than five heavily armed members of Bahraini’s security services standing guard. Some even had their fingers resting on the triggers of their machine guns. Did they think I was Hannibal Lecter? I was hardly in a position to lift myself out of bed, let alone escape.
A doctor walked in. His stern expression suggested that he either loathed treating me or was about to tell me I was dying.
‘You’re at the King Hamad Military Hospital. We’ve run blood tests; you have diabetes.’
‘I had no idea,’ I said.
‘It needs to be brought under control. Your blood sugar levels were so high you were in danger of going into shock. We wouldn’t want you dying in detention. The human rights people would have a field day,’ he said drily.
