Valuetainment - Life As A Spy from Al-Qaeda to MI6

00:00:00.840 Do you think the jihad needs you?

00:00:02.680 I know that the jihad doesn't need me, but I need it.

00:00:07.280 Are you thinking we should do that with the help of violence?

00:00:10.320 Are you convinced at this point?

00:00:12.160 Never hate so intensely and never love so intensely.

00:00:16.760 Volunteers who came from all over the world were about 900.

00:00:19.600 We buried 350 there.

00:00:21.040 It was a very peaceful religion.

00:00:23.000 Is that kind of what you're saying?

00:00:24.680 Islam is not a religion of peace. 1.00

00:00:26.240 And Islam, basically, by the way,

00:00:27.440 is one of the most capitalistic free market religions

00:00:30.680 you could ever find.

00:00:31.440 The embassy was actually a front for the CIA.

00:00:42.160 So, you know, a lot of people have lived interesting lives,

00:00:44.040 but some tells me today's guest has lived

00:00:46.720 maybe a little bit more of an interesting life.

00:00:48.680 You'll find out here in a second when I tell you,

00:00:50.520 this man went from being part of Al-Qaeda,

00:00:53.240 yes, Al-Qaeda in 1996,

00:00:55.680 he met Osama bin Laden for the first time.

00:00:57.680 You'll kind of hear how that process takes up, takes place.

00:01:00.000 And in December 98, he leaves and he goes from Al-Qaeda

00:01:03.280 to joining MI6.

00:01:05.200 And he writes a book.

00:01:06.400 The title of the book is

00:01:08.320 Nine Lives, My Time as MI6 Top Spy Inside Al-Qaeda.

00:01:14.080 With that being said, Ayman Deen,

00:01:15.920 thank you so much for being a guest on Vaitainment.

00:01:18.160 Thank you for having me.

00:01:20.240 So you've lived a quite, you know, interesting life there.

00:01:24.160 That qualifies for interesting.

00:01:27.760 I sure hope so.

00:01:29.600 Yeah.

00:01:30.320 So can you take us back and kind of tell me about your upbringing,

00:01:34.320 where you grew up at, so the audience knows.

00:01:36.080 Obviously, I got all the notes here in front of me,

00:01:38.080 but if you don't mind taking a moment and sharing with that,

00:01:40.160 and then how you got recruited into Al-Qaeda,

00:01:43.520 I think that'd be a good way to start.

00:01:45.520 Well, I can say that I was more of the typical Middle Eastern salad,

00:01:50.320 you know, if you could say it that way,

00:01:52.240 like because I was a Bahraini national born in Saudi Arabia

00:01:59.120 to a father who was born in Iraq, you know, to,

00:02:02.960 and his mother was half Turkish, half Greek Jewish.

00:02:06.720 And my mother was from Lebanon.

00:02:08.560 So, you know, I ended up basically like,

00:02:10.800 I mean, being a true Middle East, you know, mix to the point where 1.00

00:02:16.560 I remember when I looked at my DNA many, many years later,

00:02:20.240 I found that 40% from the Middle East, 30% from Persia,

00:02:25.280 10% from Turkey and the Caucasus, you know,

00:02:27.840 and about 10, 12% from the Indian subcontinent,

00:02:31.920 including Afghanistan.

00:02:33.200 So I thought, wow, what a mix.

00:02:36.480 But nonetheless, if you grew up in Saudi Arabia in the 1980s,

00:02:41.600 you know, you will be growing up in a society that was deeply,

00:02:45.520 deeply conservative Sunni Muslim.

00:02:49.200 And where I lived actually was a mix of Shia and Sunnis,

00:02:52.880 because I lived in the Eastern part of the country.

00:02:56.560 So, and I lived in the most divisive era you could ever imagine.

00:03:03.040 Imagine that my mother was from Lebanon, 0.92

00:03:05.360 so she was worried about the Lebanese civil war

00:03:07.840 that was taking place in her mother country.

00:03:11.360 At the same time, just a few hundred kilometers away to the north,

00:03:15.280 Iraq was locked in a deadly war with Iran for eight years,

00:03:19.440 from 1980 until 1988.

00:03:22.080 So in our school, I remember...

00:03:24.400 I was living in Iran at that time when that was going on,

00:03:26.720 in Tehran, 80 to 88.

00:03:28.080 It was not pretty, it was ugly.

00:03:29.360 Exactly.

00:03:30.240 So I remember where I grew up in our school,

00:03:35.840 one third of the students were Shia and two thirds were Sunnis.

00:03:42.160 So it was almost like supporting two opposing football teams.

00:03:47.680 So the Sunnis will support Saddam Hussein and Iraq, and the Shia will be supporting Iran and Ayatollah Khomeini. 0.97

00:03:56.560 So, you know, and of course, for us kids, it was very strange.

00:04:01.040 I mean, how would you desensitize war to the point where basically,

00:04:05.840 like, you know, you view it as a contest, you know, between two teams,

00:04:09.520 and you make it so sectarian, you know, that, you know, we are all Saudis or Gulf people there,

00:04:16.720 and yet we were supporting different sides of the war according to our sectarian preferences.

00:04:24.240 So if that doesn't politicize a young child at such young age, I don't know what would do, actually.

00:04:32.640 And then, you know, ironically, the man who we supported, the man who we were cheering up for,

00:04:41.280 Saddam Hussein, in August of 1990, decided to stab us in the back, well, actually the front, 0.50

00:04:49.680 moved into Kuwait.

00:04:51.680 And as a result, my city, Khubar, was the first major city from the Kuwaiti border.

00:04:58.160 So, three hours drive from the Kuwaiti border, we started to see what I would call in 1990,

00:05:04.640 the richest caravan of refugees you could ever imagine.

00:05:08.800 Imagine refugees coming in BMWs, Mercedes, Cadillacs. 1.00

00:05:15.120 You know, it was a weird sight to see.

00:05:18.800 People who wore same Arabic dresses as us, they spoke the same accent, almost the same tribal makeup. 0.65

00:05:27.440 And yet, they were running away from the person who, until two months ago, we were cheering up,

00:05:34.480 calling him the hero of the Arab world, the guardian of the Eastern Gate, as the Arabs used to call him.

00:05:43.040 And, you know, he basically stabbed us, you know, basically in front and back.

00:05:51.040 And that, of course, resulted in a massive international effort to expel him.

00:05:57.600 How that happened?

00:05:58.480 Well, from seeing rich refugees coming into my city, I started seeing 1.00

00:06:04.480 many American soldiers landing in my city.

00:06:08.000 Because my city also was the host of the largest

00:06:12.080 military air base in the entire Middle East, King Abdulaziz Air Base.

00:06:16.160 So, I mean, I was seeing, you know, hundreds of U.S. Humvees and, you know,

00:06:24.960 armored vehicles just going around.

00:06:27.680 These American soldiers were very approachable, very friendly.

00:06:31.680 What year is this?

00:06:32.720 What year?

00:06:33.600 Uh, 1990.

00:06:35.360 Got it.

00:06:35.760 Okay.

00:06:36.000 Of course, they were, at that year, they were friendly.

00:06:38.480 They were not yet, they haven't yet faced the, you know, the hostility that grew up with

00:06:45.280 the Haida, basically of the later 1990s.

00:06:47.760 And so they were even lining up in the fast food chains in order to order burgers and fries and all

00:06:55.200 of that.

00:06:55.600 And they were just happy to mingle with the local population because for us, we saw them as

00:07:01.200 the protectors from a impending Iraqi invasion that Saddam Hussein wanted to control the oil wells

00:07:10.720 and the oil wealth of the Gulf.

00:07:13.840 And therefore, we were afraid we would be next after Kuwait.

00:07:16.880 The presence of the American soldiers and the American forces was a reassuring presence.

00:07:22.320 But at the same time, I was a religious kid.

00:07:26.400 My religious leaders at the time were opposing completely the presence of the American troops.

00:07:33.040 They were saying that it is completely against the spirit of Islam that in the Arabian Peninsula,

00:07:39.040 an army of half a million Christian soldiers are present.

00:07:42.880 This is not what was supposed to happen.

00:07:45.600 And therefore, they are supposed to be expelled rather than being invited.

00:07:50.080 Now, this is where the first, you know, took place, you know, in my mindset.

00:07:57.280 I was by that time, 11, going on 12.

00:08:00.400 And I was already heavily politicized kid because of everything that was happening around me.

00:08:06.560 Let me ask you, at that time, when you're 11 years old, about to be 12, in your mind,

00:08:11.600 who's America, who's Iran, who's Israel, in your mind?

00:08:15.760 For us, Iran was the sectarian threat. 0.99

00:08:21.680 Israel was the occupier of the holy sites. 0.99

00:08:25.520 America was the big bully, you know, kid on the block, but with cool gadgets.

00:08:33.120 That's how we viewed America at that time.

00:08:35.440 Okay.

00:08:35.920 Yeah.

00:08:37.440 So please continue.

00:08:38.800 You're 11 years old, about to be 12 years old.

00:08:40.960 Exactly.

00:08:41.440 So for me, you know, I started to become more confused about what to believe anymore.

00:08:47.120 I mean, you know, should I cheer the American presence and the fact that they will be not

00:08:54.960 only defending us against a potential invasion by Saddam Hussein, but also expel Saddam Hussein

00:09:03.280 out of Kuwait, because for us, still, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was unjust, and he is not

00:09:10.240 supposed to have invaded Kuwait, and therefore he needs to be expelled.

00:09:14.480 And that is, I think, where, at the time I was reading a leaflet I saw in one of the mosques,

00:09:22.480 that leaflet was saying that it was a big historical mistake on, you know, with catastrophic proportions,

00:09:33.440 that we have allowed the Americans to come in.

00:09:35.920 The solution was to raise an army of jihadists, an army of Mujahideen, to push back Saddam Hussein

00:09:43.440 from Kuwait.

00:09:44.320 Who signed that pamphlet, which I saw in that mosque?

00:09:47.600 And that was the first time I heard, and I read the name Osama Bin Laden, that he is one of the

00:09:54.080 leaders of the Arab jihadists in Afghanistan, fighting against the Soviets, and then later

00:09:59.600 the communist regime in Kabul.

