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The making of a terrorist
Revealing his identity could put him at risk, so he asked to be called Ahmed, instead of his real name. His resume includes a stint in an al Qaeda training camp. And what kind of things did he learn there? "I learned there is many ways to kill someone," he says. "You can kill someone with a pen, you can kill someone with a credit card," he told CBS News Correspondent Richard Roth. Ahmed is 29-years-old. He grew up in what he calls a ghetto of Algerian immigrants in the suburbs of Paris, and French authorities say the story of his enlistment in the cause of Islamic militants here is a modern classic. Muslim, but not devout, he'd been selling drugs and stealing cars when he was jailed. Alone and scared, Ahmed was an easy target for a recruitment process he calls smart and irresistible. In his case, he was approached by men he calls his "Muslim brothers." He was told, he recounts: "Look at the way the French people making us living. Look, your father is working like a dog. You have no money. You have no respect." The favorite enemies are the U.S. government and also the U.S. people and the Jews. On the day he got out of jail, his "Muslim brothers" led him to an apartment and a job in a bakery. And soon after, they had other work for him too: as a bagman, smuggling money and jewelry out of France into Belgium and Switzerland, and traveling by car and truck, eventually to Chechnya. "Probably some money that I carried was involved in something bad too," he says. When asked if that something might be a bombing, Ahmed says, "it's almost certain." He made no secret of his ambition for a bigger role in the movement that had become his family, and in January 2000, he says, that ambition was rewarded. He was sent from Paris to Ankara, then on to the Turkish city of Sansom to collect a forged passport that would foil government efforts to track a terrorist's travel. Ahmed went overland by bus through Iran into Afghanistan, to a mountain camp where scores of men were training. He says he spent six weeks in physical training, handling weapons, learning self-defense and how to kill. But it was hardly the picture portrayed in propaganda videos. There was little camaraderie. All that united the men was a notion they were part of what they called, "the movement.'" He says there was never a sign saying, "Welcome to camp al Qaeda.'' "My problem with al Qaeda ... I think it's like a brand," he says. "I think that al Qaeda is just an easy word to englobe very different movements." Back at work in Paris though, Ahmed began to have some doubt about where he was headed with his new training. It put him on a dangerous collision course with the men controlling him. Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-05-06 |
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