"Inside the Jihad"

Terrorist turned spy Omar Nasiri has written the first personal account of life as an al-Qaida operative. An excerpt from his terrifying new book.

By Omar Nasiri

Read more: France, Books, Terrorism, Books Features

Nov. 20, 2006 | When Omar Nasiri heard about airplanes hitting the twin towers in September 2001, he knew without a doubt who was behind the attacks. As Nasiri explains in the introduction to his new memoir, "Inside the Jihad: My Life With Al Qaeda, a Spy's Story," being published this week by Basic Books, he had spent years working and aiding Muslim extremists in Algeria, Belgium and Afghanistan. He knew what al-Qaida was capable of, if not exactly what it had planned.

Nasiri (not his real name), now in his 40s, grew up in Brussels and Tangiers. In the '90s, he began working as a low-level compatriot of extremists, including his brother, in Algeria and Brussels. At first he purchased bullets, then small arms, and later high-level explosives for his Muslim brothers. He was always sympathetic to the cause but was consistently a more moderate follower of Islam (he liked to drink and smoke, and had less-than-perfect attendance at mosque). As the work got riskier, and as Nasiri became more disillusioned with the violent, indiscriminate nature of the work these would-be jihadists were doing, he decided to save himself and get out. He became a spy.

"I had eventually turned against them and their killing of innocents," writes Nasiri. In his work as an agent for the DGSE, the French counterespionage service, Nasiri infiltrated radical mosques and transmitted secret messages to jihadists in Pakistan; he even infiltrated an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan and experienced the rigorous training and religious education Muslim extremists from all over the world hope to receive.

In "Inside the Jihad," Nasiri offers the first first-person account of an al-Qaida operative. It's a fast-paced read, to be sure; it's also an illuminating one. In telling his story, Nasiri attempts to shed light on some of the hard questions that don't yield easy answers: Why do certain Muslims become jihadists while others don't? What do terrorists want? In so doing, he takes us inside the world of fundamentalist Islam in a way no other writer has yet been able too.

In the excerpt below, which takes place in early 1995, Nasiri's brother Hakim has asked him to purchase explosives from his arms contact, Laurent, in Brussels, and then drive them in a beat-up car to Morocco. The passage illustrates how terrorist networks organize and operate in broad daylight, and how a familiar and everyday object, like an old Audi, can become a dangerous weapon. It also shows the futility of relying too strongly on domestic law enforcement -- especially in sensitive border areas and nations where corruption is routine -- to protect the world.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Everything was speeding up. Right around the time Yasin asked me to buy explosives from Laurent, Hakim asked me to do something more unusual still. One day, we were running an errand in town. We were in a tiny car I had never seen before -- a Peugeot. On the way home, he pulled over to the side of the road and asked me to drive for a bit. It seemed strange, but I went along with it. Once I started driving, I immediately realized there was something wrong with it. The car kept lurching to the left -- I had to use all of my strength to keep it on a straight track. Soon, Hakim asked me to pull over and I did.

"What's this all about?" I asked.

"Brother, I need you to do me a favor."

"What kind of favor?"

Hakim paused, and then began to speak slowly. "There is a brother in Morocco -- a very good one. I bought him a car as a favor, but he can't come to pick it up because he doesn't have a passport. So I'm hoping you will be willing to drive the car to him."

I was stunned. "What are you talking about?" I demanded. "You know I don't even have a license."

"That's not a problem," Hakim said quickly. "We'll have someone drive with you to the port in Aljeciras."

I could feel the blood rising in my face.

"If you want me to do something for you," I shouted at Hakim, "then you better tell me exactly what it is. I'm not going to drive a car down to Morocco for you unless you tell me exactly what's inside and what I'm doing with it. Don't try to fool me, Hakim -- I'm not stupid."

My brother just stared at me and said nothing. I got out of the car and walked away.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Two nights later, Hakim came up to my room.

"Come with me," he said. "I have to drop some supplies off with a friend of mine, and I want you to meet him."

There was something strange in the way he spoke, and I was curious. So I went with him to the car. We drove for about one kilometer and turned onto a residential street. We stopped in front of an apartment building and Hakim got out and opened the gate to an interior courtyard. Inside, there were four garages. The light was on in one of them. We walked over and Hakim knocked on the window.

The garage door opened and there were two men. One was clearly a mechanic -- he was wearing a jumpsuit and was covered with sweat and oil. Towards the back of the garage there was a curtain, and behind it I could make out the rear bumper of a car.

The floor in front of us was covered with all sorts of supplies -- piles and piles of currency, guns, radio transmitters. And what looked like bricks wrapped in white paper. It was obvious to me that the mechanic was taking apart the car to hide all of this stuff inside.

Hakim spoke a few words to the two men and gave them a bag of groceries he had brought with him. Then we left.

On the way home he turned to me.

"Will you do it?"

I didn't pause for a second. "Yes, I will do it."

If I said no, then he would know that I had never really repented, that I had never come back to him and the others. If I said yes, they would trust me again totally. Gilles [Nasiri's DGSE contact] had told me from the beginning that he wanted me to get into their inner circle, and I knew this was my chance.

I had only one question. "So when do I leave?"

- - - - - - - - - - - -

I saw Gilles the next day. I told him about Hakim's request, about the garage. He sat bolt upright as he asked me what I had seen, and I told him. When I told him about the bricks he nodded and explained that it was probably Semtex.

"So are you going to do it?" Gilles asked. He was obviously nervous, but I knew he wanted me to go. He wanted to find out how all of this worked. He wanted to get me in that inner circle.

"Yes," I said. "I already told him I would do it."

"You know this is very risky," he said. "We have no jurisdiction in Spain. If you get arrested there, there is nothing we can do."

"I know," I said. "I don't plan to get arrested."

Gilles exhaled. "All right, then. Here's what I need you to do: I need you to tell me everything about the car. I need you to tell me when you are leaving. And I need you to call me every time you stop along the way and tell me where you are so that we can keep track of you."

Gilles was playing the bully again, and it pissed me off. I had offered to do something incredibly dangerous, and now he was trying to tell me how to do it. I wasn't going to let him. Not just because I was stubborn, though -- although of course it was partly that. There was no way I was going to let Gilles track me while I drove across France with a car filled with explosives. I didn't trust him, and if he wanted to he could just have the police pick me up and search the car and I would spend the rest of my life in jail. If he tipped off the Moroccan police, it would be even worse.

"No way," I told him. "I'm not telling you where I am. I will call you when I get there and the deal is done."

"If we don't know where you are," he said angrily, "we can't help you if you get in trouble."

"I'll take that risk."

- - - - - - - - - - - -

At about 3am the next night, we went to pick up the car. Hakim brought me back to the garage. There was another young man waiting for us when we got there. Since I didn't have a license, they were sending someone to drive with me as far as the Spanish port. Once I got into Morocco, I was on my own.

The young man's name was Kamal. I had seen him around the house a few times before. He wasn't like the others -- he had a long beard, and was very quiet and spent most of the time reading the Koran.

The car was ready. It was a green Audi. There was a trailer attached to the back and the back seat of the car was filled with all sorts of things -- rugs, big boxes, electronics. We were supposed to look like a couple of immigrants traveling back to Morocco to see our families. Before we left, Hakim gave me a cell phone number. He told me to use it when I got to Morocco to reach Yasin -- he would give me instructions on finding the contact once I was there.

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