00:10:01.760 And he was opposed to it, opposed to the presence of American forces.

00:10:07.040 And he was talking about the fact that you can't have an American Christian army

00:10:14.000 present in the holy, sanctified land of Arabia.

00:10:19.520 Although I was wondering, there is nothing holy about my city.

00:10:22.880 I mean, yes, there is Mecca, Medina, that's holy, but the rest of it is not.

00:10:26.720 However, you know, for Osama Bin Laden and for many of those who were like-minded, including

00:10:33.200 the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Saudi Arabia, the other hybrid group,

00:10:37.680 you know, which is the hybrid Salafists, Wahhabists and Muslim Brotherhood groups,

00:10:41.920 they were not exactly happy with the presence of the American forces.

00:10:45.760 They believed basically that the solution should come from within,

00:10:49.680 you know, the so-called Muslim Ummah or the Muslim nation.

00:10:55.440 However, I was thinking at that time, how could the solution come from within the Muslim Ummah,

00:11:00.160 when many parts of the so-called Muslim nation were actually supporting Saddam Hussein,

00:11:04.480 including Yasser Arafat, to God's sake, as well as, you know, the leaders of Yemen and Sudan.

00:11:11.600 That is, I think, where, you know, my mind was spinning around faster than, you know,

00:11:19.520 I could actually comprehend in terms of who to believe and what to follow.

00:11:24.480 Nonetheless, the war, the Gulf War, took place in January of 1991.

00:11:29.360 And for us, it was the first televised war. And this is the first time ever in my life I saw CNN.

00:11:37.520 So, at the time, CNN was the network station that broadcasted the war live for everyone to see,

00:11:48.080 whether from Baghdad or from, you know, even our own city, which was due to the presence of the air

00:11:56.640 base, subject to a scud missile attack by the Iraqi forces. And of course, basically, it's the first

00:12:03.120 time we, you know, we were subject to air raid sirens. We have to put the gas masks on ourselves,

00:12:12.960 because we were suspecting that we would be attacked by chemical weapons, that the missiles

00:12:17.040 are carrying chemical warheads. We were, of course, living through a nightmare. And that is,

00:12:23.600 I think, where my first experience of war, it was not as brutal as those who experienced it,

00:12:31.280 of course, in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. But nonetheless, it was the first time I felt what

00:12:37.280 it feels like to be subject of an attack by such sophisticated weaponry, but also glad for the American

00:12:45.600 air defense network, the Patriot system, which shot down the vast majority of those missiles before they

00:12:53.040 reached the ground. Although near the end, I remember, I was at the roof of my house,

00:12:57.520 when I saw one of the missiles in a basically landing, just only 800 meters from my house.

00:13:03.920 And it hit a barracks, you know, a building where 28 American soldiers were killed

00:13:10.720 due to that attack. So I remember I saw all the ambulances going and I saw dozens of them,

00:13:16.480 the firefighters, and heard the news. And somehow, it made me sad, you know, the death of the soldiers.

00:13:25.600 And that was, I think, the last time the death of American soldiers made me sad for many years to come,

00:13:32.160 because at later life, I became so radical in my thoughts that I would end up celebrating the death

00:13:39.680 of American soldiers rather than other way around. How did that indoctrination take place? What were

00:13:46.720 events that got you to believe in the fact that you should celebrate rather than mourn over the loss

00:13:53.440 of American lives? What happened there? How did you get recruited? Who changed your way of thinking?

00:13:59.760 Two events in particular, I would say. The first event was personal. At the age of 12, just months

00:14:09.040 after the end of the Gulf War, my mother passed away. She was only 49 at that time. It was a brain aneurysm.

00:14:16.960 It was sudden, just as brain aneurysm is, you know, it goes undetected. And that's it. She collapsed.

00:14:25.600 Two days later, she died. And for me, of course, as a young religious kid at that time, for me,

00:14:32.480 it was all about finding answers. I was the youngest of my brothers, you know, so it helped

00:14:37.760 that there were older brothers in the house who would, you know, more or less offer some comfort

00:14:42.800 and support. My dad already was dead when I was four. So basically, like, you know, for me,

00:14:48.960 the passing of my mother was, you know, the loss of the last, I would say, moral compass that

00:14:55.200 stabilizing factor, that anchor that, like, actually keeps you safe and secure

00:15:00.080 and grounded. Unfortunately, that was gone. And for me, I drifted into, for example, kids,

00:15:06.000 when they have some freedom, usually, like, you know, basically, they will use that freedom towards,

00:15:10.000 you know, going out with their, you know, with their friends, hanging out, smoking, you know,

00:15:14.720 doing something like, you know, basically bad or whatever. For me, I was more of a nerdish,

00:15:19.600 you know, kids, more into books. And so the drifting was more subtle, more political and

00:15:26.400 ideological and religious. And I ended up basically looking into ways to find solace and,

00:15:35.200 how can I say, you know, consoling, basically, in religious texts. And one of my teachers at that

00:15:43.040 time, said to me that there is a book that if you read, it could help you deal with your grief.

00:15:51.200 And I said to him, what is that? He said, there is a book written by an Egyptian ideologue

00:15:58.480 and a thinker, his name is Sayyid Qutb. Sayyid Qutb, of course, basically had a great impact,

00:16:05.040 not only on my country, but yours also, you know, basically in Iran, because, you know,

00:16:11.360 he actually, his writings were translated by the current Ayatollah Ali Khamenei when he was in

00:16:17.360 prison. And it provided the framework of political Islam to take shape in Iran, and then later in 0.83

00:16:24.560 other Islamic movements across the Arab and Muslim world. And so, for me, I was told that I should

00:16:30.080 read his books. What is the book I was supposed to read? A book called In the Shades of the Quran.

00:16:34.720 It is 4,000 pages, written over a nine-year period. And all of these nine years, you know,

00:16:43.120 this book was written between the years of 1954 and 1963, when Sayyid Qutb was in jail in Egypt. And

00:16:53.600 the Egyptian jails in the 1950s and 60s were not exactly a picnic. I mean, it was a horror show, 0.95

00:17:00.880 to say the least. So he wrote his interpretation, his literary interpretation of the Quran from the

00:17:11.840 prism of pain, grief, and torture, and darkness, and loneliness, and grief. You know, so his commentary

00:17:22.400 on the Quran was, while beautiful in its words and imagery and literary value, it was really all 0.99

00:17:33.440 geared towards one aim and one goal, as he always keeps repeating this. It is to establish the kingdom

00:17:40.240 of God on earth as he ordained it to be. So, you know, this concept of God's kingdom on earth,

00:17:50.080 and that it needs to be achieved through violence, you know, if necessary, which is jihad, in order to

00:17:57.360 achieve a pure Islamic society that would drive away most of the grief and the pain and the suffering 1.00

00:18:05.520 that we are experiencing because of the disillusionment and the ill-governance that is

00:18:11.120 taking place in the Arab and Muslim world at the time. Remember, he was opposing, he was a socialist

00:18:16.720 at early stages of his life. He dabbled in communism. Then later, he became an Islamist, 0.55

00:18:22.400 opposing both capitalism and socialism and communism. So basically, he arrived at the conclusion that only

00:18:29.920 Islamism could offer a salvation, a solution to the Muslim masses that are yearning for justice.

00:18:38.320 That is Sayyid Qutb. So I ended up between the ages of 12 to the age of 14, reading the writings of

00:18:46.960 Sayyid Qutb and basically being influenced so heavily by it. How do you spell his name?

00:18:53.040 Sayyid, which is S-A-Y-E-D. And then Qutb, which is Q-U-T-B. 0.99

00:19:02.880 And this book he wrote, you said, 4,000 pages. He wrote in eight, nine years of being in jail in

00:19:07.840 Egypt in the 50s to 60s. And you said prior to that, he was a communist and a communist to socialist to...

00:19:15.520 Islamist.

00:19:16.880 Islamist. Okay. So in that process, who would you compare him to? Was he like the... 0.70

00:19:22.960 Was he like the Karl Marx minus the jail? Was he like the figurehead of sharing some of those

00:19:29.520 philosophies with the people? Who would you compare him to?

00:19:32.960 I think in my opinion, he was a revolutionary thinker who basically, for the first time ever,

00:19:40.480 like Karl Marx and others, basically, who advocated the violence of the overthrow of the bourgeoisie

00:19:48.320 governments by the oppressed proletariates. He advocated the violent revolution by the masses to

00:19:57.760 throw away the unjust, un-Islamic rule across the Muslim world and replacing it with Islamic 1.00

00:20:06.160 sharia-based rule. What he called it, the kingdom of God on earth, a semi-utopian society that is 0.81

00:20:14.880 subject to God's laws, but are governed by men of God. That's how he saw the evolution of societies in

00:20:25.600 the Muslim and Arab world into a unified super Islamic structure, which is the caliphate, 1.00

00:20:33.200 the kingdom of God on earth. And he was the first one who advocated that since, you know,

00:20:41.040 violence or the deployment of violence throughout Islamic history was the prerogative of the state, 0.95

00:20:48.080 never the individual. He is the first one to actually advocate the deployment of violence by

00:20:56.400 individuals to overthrow the state and to replace it with a Islamic state.

00:21:02.480 Wow. So here's what it says here about him. It says, even though most of his observations and

00:21:07.440 criticism were leveled at the Muslim world, Qutep is also known for his intense disapproval of the

00:21:13.120 society and culture of the United States, which he saw as materialistic and obsessed with violence and

00:21:18.320 sexual pleasures. He advocated violence, offensive jihad. Qutep has also been described by his followers as a

00:21:24.320 great thinker and martyr of Islam, while many Western observers and some Muslims see him as key

00:21:29.760 originator of Islamist ideology and an inspiration for violent Islamic groups such as Al Qaeda.

00:21:38.000 Today, his supporters are identified by his opponents as Qutibists or Qutb is what they describe him. So, 0.52

00:21:45.440 let me ask you, when you read this as a kid,

00:21:49.120 at that point, was he already,

00:21:50.640 did he already have a lot of influence? He's written 30 books. You know, he's been around the block.

00:21:54.960 Was he already an influential figure or not yet? When you first read it?

00:21:58.480 He was. He was an influential figure. No question. Because you see, President Nasser of Egypt executed him in 1966.

