convinces them to blow themselves up in the name of Islam. The first programme showed the testimonies of former terrorists Ziyad Asfan, Abdullah Khuja and Walid Khan. They revealed that there are four main phases in al-Qaeda's recruitment of young Muslims: brainwashing, the actual recruitment, the departure for the Jihad or holy war, and the
Saudi TV also spoke to religious experts who explain how al-Qaeda's reasoning differs from Islamic Sharia law. They also explained the social and emotional situations that lead these young people to fall into the terror group's trap, the fact that the recruiters use their passion and predisposition to extremism, as well as their desire to change the world through quick, radical solutions. The programme highlighted how the recruitment activities and brainwashing of the fundamentalist cells lead the young person to distance themselves from their own families and the world around them.
The first to give his testimony on the programme was Walid Khan, who talked of the phase in which they convince the recruit. "There are particular issues that pushed me which have nothing to do with the Jihad or Muslims," he said. "At first...I just wanted to go and join the Jihad. Then I lived with people who believed the Takfir [the act of identifying someone as an unbeliever] and I was with them 24 hours a day until I ended up believing them. At the beginning it was only passion, I wanted to be like the other guys who said to me one day that they were going to do the Jihad," he explained, adding "they made me listen to Islamic chants which filled me with even more passion to the point of convincing me."
In his testimony, Abdullah Khuja said: "I listened once to one brother, Tahir Jan, emir of the mujahadeen of Uzbekistan, who came to the city of Ta'if where I work," he explained. "I went to meet him and I talked with him at length of my firm willingness to go to Afghanistan or a place where it would be possible to fight for Allah under a clear flag and he proposed that I follow him."
Ziyad Asfan said on the programme he went to a training camp in Afghanistan, where they gave him the name al-Sadiq. "We did two weeks of simple training where we learnt to use light weapons and there were lots of Islamic chants and lessons to follow which all talked of the Jews and Christians' warped plot against the Muslims," he said.
Khuja also reveals how easy it was to enter the countries where they went to fight the Jihad, saying: "we crossed the borders and entered Afghanistan easily using typical Afghan clothing so that no one would think we were Arab. I asked to go straight to the training camp, where I started to use light weapons, though they told me not to ask too many questions." "The young people there were very afriad," he explained. "That was why they told me not to ask questions and not to ask who the guys with me were or where they came from, because many feared people had infiltrated to obtain news."
For Khan too, crossing the borders of countries like Iraq and Afghanistan was relatively easy. "We arrived at night in a village in the north of Afghanistan by taxi, entering first Iraq and then Iran. We crossed the border easily without problems, and were welcomed by a man called Ansar al-Islam, who took us to a second car which drove us towards the Khurman area."
Finally the three former terrorists talked about the role the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi played in the times of the training camps in Afghanistan, saying that from then on it was clear he and his group were the most dangerous and the most fanatical of the Arab mujahadeen who joined al-Qaeda. "The problem is that most of the Arab mujahadeen present in Afghanistan were Jordanian and all from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group," Khan said. "They were all followers of the Jordanian sheikh al-Maqdisi, who they had sworn loyalty to in 1995, and because of this they were sentenced to 15 years in prison. After five years however, they were pardoned, including al-Zarqawi, and because of this they all went to Afghanistan with a strong hatred for their government, the police and all the state apparatus of the Arab countries. Being in the majority we had to mix with them," he said.
| Ah, I detect a new meme; "It's the Jordanian's fault!" |