00:22:07.520 So, what he said before he died, which is a very famous quote by him, he said,

00:22:13.760 our words remain dead candles with no life until we die for these words. And then they are lit and they are alive.

00:22:25.040 And therefore, basically, he believed that by dying, he will seal his legend. That's why, you know, when he, you know, when he was,

00:22:35.200 you know, about to be hanged, you know, they brought a, a cleric, you know, to remind him, you know, to say the words, you know, basically, before he dies, which is, you know, la ilaha illallah, like, you know, there is no God but God.

00:22:50.160 So, he said, you know, to the cleric, I die, while you eat bread with that word. 0.94

00:22:58.640 So, the man knew what he was doing. He was sealing his legend to make sure that his revolutionary ideas will become even more intense and more credible because he died for them.

00:23:12.380 He knew what he was doing, strategic. And by the way, he was hung because he was conspired to assassinate the president. So, you know, that was one of the concerns about it.

00:23:21.620 But let me ask you, when you read the book, at this time, when you first read it, you're how old, 12 years old, 13 years old?

00:23:27.280 Yeah, between the ages of 12 and 14.

00:23:29.980 So, when you read this book the first time, 4,000 pages, what are you thinking when you're done reading it? Are you thinking this guy makes sense? I want to go bring the kingdom of God on earth. Are you thinking we should do that with the help of violence? Are you convinced at this point?

00:23:45.220 By that time, yes.

00:24:15.220 Very effective.

00:24:17.220 The first social media platform.

00:24:19.220 Yep, that's right.

00:24:19.920 You know, you know, to make sure that people who are taking taxis, you know, would listen to his sermons. It's the same thing. The cassette was the medium through these clerics were disseminating, you know, their, you know, revolutionary ideas about the fact that Saudi Arabia for them was not Muslim enough. Can you believe it? 0.81

00:24:40.660 Like, I mean, I mean, for them, Saudi Arabia, which was a Wahhabist, a, you know, Salafist, closed Muslim conservative society was not good enough even. And therefore, there was the need to overthrow them, just like the Shah was overthrown. And therefore, we need to do it. 0.98

00:25:00.300 I was so convinced at the time because, on one hand, I was reading this book and getting all of these ideas. And on the second hand, I was also listening to these clerics, you know, from their cassettes, listening to their lectures and sermons, talking about the need for Islamic solidarity, Islamic awakening, Islamic renaissance, and the need to go from the repetitive, the boring, the, you know, the, you know, and this

00:25:30.220 lack of lack of lack of lack of dynamism, as they called it, into a more dynamic, you know, Muslim society that can actually challenge the powers of the world at that time. 1.00

00:25:41.600 However, that wasn't the only reason why my radicalization, you know, happened. There was another event, you know, that also led me towards, you know, the jihad and the path of the jihad, which was the Bosnian conflict, which was, you know, raging in 1936.

00:26:00.220 In 1992, at the time, I was 14. So it just started. And at that time, the, you know, my local mosque, the local charity that I used to belong to, started to collect funds to help the Muslims of Bosnia, who were, of course, subject to the civil wars, and the horrors of the civil wars that were taking place in the former Yugoslav, Yugoslav republic.

00:26:25.660 Bosnia, you know, was a country where the Muslims made up about half of the population. The other half was divided between Serbs and Croat. They voted for independence from Yugoslavia. That led to the Serbs of the country declaring war on the Muslim majority.

00:26:44.000 And as a result, ethnic cleansing started to take place. Now, these events were portrayed, unfortunately and wrongly, in the Saudi media and the Arab world, you know, intellectual discourse, as a war between Christianity and Islam, because the Serbs invoked Christian symbology.

00:27:08.000 While in fact, they were fighting a ethnic nationalistic war that had nothing to do basically with Christianity. They were actually killing, you know, their, you know, fellow Christians who were Corwats. 0.99

00:27:23.000 You know, you know, you know, of course, basically, it was sectarian based because the Serbs were Orthodox and, you know, the Corwats were Catholics, but nonetheless, like, you know, even the Corwats were subject to ethnic cleansing, and they were not Muslims, basically, they were Christians, but it was portrayed this way in our media and in our religious discourse in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab and Muslim world.

00:27:45.000 So, suddenly, we are not only collecting funds to help, you know, the Muslims there withstand the onslaught of the Serbs, suddenly, we started to see people from our community, including a teacher of mine at school, who was a math teacher from an affluent family, would travel there with a member of the Bahraini royal family.

00:28:09.000 Both of them would die there over the summer of 1992, and fighting alongside the Bosnians against the Serbs, and suddenly, you know, we started to hear that, you know, a few words put together in one sentence.

00:28:24.240 Jihad, jihad, martyrdom, and sacrifice, all in one word, and suddenly, the Bosnian conflict, which was raging, you know, 3,000 miles away, where, you know, was in fact present in our own classroom, because our teacher is missing, you know, our math teacher is missing, but he was killed in action in Bosnia.

00:28:47.520 He's a Saudi, you know, he's a Saudi, you know, from the Saudi desert, has nothing to do with the lush European mountains of the Balkans, but that Islamic solidarity and that sense of Islamic duty towards oppressed Muslim minority, more or less ignited that need in him to go and fight the jihad.

00:29:08.320 So I was asking myself, so I was asking myself, if my teacher can't do it, why can't I?

00:29:13.880 And two years later, when I became 16, the catalyst for that event happened when one of my friends, even though he was three years my senior, he was actually going to join the jihad in Bosnia.

00:29:29.860 I learned from his brother that he was leaving, so when I was going to his home, you know, to say goodbye, I ended up knocking at his door, and instead of saying goodbye, I was saying, I want to come with you.

00:29:44.600 And I remember, like, I mean, he was, you know, even though he was 19, you know, he himself was young, but he was telling me, since I'm 16, I just became 16 four days ago, you know, since you're 16, you can't go, like, and I mean, jihad is not a picnic.

00:29:56.680 He was telling me, amen, for God's sake, you are only 16. Do you know what jihad is? You know, people will not just only die, they could actually get wounded, bullet holes, amputations.

00:30:08.160 You know, you could step on a mine and lose your leg. You know, it's not a picnic. Do you think the jihad needs you?

00:30:15.460 I remember what, you know, that my answer changed his mind and changed my own life.

00:30:21.420 And I said to him, Khalid, I know that the jihad doesn't need me, but I need it. I want to go. You know, I need it for my own betterment.

00:30:32.940 I don't want to be a spectator on the, you know, you know, on the seats, basically watching the caravan of history passing me by, wishing that I, you know, made my own, you know, writings on the pages of history.

00:30:46.300 You know, I wanted to be part of it. I don't want to be a spectator anymore. That's it. And that changed his mind and he decided to take me with him.

00:30:55.240 And two weeks later, we were in Vienna, you know, on our way to Bosnia.

00:31:01.260 During your time as a, you know, when you went to Bosnia and as well as once you joined Al-Qaeda, what are some things you witnessed yourself?

00:31:07.840 Well, where to start? Like, you know, I mean, I think the right question is what didn't what didn't I witness, you know, in the sense like, and I mean, you see everything once you are in a war, a brutal war like Bosnia.

00:31:20.020 I mean, you see mass graves, you see the child remains of villages, you see destroyed mosques, destroyed churches, you see, you know, prisoner exchanges where instead of seeing prisoners, you know, who are wearing military uniforms and, you know, big, you know, hairy men, instead you see children being exchanged, you know, basically.

00:31:41.340 Like, I mean, who were, you know, in the camps, you know, being held prisoners, you see young 14 year olds who were held for two years as captives.

00:31:50.500 And you hear the horror stories basically of them being gangrene, you know, you see a lot of this because of the hatred, the deep hatred that was beneath the surface between the communities there.

00:32:02.580 And this is a warning to many people across the world, you know, is never hate so intensely and never love so intensely.

00:32:14.620 You never know who will be your enemies one day and who will be your friends one day.

00:32:18.940 Moderation and everything basically is the key towards longevity of any society.

00:32:23.300 You know, so this is exactly what I've seen, you know, and of course, basically, you know, when we went to Bosnia, we were four, we left Bosnia, we were two, because we buried two of our, you know, friends back.

00:32:36.740 I mean, the number of the volunteers who came from all over the world were about 900, we buried 350 there.

00:32:43.940 So, so, so basically, like, I mean, the life expectancy was really short for anyone who was there.

00:32:49.600 I was wounded in action there, you know, basically, although it was a mild one, I, you know, basically have seen for my eyes, like, you know, as a 16 year old, things that, you know, well, a 16 year old shouldn't have witnessed, like, you know, but then what made me resilient is that I've seen the 13 and the 14 and the 11 and the nine year olds, you know, basically, who've seen the horrors of all being more resilient.

00:33:13.240 And that basically gave me hope, you know, basically, that if they can put up with it, if they can go through it, then I can.

00:33:22.920 I mean, let me ask you, first time you met Osama bin Laden, how old were you?

00:33:26.260 Well, it was just before my 18th birthday, it was August, the first week of August of 1996, you know, so I was about to become 18 in about maybe like, I mean, five weeks, six weeks.

00:33:41.360 You know, by that time I was in Afghanistan, you know, the whole scene shifted now, Bosnia was over, the war was over there.

00:33:50.080 And on the advice in Bosnia, where I met him, on the advice of the mastermind of 9-11, Khalil Sheikh Mohammed, when he came to visit us in Bosnia, his advice was go to Afghanistan, get training, you know, prepare for the next phase of the war, the camps are reopening.

00:34:08.480 So I followed his advice after a brief detour to the Caucasus, and I ended up in Afghanistan in 1996.

00:34:16.700 So two months after my arrival, or three months, I would think, Osama bin Laden returned from Sudan, where he was in exile there, to Afghanistan.

00:34:27.480 And, you know, where we were training, in our training camp, his location was only 45 minutes' drive away.

00:34:35.380 So we heard that he was asking around if there are any people from the Arabian Peninsula.

00:34:43.300 He never wanted to say Saudi Arabia, you know, because he always believed that the House of Saud was illegitimate.

00:34:49.100 So he was saying the Arabian Peninsula.

00:34:52.020 So, you know, 14 of us decided to go and see him.

00:34:56.420 And when we went to see him, he was a guest at a compound that belonged to one of the warlords of Afghanistan.

00:35:05.220 His name was Yunus Palos.

00:35:07.800 And I remember when we entered the compound, we saw so many people who were Egyptians and some people from Sudan, Libya, Algeria, as well as himself, originally from Saudi Arabia.

00:35:20.420 But what we saw wasn't impressive.

00:35:23.980 You know, they looked like refugees.

00:35:26.080 Wasn't or it was?

00:35:27.100 It wasn't impressive?

00:35:28.120 Wasn't at all.

00:35:29.260 Okay.

00:35:29.680 You know, you see, the problem is many people, when they ask me the question, how was it, you know, their first time, you know, seeing Osama bin Laden?

00:35:37.320 And people expect me to say, oh, wow, it was so impressive.

00:35:40.000 No, it wasn't.

00:35:40.500 And the reason is because everyone in the world, everyone in the world, their impression of Osama bin Laden is that neat white turban with the, you know, white, clean, well-ironed robes, you know, looking so, you know, clean and tidy.

00:35:59.740 And, you know, that wasn't how I saw Osama bin Laden the first time.

00:36:04.460 He wore very creased robes and an Arabic headscarf over his head that was not at all seeing an iron for weeks, actually. 0.98

00:36:12.040 And he looked really disheveled and as if, basically, he was just lucky to escape with his life.

00:36:18.040 So, you know, the first impression wasn't the best impression, to be honest.

00:36:21.960 But, nonetheless, you know, when we sat in front of him, all 14 of us, and, of course, he had his lieutenants around him, including Abu Hafs al-Masri, who was his deputy.

00:36:34.820 We sat in front of him to understand why he returned back from Sudan.

00:36:39.960 Of course, he was betrayed by the Sudanese leadership and expelled.

00:36:44.920 But, nonetheless, he spoke about the divine mission that he is, you know, embarking on, the divine path laid in front of him.

00:36:57.880 Because he was believing that it was destiny, it was faith that brought him from Sudan all the way back to Afghanistan to enact God's plans in the old ancient prophecies of Islam regarding the armies of the black banners, you know, and the victorious vanguard sweeping from Afghanistan all the way to Jerusalem, all the way to the Arabian Peninsula, you know, paving the way for, you know, the fictional Imam Mahdi.

00:37:27.560 You know, which is a messiah figure in Islamic imagination, in order, you know, to fill the world with justice after it was filled with injustice.

00:37:38.080 Now, he saw, by the way, Osama bin Laden was great at reading minds. 0.98

00:37:44.300 He would basically look at your face and will see, you know, whether you are a believer, a skeptical, you know, whether you, you know, are really going along with the flow or are you not like exactly like, I mean, understanding what he's saying.

00:37:59.520 So he looked at our faces and he could tell that some of us were really skeptical, you know, really, are we the, you know, fulfillment of the prophecies.

00:38:10.340 So he said, you might see us right now as a bunch of refugees, you know, people basically who just arrived, you know, escaping and lucky to be escaped with our lives.

00:38:22.820 You know, it was a miracle, actually, that we made it without being caught, you know, here in Afghanistan.

00:38:27.500 But he said, remember that when the Prophet Muhammad, he escaped Medina, sorry, he escaped Mecca on the night of his migrations and flight to Medina.

00:38:41.220 While he was escaping, the Arab tribes were hunting him and the Arab knights were, you know, hunting him because basically they wanted to win the bounty on his head.

00:38:51.460 And one of the Arab knights, when he finally approached him, his horse fell, broke his legs, and he was tumbling on the ground.

00:39:00.000 So he thought that Muhammad used one of his magic tricks.

00:39:03.840 So he said, you know, you know, to the Prophet, I can't let you just go to Medina.

00:39:09.460 I have to, you know, bring you back.

00:39:10.960 And so the Prophet said, well, if you let us go, then I promise you something. 0.79

00:39:16.240 I promise you that you will be wearing the crown and the bracelets of the Persian emperor.

00:39:24.700 So, you know, that Arab knight said, what are you, out of your mind?

00:39:28.240 Like, you know, I mean, you are a fugitive in the desert, you know, of the Arabian desert, like, you know, basically.

00:39:33.140 And you are threatening the might of Persia. 0.93

00:39:36.060 You know, so he said, yes, I promise you that you will be wearing, you know, the crown and the bracelets of the Persian emperor.

00:39:42.620 He said, put it in writing.

00:39:43.600 So the Prophet instructed his companion to, you know, write it for him, give him the parchment sealed with his seal.

00:39:52.000 And that's it.

00:39:52.620 So 16 years later, you know, that Arab knight was actually wearing, you know, the crown and the bracelets of the Persian emperor after the conquest of Tassipan.

00:40:03.200 And I think in the year 636 AD or 637 AD.

00:40:08.720 So Osama bin Laden used that incident to say, never, ever underestimate what we can do here.

00:40:16.900 We can change history if we believe in ourselves the same way that the Prophet did. 0.96

00:40:21.440 Ironically, he did change history when his operatives slammed those airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the U.S.

00:40:31.300 So this is the mindset of Osama bin Laden, the combative, fanatical, believing mindset of Osama bin Laden just days after he arrived into Afghanistan from Sudan.

00:40:48.220 Next to me, his knee touching my knee was a man called Abu Ubaid al-Makki.

00:40:55.140 Abu Ubaid al-Makki, a young Saudi bespectacled with thick glasses, two years exactly, on the 4th of August of 1998.

00:41:04.060 Two years after that, he was so mesmerized, of course, by Osama bin Laden's talk. 0.76

00:41:10.240 He went on to drive the van to the American embassy in Nairobi.

00:41:17.440 So, and that, of course, exploded with, you know, a considerable number of casualties.

00:41:24.800 You know, 220 plus people were killed, including 12 Americans, and as well as 5,000 people wounded.

00:41:32.160 150 of them were blinded for life.

00:41:34.140 So this is the effect of fanatical, eschatological, prophetic words that Osama bin Laden, you know, basically delivered into our minds, you know, basically.

00:41:47.940 And they had the effect of toxins, you know, they were toxic.

00:41:52.340 That's the guy that was sitting right next to you that drove the van into the American embassy in Nairobi.

00:41:57.820 Exactly.

00:41:58.160 He's sitting right next to you.

00:41:59.380 Let me ask you a question.

00:42:00.580 From your, you know, research on him and knowing him, now, over the years, you've had access to a lot of different information yourself, and you've done your own research.

00:42:14.400 You've been around it.

00:42:16.100 What things did Osama bin Laden admire?

00:42:20.320 Was he also a guy who admired Saeed?

00:42:22.300 Because I just looked up an article while you were speaking, how Khomeini read the book that Saeed wrote three years after he was assassinated.

00:42:32.120 And in 1984, even in Iran, he sent some postcards showing the frowning face of Saeed behind prison bars before his execution.

00:42:41.520 He issued a postcard.

00:42:43.080 Khomeini did in 1984.

00:42:44.880 So that was his inspiration, right?

00:42:46.660 Like, who was bin Laden's inspiration, a guy that he looked up to outside of Prophet Muhammad and the Quran?

00:42:53.140 Who else was it?

00:42:54.480 Well, of course, it was Saeed Qutb.

00:42:56.380 No question about it.

00:42:57.640 For him, Saeed Qutb was the inspiration because he is the first to call for an Islamic revolution by the masses.

00:43:07.560 It never happened before in Islamic history.

00:43:10.040 Throughout Islamic history, you know, and just to let you know, for example, Muhammad was, in fact, the last cleric, you know, if we can, you know, use this word to describe him, to be the ruler of a society because his successors after that were never from the clergy or the class of the clergy.

00:43:31.680 You know, Abu Bakr was a merchant, you know, the first caliph.

00:43:34.380 Umar was a merchant, Othman was a super merchant, actually, and Ali was a judge and a warrior.

00:43:41.320 And if you look at, you know, all those who followed in the dynastic, you know, empires like the Umayyads and the Abbasids and the Ottomans, they were all dynastic rulers, you know, without any, you know, clerical or let's say basically religious, you know, upbringing themselves.

00:43:59.140 You know, so therefore, you know, the idea that Islam, you know, or Islamic societies should be ruled by those who basically are clerics or members of the clergy is an anisma to the Islamic spirit itself. 0.60

00:44:14.140 Um, and this is why, you know, the, um, you know, the Sayyid Qutb is the first to break away from that, you know, to break away from the idea that, uh, the Islamic or the Muslim masses should obey their secular rulers, 0.58

00:44:31.140 that the Muslim masses, that the Muslim masses have no right to deploy violence against the state, that only the state has the right to deploy violence and the protection of the state from enemies within the society and from outside. 0.91

00:44:46.120 And so he broke away completely like, you know, I mean, he, you know, he thrown out all of these, uh, you know, conventions, uh, you know, outside of the window altogether, and decided to come up with an ideology that is similar to communism.

00:45:02.160 You know, in other words, basically he appropriated Islam in a communistic fashion because he was actually a communist before to revolutionize it in a way that enables the masses, the individuals to carry out arms against the state in order to replace it and to bring about, uh, Islamic sovereignty. 0.56

00:45:24.560 You see, you see, if you look at, um, you know, uh, Shia Islam, jihad is almost absent there because jihad is only the prerogative of the imam. 0.67

00:45:34.300 And since the imam is absent, therefore the, um, you know, the jihad is absent for Sunni Islam, there are two kinds of jihad, you know, the defensive jihad, you know, if your society is overwhelmed by enemy, you know, take up arms and defend yourself, self-defense, that's understood.

00:45:53.560 However, the offensive jihad, the, uh, conquest jihad, which unfortunately many Muslims feel ashamed of and try to brush it under the carpet, you know, and say, oh, it doesn't exist.

00:46:05.780 It exists.

00:46:06.660 I'm sorry to say that, you know, but thousands, you know, of books basically, like, you know, explain the concept and it exists there.

00:46:13.040 I mean, and there is nothing to be ashamed about conquest.

00:46:16.360 I mean, every empire did it, you know, throughout history from the Romans, you know, basically to the Byzantines, to the Chinese, to the Indian empires and Incas and Aztec and, you know, British and French empire, everyone did conquest.

00:46:29.080 That's fine.

00:46:29.500 But, you know, Islam as a religion actually did, uh, Sunni Islam did, in fact, put together, you know, a theology of, uh, conquest jihad.

00:46:40.880 And, however, that conquest jihad is only the prerogative of the head of the state.

00:46:47.540 Only a state can sanction that.

00:46:49.640 Now, Sayyid Qutb came, after all these years, after 1,350 years of solid theology, to come and say, no, no, no, no, no, no, we have a third kind of jihad, a school jihad of Tamkin, or the jihad of sovereignty.

00:47:06.800 The sovereignty jihad, to restore Islam to sovereignty, to the position where it belongs. 1.00

00:47:11.940 So, I mean, you know, just like with suicide bombings, just like with many other aspects of modern jihadism, there is a clear departure from the old agreed-upon Islamic principles, you know, you know, and, uh, you know, this is why, like, you know, when people say that modern-day jihadists, like, you know, basically are really, you know, having twisted many of the interpretations of Islam, it is true, to some extent, actually. 1.00

00:47:41.240 Because they did actually invent quite new forms of theology, just to justify the revolutionary ideas that they are, you know, basically, um, supporting and propagating.

00:47:54.740 Would you, would you consider yourself a Muslim today?

00:47:57.800 Ah, yes.

00:47:59.020 Um, at the end of the day, thank God, like, you know, Islam has, you know, more than 70 different schools of thought.

00:48:04.980 Um, I would consider myself a hybrid between, uh, a Sufi and Salafi, although, like, you know, some people would say, what?

00:48:12.180 But, you know, I view Islam basically as a spiritual, uh, anchor, um, a something basic, yeah.

00:48:20.620 Sorry?

00:48:20.840 Who's Prophet Muhammad to you?

00:48:22.180 Who's Prophet Muhammad to you?

00:48:23.960 A teacher.

00:48:25.800 A teacher.

00:48:26.860 Who's, who's Jesus to you?

00:48:29.060 Um, a divine prophet.

00:48:30.240 Got it.

00:48:33.780 Uh, who's Salman Rushdie to you and what he wrote about in his satanic verses?

00:48:38.820 Ah, um, I would say a very mediocre writer. 0.64

00:48:42.520 A very mediocre writer. 0.60

00:48:44.680 Yeah.

00:48:45.300 Have you read the book?

00:48:45.980 Yeah, I read it.

00:48:47.440 What'd you think about it?

00:48:48.460 Um, basically, like, you know, I mean, um, the writing wasn't great, um, you know, basically,

00:48:54.020 but he based his, uh, writing on, you know, basically a, uh, a story that was, uh, happened during the time of the Prophet.

00:49:02.720 Then he took it and took extreme liberty with it in order, basically, to embellish it with imagery and with intrigue and with, um, you know, um, how can I say, like, you know, representation of Arab society at that time.

00:49:17.360 Um, you know, uh, but, you know, I didn't, you know, while I didn't find it, um, you know, basically like a great book, you know, basically, um, that's why I always used to say that, uh, the biggest, uh, you know, supporter of Rushdie was always Imam Khomeini because his fatwa actually sold the book for him.

00:49:35.840 Yeah, made him a bestseller.

00:49:37.700 Khomeini made Salman a multimillionaire, but, uh, go back to it.

00:49:42.280 So, you know, you've, have you seen Bill Maher when he goes and debates Muslim and he goes back and forth and he says, you know, 75% of Muslims are good, but 25% of our extremists.

00:49:51.940 And I don't know if you've seen that before when they go back and forth on that debate.

00:49:55.760 Are you, are you insinuating or suggesting that the fact that the extremists are a by-product of post-Sayed and what he wrote pre that it was a very peaceful religion.

00:50:08.280 Is that kind of what you're saying, that things change dramatically after Sayed?

00:50:12.800 Oh, no, no, no, definitely not.

00:50:14.880 Um, first of all, Islam is not a peaceful religion. 1.00

00:50:17.180 You know, let's put this to bed.

00:50:18.660 Um, you know, uh, Islam is not a religion of peace. 1.00

00:50:22.160 Uh, it never was.

00:50:24.020 Uh, I just said to you before that there is actually like, you know, a jihad conquest, you know, in Islam, basically, and the justification for conquest, um, within Islam itself. 0.51

00:50:32.720 Um, but Islam is not a religion of war either, uh, basically, you know, it is a very, uh, what I would call a mercantile imperial religion. 0.54

00:50:42.200 You know, so basically it is, you know, it basically views the conquest of new lands as an opportunity for taxation and, uh, you know, commerce.

00:50:51.340 So for them, they were almost copying the Roman empire, you know, basically expansion, we need to expand because we need more citizens.

00:50:59.260 So they pay more tax.

00:51:00.520 We need to expand because basically this is, uh, this is our commercial destiny.

00:51:04.740 Don't forget Islam was founded by a merchant, you know, a prophet Muhammad.

00:51:07.840 In fact, he started his life as a merchant.

00:51:09.940 Um, and therefore, and Islam basically, by the way is one of the most capitalistic, you know, free market religions. 0.96

00:51:15.840 You could ever find, you know, the prohibition of taxation for, you know, the, you know, the opening of free trade, you know, that putting, uh, tariffs and, uh, trade barriers is anti-Islamic, you know? 0.57

00:51:27.120 So basically it is one of those, you know, religions that actually, one of the mottos of, um, uh, one of Muhammad's disciples, when he arrived to Medina, you know, poor and destitute, when he was offered charity, he said, no, no, no, no.

00:51:40.380 Just show me where the market is.

00:51:42.240 So this show me where the market is became a, you know, uh, synonymous with Islam as a religion of trade, but of course, a trade support with imperial force.

00:51:54.600 Um, so this is how I could describe Islam in all honesty.

00:51:58.440 Uh, you're not, you're not just somebody that's saying that you, uh, I don't know how old you were when you could do this.

00:52:03.860 You memorize every word in the Quran, right?

00:52:06.400 I was 12 by the time I, uh, finished, uh, the process.

00:52:09.640 I started at the age of nine, 33 months later, basically I finished memorizing the Quran.

00:52:14.800 Is that pretty common for, uh, kids at that age to memorize the Quran?

00:52:18.640 I don't think that's common, right?

00:52:20.100 I think one out of 20, uh, at least in my town, like, you know, basically it was almost one out of 20 who would do it.

00:52:26.240 That's still a big number.

00:52:27.340 I mean, in America, I don't know if one out of a thousand kids memorize every word in the U.S. Bible, you know?

00:52:32.180 I mean, I don't know how many people do.

00:52:34.360 Yeah, but I think the Quran is a little bit smaller than the Bible. 0.82

00:52:37.620 If we put together the Old and the New Testament, the Quran has about 6,000, um, you know, uh, 236 verses, um, roughly about 140,000 words.

00:52:48.580 So basically it is not that easy to, uh, not that difficult to memorize, but not that easy either.

00:52:53.340 Like, you know, basically.

00:52:54.320 Yeah.

00:52:54.460 So it's still a challenging thing to do, but let me, let me go, so let's go back to Osama bin Laden. 0.87

00:53:00.880 So you hear him speak, you, the guy next to you goes and drives the van into the embassy in Nairobi, you know, lives, 150 people are permanently blind.

00:53:10.460 We see this all over the news.

00:53:11.500 I think it was 98.

00:53:12.600 I don't know the exact year when that happened, late nineties.

00:53:14.840 And, uh, at this point you're hearing this, what's next move for you?

00:53:21.200 Because you stayed there only for, uh, what was it?

00:53:23.440 Two years, you know, the December of 98, right?

00:53:25.860 December 98 is when you left.

00:53:27.320 So what was the experience like when you were in there?

00:53:30.000 Did you ever get close to him to kind of see how he thinks, Osama?

00:53:33.240 And then what caused you to want to leave?

00:53:34.740 Um, I remember when I gave my allegiance to him and joining Al-Qaeda, um, I remember he looked at me and he said that he wants me, uh, to go and, uh, to, uh, become part of Al-Qaeda's explosives, chemicals, uh, explosives, chemical and biological weapon program.

00:53:55.580 Why?

00:53:56.340 Because he said, you don't look like the materials of, you know, commandos.

00:53:59.940 You're not a commander material.

00:54:01.120 I'm not going to be, you know, someone who would be carrying heavy weapons and storming.

00:54:05.820 What's that to him?

00:54:06.940 What, what, who is the right material of a commander to him?

00:54:10.620 Uh, well, five foot nine, you know, and above, I'm five foot seven.

00:54:14.860 Um, also basically someone who is not actually wearing glasses all the time.

00:54:18.400 Someone basically with a better eyesight.

00:54:20.500 Um, you know, but nonetheless, basically, you know, he said, I see that, you know, you have an aptitude for math and science and, uh, you know, you will be the perfect fit for that.

00:54:29.620 Like, you know, I mean, so, um, so I ended up being sent by him, uh, to a remote camp in Afghanistan, um, you know, which, uh, was run by an Egyptian, uh, former officer of the, uh, bomb squad in the Egyptian army.

00:54:45.040 Um, and he was already a veteran of the Afghan jihad.

00:54:48.220 He's been there since 1986.

00:54:49.720 Um, he, uh, was the master bomb maker in all of Afghanistan and he was a master in his art. 1.00

00:54:57.820 So the idea was, is to go into that remote camp in the mountains and study with him.

00:55:03.240 So that was, uh, for me, an eyeopening experience.

00:55:06.820 I mean, basically first of all, um, only very few people, you know, make it into that camp.

00:55:12.140 And the reason is because when you go there, there are only four students each, uh, course.

00:55:18.460 So the course could run for seven months, but there are only four people who would be studying.

00:55:23.440 That's it.

00:55:23.820 So the camp is really small.

00:55:25.280 And the reason for the small number is to limit the possibility of a mistake.

00:55:30.120 The bigger, the number of students, the easier it is to have a mistake.

00:55:34.040 And the problem is with making bombs, as anyone will know, that your low, your first mistake

00:55:40.080 is your last mistake.

00:55:41.720 That's it.

00:55:42.640 No more mistakes to be made.

00:55:44.960 You don't get second chances.

00:55:46.200 Exactly.

00:55:47.300 So, you know, so there I've learned, you know, uh, the, the basics of explosive makings and

00:55:54.240 then into, you know, the bomb making and then into, uh, chemical weapons, poisons, and then

00:55:59.360 into biological weapons, you know, took about seven, eight months, but it was,

00:56:03.860 it was extremely eyeopening, you know, for me.

00:56:06.200 And I remember the, uh, three people who were studying with me.

00:56:11.320 I had the Moroccan, a Tunisian, and a Saudi.

00:56:14.020 Uh, the Saudi was later, uh, years, uh, an assistant of, uh, Zerqawi and was captured

00:56:20.020 by the Americans.

00:56:21.020 His name was Hassan Gul.

00:56:22.920 Uh, the Moroccan was, um, you know, later captured in Morocco in 2003, uh, attempting to

00:56:28.920 blow up, uh, synagogues there, uh, in, um, you know, in Morocco. 0.97

00:56:33.200 And then, uh, the Tunisian who was a pure, pure, pure psychopath, um, this Tunisian guy, 1.00

00:56:41.000 uh, ended up. 0.73

00:56:42.020 What was his name?

00:56:42.720 What was a Tunisian's name?

00:56:43.960 Uh, his name was Abu Nassim.

00:56:46.100 That's the alias, but his real name was, uh, he ended up actually masterminding the, um,

00:56:53.780 terrorist attacks, uh, on behalf of ISIS in Tunisia, uh, in recent years, uh, the attack

00:57:00.260 in the Bordeaux museum and later, uh, in the, uh, Sousa, uh, beach, which killed 31 British

00:57:07.280 tourists.

00:57:08.380 Um, so he was the mastermind of these attacks.

00:57:11.040 Now, um, I would say that, you know, in, you know, of, out of all the people, uh, who

00:57:18.560 were with me, uh, in that camp, he was the closest to me.

00:57:21.700 I don't know.

00:57:22.420 Was I like, you know, attracting a psychopath or, um, but, and he was the best cook.

00:57:29.460 He was, you know, he lived in Italy.

00:57:31.100 So his pasta cooking skills were legendary, um, you know, and, uh, you know, so we used

00:57:37.560 to have pasta, yes, in Afghanistan, in the middle of the mountains, we used to have pasta,

00:57:41.820 you know, for, um, uh, dinners there.

00:57:44.180 And while we are busy learning, you know, how to make, uh, bombs and explosives.

00:57:49.480 Now, then of course came August of, uh, 1998, you know, that was a seminal event in my life

00:57:59.040 because that is when that young man who was my friend from the camp who came with me to

00:58:05.440 see Osama Bin Laden and to listen to him, uh, two years earlier, he, uh, of course, went 0.90

00:58:12.240 on to blow up the American embassy in Nairobi and another guy then blew up the American embassy

00:58:16.940 in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, um, and simultaneously, of course, when the news came to the camps,

00:58:24.180 I mean, you know, people were saying rejoice, you know, the largest CIA station in East

00:58:29.000 Africa were bombed to the ground and I was thinking, okay, CIA station, that's amazing, 1.00

00:58:34.800 that's good.

00:58:35.900 Um, but then of course, like many other young Qaeda members, I have a radio. 0.98

00:58:41.160 So I have a radio and I was listening, you know, to one of the radio stations from the

00:58:45.700 Arab world, like, you know, basically we pick up in the mountains. 1.00

00:58:48.000 It was Kuwait radio.

00:58:50.380 Um, and also we used to pick up the BBC Arabic.

00:58:52.940 So they said that it was the American embassies in Nairobi in Kenya and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.

00:58:59.000 So I thought, uh, that's, you know, okay, um, one minute here, why are we bombing embassies?

00:59:07.600 Uh, that's one.

00:59:08.720 And then when the news of the identities of those who were killed started to come, first,

00:59:15.720 um, we were told that 12 Americans were killed in addition to about 220 innocent Kenyan Somalis

00:59:22.000 Kenyan Somalis and other Africans who were there, you know, basically to apply for visas,

00:59:27.040 to visit their friends and family or to study or to do business in the U S so basically,

00:59:32.360 uh, uh, and many others who were there at the wrong place at the wrong time.

00:59:36.960 I just did not feel right because, you know, Al Qaeda is preparing me to be the future bomb maker. 0.99

00:59:44.320 However, I will be one of those who will be building one of these giant devices that will

00:59:49.420 go into a van that will do exactly this, you know, it dawned on me more than any of the

00:59:55.100 others in the camps because they are just foot soldiers.

00:59:59.520 However, I'm the bomb maker of the future. 1.00

01:00:02.300 I'm the one who is going to build this and kill these people. 0.99

01:00:05.480 And I will be meeting God on the day of judgment with their blood on my hand, you know, basically, 0.99

01:00:11.160 and they will be asking him, you know, ask this, you know, dude here, why did he kill us?

01:00:16.040 So why did he build the device that actually ended our lives and ended the, you know, our dreams?

01:00:22.040 You know, so for me, like, I mean, that epiphany, that moment was so, you know, uh, strong and powerful,

01:00:30.280 powerful enough to question my whole existence within that framework, within Al Qaeda. 0.65

01:00:37.800 And I remember I went, uh, to the, uh, de facto mufti of Al Qaeda at that time, the religious,

01:00:44.200 you know, advisor, he's Egyptian, his name is Abu Abdullah al-Muhajir, and he himself was involved

01:00:50.120 in the attack on another embassy three years earlier, the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad,

01:00:54.760 when it was raised to the ground by a suicide bomber. He had a hand, uh, in that operation too.

01:01:00.840 So I went to ask him, I said, look, I'm not doubting. I just want my heart to be at peace here.

01:01:06.440 You know, remember, you know, uh, Sheikh Abu Abdullah, his name is Abu Abdullah al-Muhajir. I said,

01:01:11.160 one day I will be building a device like this. So could you please help me understand how I can justify it?

01:01:18.200 So he said, look, you know, the embassy was actually a front for the CIA. Okay. That I got. That's fine.

01:01:27.480 What else? What about the people basically who were there? He said, ah, look, we have a fatwa in our

01:01:33.800 Islamic theology that when the enemy is hiding within civilian populated areas, we have the right

01:01:41.800 to attack. And then those civilians who died, uh, the result of our action, then God will make it up

01:01:49.960 to them. In other words, you know, the famous saying of kill them and God will sort them out. 0.99

01:01:57.480 Um, you know, I said, okay, fine, you know, where, where do you find this fatwa? He told me where to 0.99

01:02:03.640 find it, you know, which is in, uh, the comprehensive works of Ebintamia, which is a scholar living 700

01:02:10.280 years ago. And I thought, goodness, that's 37 volumes. God help me. Like, you know, where do I

01:02:15.000 find it? But anyway, I asked him, I said, isn't it, you know, awful that 220 innocent people, you know,

01:02:24.120 basically, you know, died because, so to get a 12 Americans. So he said to me, ah, come on,

01:02:30.760 they were just bunch of Africans who cares. Um, I looked at him and I said, should you tell that to the 1.00

01:02:39.400 Somalis in our camp here? You know, they wouldn't take it nicely. He said, oh, no, no. And I second

01:02:44.840 thought, just don't tell them. Uh, yeah. Casual racism was, what casual actually? It was outrageous.

01:02:53.560 Racism also exists within Al-Ta'idah. Can you believe it? Even within Al-Ta'idah, we were racist

01:02:57.480 against each other. The Saudis against the Egyptians, the Algerians against the Egyptians, the Saudis, 0.82

01:03:02.360 you know, and the Tunisians hated every, every single one of them. And the Yemenis were always 1.00

01:03:06.520 described as ignorant mountain monkeys. Yes. You know, it was always like this. There, you know, 1.00

01:03:12.920 Islamic solidarity, seriously. Anyway, so, so I went. How many other, how many other guys at that time

01:03:21.400 are feeling the same way you're feeling? Were there other people coming up to you? Were you the only

01:03:24.840 person that was, uh, second guessing everything? I was the only one from what I could tell.

01:03:29.400 I was the only one. I went to the library of Al-Qaeda in Kabul. Uh, they have a massive library there,

01:03:38.760 um, for their Islamic Sharia courses. And so I searched for that fatwa in that, uh, book. I found it,

01:03:45.320 um, and there are no resemblance whatsoever. It was talking about a very completely different,

01:03:51.800 you know, era. It took, it talks about the, uh, Mongol invasion of the Khawarizmed Persian Empire,

01:03:59.720 you know, and how the Mongols had a practice where, when they sack a, uh, a city in the Muslim

01:04:07.240 world at that time, they will take some civilians from that city. They will make them push the siege

01:04:12.120 towers, the Mongol siege towers, towards the walls of the next Muslim city they, they intend to sack. 0.99

01:04:18.920 And of course, the Muslim defenders have a dilemma here. Do we shoot arrows and spears at those four 1.00

01:04:26.600 civilians who are being, uh, coerced into pushing the siege tower towards our walls or not? So they

01:04:34.360 sent urgent requests for fatwas and the fatwas came back. Look, they are already dead, whether you

01:04:40.120 kill them by your own hands or by the Mongol hands when they are, once they are done with them. 1.00

01:04:44.840 So defend yourselves, kill them to prevent the siege towers from coming into your walls. 0.99

01:04:50.120 Now, can you see here any resemblance between that fatwa and how they actually applied it 0.56

01:04:59.800 in the case of the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam? I mean, I'm sorry, but I didn't

01:05:05.640 see the American embassy in Nairobi pushing siege towers towards Mecca or Medina.

01:05:09.560 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, at that point, you know, that's, that's kind of how,

01:05:14.200 you know, when, when, uh, certain pastors interpret the Bible scripture in their own way to manipulate

01:05:21.640 some audiences. And these are when, uh, they go away from the Bible and they, you want to create

01:05:26.920 their own church. And I'm the, you see this a lot of time with some people doing that to be able to win

01:05:31.400 people over, but go back to it. So that even takes place. You said that's, that's August 98.

01:05:39.160 I just, you know, the, the, you still are there for four more months during those four more months

01:05:45.720 that you're there. Are you being recruited by MI6? Are you gathering intel? Are you like,

01:05:51.880 I don't know how to leave this place. I'm afraid to leave. What if they kill me? Uh, maybe I still

01:05:57.400 want to stick around. What are you thinking for those four months before you left?

01:06:00.520 Uh, actually I was, I was waiting for my, uh, departure date. Um, so by September, you know,

01:06:08.760 roughly about like, and I mean, uh, four weeks after the incident, I made my mind after I read

01:06:14.680 the fatwa after, of course, the cruise missile attack against our camps, you know, by President

01:06:19.560 Clinton, I decided that I don't want to be part of this anymore. One day they will tell me to build a

01:06:27.160 device like this is inevitable. I don't want to be the author of death of many innocent people

01:06:34.280 who I will never meet. I will never know who they are. And I will always wondering at the back of my

01:06:38.520 mind, you know, that when my death date come, I will be facing them in the afterlife. No, thank you. I

01:06:46.200 don't want to be in that position. So I decided to leave. The problem is I already have a departure

01:06:52.840 date for a medical checkup in Qatar. It was an important medical checkup because a year earlier,

01:06:59.080 I had been struck by both malaria and type fight at the same time, and that caused some damage to the

01:07:05.640 liver. So the hospital in Qatar that treated me, because there wasn't enough, you know, advanced

01:07:11.960 medical facilities in Afghanistan or Pakistan, they told me you have to come back in a year time

01:07:17.800 exactly to make sure that there is no damage or no lasting damage. So I decided that I have to use

01:07:24.600 that. But the problem is that date is December 8. And between September, you know, and, you know,

01:07:32.760 December, you know, there are a few months, but I have to stay there. I have no other choice,

01:07:37.800 you know, to wait for the departure date, which is allocated for me. So therefore,

01:07:42.440 I waited, but I wasn't waiting, doing nothing. I ended up actually like, you know, subconsciously,

01:07:48.360 you know, gathering a lot of information, copying some of the floppy disks. Ah, floppy disks. Now,

01:07:55.080 for the millennials who are listening, floppy disks are ancient tools where we can store data and

01:08:01.560 information. And there were three and a half inches by three and a half inches, I think. And, you know,

01:08:07.480 I don't know how much we can store on them, two or three megabytes, I can't remember anyway.

01:08:11.400 Nothing. Yeah, nothing. So, so I gathered a few floppy disks, which contained the entire

01:08:18.760 Raqaida program on explosives, bomb making, chemical weapons, explosive, you know, biological 0.56

01:08:24.040 weapons, poisons. I gathered it all basically there. And I also basically applied myself to study on the

01:08:30.040 map, all the locations of the camps, of the places, of the, you know, houses of the leadership.

01:08:35.560 Why are you doing that? Why are you doing that at that time? Are you thinking vengeance?

01:08:38.600 Are you thinking I'm going to stop these guys? Are you thinking I'm going to go to somebody with

01:08:42.840 this information? Why are you gathering that intel? I think it was for me insurance policy.

01:08:48.280 I got you. Yeah. Because I wasn't leaving Afghanistan to become a spy. Let me, you know,

01:08:54.120 put it this way. I wasn't leaving to become a spy. I was leaving to go back to university and to study

01:09:00.440 history and then to become a history teacher. That was my dream, which was a naive dream.

01:09:05.320 Now, much to the delight and the relief of my would-be students, it never happened. So, you know,

01:09:13.480 I left to Qatar. I arrived there, you know, only to be actually detained by the Qatari intelligence.

01:09:18.680 They were waiting for me, Panina. And, you know, and they were aware of my arrival, thanks to a tip by

01:09:26.920 the French intelligence. How did they know? I have no idea. So, you know, once I was there, I was, you know,

01:09:33.880 of course, like, you know, basically interrogated. In the first 45 minutes, basically, they were

01:09:38.760 trying to be intimidating, you know, the Qatari intelligence officials, you know, they were trying

01:09:43.480 to be really intimidating and trying to scare me and whatever. And what they found from my side was

01:09:49.720 a very cooperative and, you know, friendly, you know, individual. So that's when they switched on the

01:09:57.800 lights, you know, because of course it was dark at my side and, you know, they, you know, they switched

01:10:02.680 on the lights and I can see their faces now. And they were telling me, what's going on here? Why

01:10:08.280 are you being so, you know, nice and friendly? And, you know, you know, so I said, well, you know,

01:10:15.800 maybe you caught me at the right time. Basically, actually, I came here because I was leaving.

01:10:20.280 And I explained to them the whole thing as I explained it to you now.

01:10:23.080 So they said, okay, one minute. So they left the room, you know, all five, six of them. And then,

01:10:29.320 you know, I think they were discussing something minutes later, they came back.

01:10:33.000 And they all came back to shake my hand and to hug me so tight and to say, well done.

01:10:38.920 You know, well done. We believe you. So now we have a lot of questions for you. Would you be willing

01:10:45.400 to answer? And they are coming from a Western intelligence service. Of course, you know, later I was

01:10:50.760 told it was the French regarding a specific individual, a specific plot, a specific, you know,

01:10:57.080 incident. So I was happy to supply them with all the information they needed. It was groundbreaking

01:11:02.440 as far as they understand. And they said to me by the end of the nine days, I was their guest.

01:11:08.760 Of course, the treatment was amazing. You know, basically, I ended up basically being caught meals

01:11:13.160 from the nearby five star hotel of the Sheraton, you know, to make it to make my stay comfortable.

01:11:20.840 But then they told me that we know that you want to go to a normal life, but we can't offer you this

01:11:27.160 in Qatar. Qatar at that time, it was 1998. It was in Doha. It was a city of 250,000 people.

01:11:34.920 You will be meeting many of your friends on daily basis. You will just run into them in the mosques

01:11:39.800 and the supermarkets and, you know, wherever you go. I mean, and so it's not safe for you here.

01:11:45.160 We suggest that you are better protected if you are to go under the protection of a larger country,

01:11:54.840 a more powerful agency that will, you know, make use of you, but at the same time protect you.

01:12:00.600 I said, okay. And who do you have in mind? They said, well, of course, the French are extending their, 0.98

01:12:08.280 you know, warm welcome because they already been hearing you via video link, you know, for the past

01:12:14.120 nine days. And also there are the British and the Americans. So I said, okay, and how long do I have 0.87

01:12:25.560 to make up my mind? You know, basically like in a day or two, no, 30 minutes. So 30 minutes to make

01:12:33.000 up my mind. And so I remember I, you know, sat down, thought to myself, you know, basically,

01:12:39.400 if the dear Lord got me out of Afghanistan, into here, into the lap of the intelligence services,

01:12:45.400 and I already trusted in his judgment, if this is his judgment, so be it. I decided, not the French, 1.00

01:12:54.760 I don't want to learn another language. And I'm not exactly very fond of them to begin with. 1.00

01:13:02.120 Then, you know, the Americans, you know, I just survived their cruise missile attack just a few

01:13:07.400 months ago, I can't just, you know, you know, be lovey-dovey with someone who just, you know,

01:13:11.960 basically press the button to kill me just a few months ago. However, the British, there is an affinity,

01:13:18.920 my grandfather fought for the British in Iraq in 1915. And in later life, I realized basically

01:13:25.320 that my father worked for the UK foreign office, possibly intelligence services in the 1960s and

01:13:30.920 70s. So that was like, you know, a revelation that I didn't expect. And then, of course, you know,

01:13:41.160 I decided, well, there is affinity with the British already. I've been to London before.

01:13:46.600 There is some familiarity there. So I chose, you know, basically to go and work with the

01:13:50.920 British intelligence services. So that night, boarded the plane, British Airways flight,

01:13:59.320 and I flew to London.

01:14:01.400 Once you got there, how soon did they find out that you're with MI6, if not while you're there

01:14:08.840 for years? And if they did find out, did anybody reach out to you? Were you ever worried? Was your

01:14:15.560 life ever threatened? Were you living a peaceful life? What happened next? Well, of course, MI6 was

01:14:23.080 amazing at concocting a cover story for my arrival. The Qatari hospital in Qatar decided that my

01:14:32.360 situation is life threatening, that they need to send me to a hospital in the UK. So they flew me there,

01:14:39.160 you know, under the pretense. And once I'm there, you know, a hospital room was ready for me. And I

01:14:44.440 invited some of my friends from Al-Qaeda who were based in London to come and see me. So they can

01:14:48.920 see for real, basically, that I was, you know, basically hospitalized and paid for by the Qatari

01:14:54.360 embassy. That all, you know, basically laid the fears. And then it was by the invitation of members

01:15:03.320 of Al-Qaeda in London that I stayed in London, you know, basically for the foreseeable future,

01:15:08.280 in order to help them with lots of things, including recruitment, fundraising, and other activities.

01:15:13.880 So suddenly, it's like the effort by MI6 paid off. But the idea was that I'm supposed to be in London

01:15:21.560 for two months for debriefings, you know, so the debriefing of MI6 about everything that I knew,

01:15:27.640 including the, you know, the maps and the floppy disks, basically, that I brought with me the data on

01:15:34.040 Al-Qaeda's activities and bomb making and explosives and chemical weapons and everything else.

01:15:38.200 That debriefing lasted seven months. You know, I didn't know I had so much knowledge in my head,

01:15:44.760 but it turns out to be, you know, the case, like, you know, I knew so much. So the idea is,

01:15:49.560 you know, I was told, I remember I arrived, it was the, you know, the, I think 16th or 17th of December.

01:15:55.880 When I arrived in London, it was just Christmas, you know, about to, you know, to come the week after.

01:16:04.040 The, you know, the MI5 and MI6 counter-terrorism officers who greeted me said,

01:16:09.560 you know, you know, Christmas, you know, came very early this year.

01:16:14.360 You know, we didn't know that, you know, Santa come dressed in a beard like yours.

01:16:21.720 So, you know, that was a wonderful thing to hear. Of course, you know, when I arrived there,

01:16:31.080 the British intelligence services, both MI5 and MI6, were just starting to recruit more and more

01:16:39.400 from their internal officers and other departments into the counter-terrorism.

01:16:44.760 Until Nairobi and Tanzania, you know, attacks, the MI6 was focusing on the former Soviet Union

01:16:52.280 republics, the proliferation of nuclear materials, you know, the gun running out of the Ukraine and

01:16:57.800 other places, counter-espinage, you know, all of that thing. MI5 was focusing on the IRA,

01:17:04.600 you know, the Irish terrorism and organized crime and the mafia coming out of Russia.

01:17:11.000 So there was, you know, that was their focus. So basically, suddenly, you know, the offices of

01:17:18.280 Islamic counter-terrorism within MI5 and MI6 need to swell their ranks. And I came at the same time,

01:17:25.400 you know, the same time frame. So for me, they were bringing more and more of their analysts to

01:17:31.400 every meeting in order to learn, to study, to understand, you know, and so to, you know,

01:17:36.520 so basically, it was the timing of my arrival, I think, basically, that, you know, at later years,

01:17:41.880 I was told that I did make a difference. You know, they always used to tell me that

01:17:47.720 the timing of your arrival made a lot of difference. It was just the right time when we are about, you

01:17:53.640 know, to recruit more and more people from within the ranks, you know, they needed a crash course

01:17:58.440 immediately, basically, on what's happening. You were the right, you know, I won't say guinea pig, 0.83

01:18:03.480 you know, but, you know, you were the right person to come at the right time in order to explain it all.

01:18:10.280 And at the time, I was only 20.

01:18:13.000 How long did you stay with MI6?

01:18:15.560 Until I was 28, eight years.

01:18:17.960 Eight years you were with them. So now you're still in UK today?

01:18:22.280 Yes.

01:18:23.160 No death threats?

01:18:25.960 I mean, they tried twice, you know, I already had the fatwa on my head in 2008.

01:18:32.200 And, you know, there were, you know, two attempts in my life, once in 2009,

01:18:39.240 in London, and another, which was a serious one, actually, it was in 2016, in Bahrain.

01:18:44.920 That was supposed to coincide with the 15th anniversary of 11. So, yeah, I mean, basically,

01:18:52.920 like, you know, it's not plain sailing. But at the same time, you know, I'm not exactly like,

01:18:58.280 you know, I mean, afraid. At the end of the day, if I was willing to sacrifice my life for the wrong,

01:19:04.280 you know, cause, it would be extremely hypocritical of me, you know, if I'm to be a coward, you know,

01:19:10.840 working for the rightful. 0.91

01:19:12.440 What a mindset to have. What a mindset to have, to know that you go through that, where

01:19:18.840 it becomes normal to be a martyr, to give your life to something. But at that time, you don't

01:19:24.520 believe in it. But still, it influences you so much that one day you will accept the fact that you

01:19:28.920 will give your life to something of a positive and good. Makes it a little bit more, like it almost

01:19:35.960 desensitizes you to it. Like, ah, it's not a big deal. If I'm giving it up for the right reasons,

01:19:40.600 I'll do it. I don't know if a lot of people are going to go through that desensitization,

01:19:44.280 if that's even a word to go through it. So, so let me, let me change the direction

01:19:48.520 of the conversation here. We'll wrap up. This has been great.

01:19:52.360 Is from the outside looking in, you're in UK. You know, one question is just for me personally,

01:19:58.840 you know, you mentioned something about Khomeini and he was doing the tapes when he was in France

01:20:03.720 and he was sending it in and putting the taxis and everybody would listen to it. And

01:20:07.160 he caused a revolution, the Shah fell, et cetera, et cetera. Are you aware of who were the political

01:20:12.680 prisoners that he had? The 3000 political prisoners that he had when Jimmy Carter was forcing him

01:20:19.720 because he was, he was, he was campaigning on human rights and he wanted the Shah to let go of

01:20:23.320 the political prisoners that he had in Iran. Some of them were today, which I don't know if you're

01:20:28.120 familiar with today is the communist at that time, but was, was it, were any of the people that he had

01:20:34.760 there individuals that later on ended up causing 9-11 that the political prisoners in Iran, or you're

01:20:41.880 not aware of it? Uh, between you and me, I'm not aware of it. Uh, the only, yeah, the only person I'm

01:20:47.640 aware basically that, you know, more or less had, uh, provided help and logistics, like, you know, for Al-Qaeda in, uh,

01:20:56.680 Afghanistan and, uh, enabling some of the drug trade to go through Sistan and Balochistan, you know, from the

01:21:03.080 Afghan border was, uh, the leader of the Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani.

01:21:07.480 Which they later took, took out, took out Qasem Soleimani under Trump. So you, you, you, you know,

01:21:15.400 from the outside looking into us, what do you see happening in us? I mean, you've been around the

01:21:20.920 block for a while, you know, does us in where you are, you UK, when you're watching BBC, I know you

01:21:27.400 watch CNN as well, cause you mentioned CNN. What is your interpretation of where America is at right now?

01:21:32.920 Well, what is, what worries me? And you remember, I, uh, talked about the, uh, civil wars in Yugoslavia.

01:21:41.640 Clearly. That's why I'm asking the question. I remember when you said that. Yeah.

01:21:44.360 I always worry, uh, when people of different political and religious, uh, and ideological

01:21:50.840 persuasions start to view the other side as the enemy so much, you know, there is, um, a word,

01:21:58.200 you know, or a phrase attributed to the prophet Muhammad, which says that love your friends

01:22:04.680 moderately for they may become your enemies one day and detest your enemies moderately for they may

01:22:13.080 become your friends one day. Moderation is the key to the longevity of nations. And you know,

01:22:22.920 no matter who said this, that's the prophet Muhammad, you know, moderation is, you know,

01:22:31.240 the key to the longevity of nations. We can't have a situation where the left hate the right so much,

01:22:37.720 they will call them Nazis. And you know, the right hate the left so much that they will see them as

01:22:44.200 subversive communist, you know, uh, revolutionaries. I mean, there has to be that middle ground somewhere

01:22:50.680 where we all can meet and agree on something while at the same time, you know, when we moderate our

01:22:57.640 positions on the left and on the right, then we can guarantee the longevity and the coexistence

01:23:03.880 between all of these factions for the benefit of the greater good. What is the greater good,

01:23:08.520 in my opinion, the nation state? I always, you know, get asked the question, who are you loyal to?

01:23:16.760 You know, Islam, the UK, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain. I say, no, I am loyal to the nation state,

01:23:24.360 to the nation state, wherever that nation state may be, as long as they adhere to the basic principles

01:23:29.880 of the nation state, with the institutions of the nation state, judicial, you know, um, and otherwise,

01:23:37.160 you know, in order to maintain, you know, prosperity, uh, stability, security, law and order, you know, for everyone.

01:23:47.640 You know, the civil war that we have in Islam right now is actually between factions

01:23:54.600 who want to destroy the modern nation state and the modern nation state. We have the Sunni political 0.99

01:24:01.320 Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood. They want to bring down the nation state. You know, we have the, uh, militant 1.00

01:24:07.560 Sunni Islam, Al-Qaida, ISIS, you know, Taliban, whatever. They want to bring down the nation state. 1.00

01:24:13.080 We have the political and militant Shia Islam. They want to bring down the nation state, all for the 1.00

01:24:20.760 sake of a borderless, you know, superstructure of Islamic empire they want to revive based on 1.00

01:24:27.880 fictional ideas of a Mahdi, a Messiah, and whatever, basically, which doesn't exist. It's a fabrication from

01:24:34.040 Islamic history. The reality is there is no escaping the fact that the only guarantor of safety,

01:24:40.840 security, stability, law and order is that nation state. And you can't have a nation state if you

01:24:47.880 always have people who on the right always detest the government and its institutions and its, you know,

01:24:55.160 basically principle, uh, in a duty in protecting its citizens or on the left who basically say no borders,

01:25:02.360 no nations. That's it. Just, you know, basically defend the police. No more, you know, basically,

01:25:07.480 uh, nation state institutions. We have this problem. We need to bring both fringes down 0.95

01:25:14.680 a notch or two in order basically to ensure the survival of the nation state because many of those

01:25:23.400 who oppose the nation state either on the right or the left did not see what I saw when I spent six

01:25:29.800 years of my life in four different war zones where I saw what the collapse of the nation state means.

01:25:37.160 No ATM outside to get your cash, you know, no safety, no security, no fire brigade, no police force,

01:25:44.200 you know, only warlords who would rape your women and children, only, you know, people who would steal

01:25:48.840 your food, you know, under, and you don't think about survival until the next five years when you graduate.

01:25:53.560 No, you think about survival for the next five days, or sometime even five hours or five minutes.

01:25:58.760 That is why young millennials, you know, in the states need to take a breath and read some history 0.73

01:26:06.600 books about what a collapse of the nation state really means. What a powerful last 45 seconds,

01:26:14.600 what you just said. I wish we had more time together. I got to tell you, I've enjoyed this.

01:26:19.000 I was told about this interview two hours before you and I sat down together. You know the story

01:26:25.720 already. I told you off the record what took place, but I am so glad we did this interview today. I am

01:26:31.480 so glad we did this interview today. I really enjoyed talking to you and I hope the right people that

01:26:35.080 watch this, it'll also get them to question certain mindsets they have and certain ways that we can all

01:26:43.320 improve to become a little bit more civil than divided as we are right now in the US. Anyways,

01:26:48.760 having said that, we're going to put the links below to both of your books. Once again,

01:26:51.960 thank you so much for making the time to be the guest on Vahy Taiman.

01:26:54.440 Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Pleasure.

01:26:57.160 Al Qaeda to MI6. What a story. Did you notice every time I'd ask questions,

01:27:00.440 you can go deeper and deeper and deeper in some of the answers he made.

01:27:03.480 Curious to know your takeaway. Comment below if you enjoyed it,

01:27:05.800 press a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel. I got two other interviews for you to consider.

01:27:09.560 One of them is with Hamoudi Jasim, who was part of the Iraqi army. I think he was the youngest

01:27:16.440 sergeant major that they had and then he became a spy. He turned on them. If you're not sitting,

01:27:20.200 click over here. And the other one is a story of Latif Yahya, who was Saddam Hussein's son's

01:27:26.760 double. And he had a chance to be around him. And the stories he tells is mind-boggling. If you

01:27:31.240 want to be entertained, click over here. With that being said, have a good one, everybody. Take care. Bye-bye.

Valuetainment - August 05, 2021

Life As A Spy from Al-Qaeda to MI6

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