The Terrorist Next Door (21 page)

I'd gone there with the goal of interviewing the worst of the worst: the most notorious of the city's seemingly endless supply of Islamist ideologues. My intent, first and foremost, was to shine a light on the insanely permissive situation in the city that British writer Melanie Phillips has aptly dubbed “Londonistan,” where wanted Islamic terrorists walk the streets as free men and even receive welfare benefits from the British government. Secondly, I wanted Britain's descent into jihadist madness and dhimmitude to serve as a cautionary tale for an American audience that was gradually seeing its own country move in the same suicidal direction under the Obama administration.

In Saad al-Faqih—who, according to the U.S. Treasury Department, has maintained associations with the al-Qaeda network since the mid-1990s and has had direct contact with Osama bin Laden
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—I had found the perfect case study.

Given that we were guests in his home, al-Faqih's quick admission that he had been marked for death by the Saudis was certainly unnerving, yet not surprising. A former medical surgeon, the 54-year-old Saudi native now makes a living—on the Web and in media appearances—as one of the world's most outspoken critics of the House of Saud. Viewing the Saudi royal family as corrupt, insufficiently Islamic pawns of the West, al-Faqih wants to see the Saudis' radical Wahhabi regime deposed (by peaceful means, he insists) and replaced with an even more extreme Islamic government. The Saudi royals are none too fond of al-Faqih's activities, and have been pressuring Great Britain for years, unsuccessfully, to deport him back to Saudi Arabia—where his treatment, needless to say, would be a bit less hospitable than what he found in England.

“The Islamic state I envision for Saudi Arabia will not be like the Taliban,” he told me over Arab tea in his sparsely furnished living room. “Saudi officials say our movement wants to take the country back to the seventh century. That is not true. We are pioneers of using modern technology.”

A look of self-satisfaction crept across his face as he folded his legs Arabic-style beneath his traditional, one-piece dishdasha. “Our use of technology,” he offered, “is much better than the Saudi government's. ... We have informants at every level of the Saudi government.”

At first glance, it would seem that al-Faqih's self-professed mastery of the Internet and Web networking has created more problems than benefits for him and his London-based group, the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA). He was designated by both the United States and the United Nations as a global terrorist in 2004, in large part due to his operation of a website that, according to the U.S. Treasury Department, was utilized by Islamic extremists “to post al Qaida-related statements and images ... intended to provide ideological and financial support to al-Qaida affiliated networks and potential recruits.”
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Among the charges against Saad al-Faqih is that he paid for a satellite phone used by Osama bin Laden in the 1998 Africa embassy bombings. According to the PBS program
Frontline
, “Saad says he's never met bin Laden, but he is connected somehow. For one, the satellite telephone that bin Laden allegedly used to plan the Nairobi and Dar es Salaam bombings was purchased from a merchant in Columbus, Ohio, on Saad's own credit card.”
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Al-Faqih became visibly irritated when discussing his terrorist designation in the United States with me, blaming it on the Saudi lobby in Washington, D.C. “Saudi agents put that material on the sites,” he said of the al-Qaeda propaganda that was featured on his websites. “They would then call the media to tip them off. I challenge anyone to find a single sentence on my website that calls for or glorifies violence.”

Yet prior to my meeting with al-Faqih, a trusted intelligence source that worked on the U.S. government's case against him confirmed to me
that al-Faqih had direct links to al-Qaeda, characterizing the Saudi exile as “bad with a capital B.” So when al-Faqih began to open up to me about the inner workings of the world's most notorious terrorist organization, I sat in rapt attention.

“Al-Qaeda consists of three circles,” he began. “The first and central circle is made up of the real al-Qaeda team who have given homage to Osama bin Laden or other leaders.” Foremost among this group, he explained, would be the members who have been with al-Qaeda since its beginnings in the late 1980s.

“Inside the second circle are those who have trained with al-Qaeda but have not formally been accepted into the organization,” al-Faqih continued. “This group is bigger than the first circle.” This would most likely mean jihadists who have trained with al-Qaeda in Pakistan or elsewhere and then returned to their native countries replete with newfound expertise in terrorist tactics.

The third and largest circle, according to al-Faqih, consists of Muslims who are “ready to join al-Qaeda and are looking for the means to enroll in the group.” Those are the homegrown jihadis, the self-starters and lone wolves, who have no direct links to al-Qaeda but are inspired by the group and its message. As we've seen, there is no shortage of this sort on U.S. soil.

Al-Faqih believes al-Qaeda is the vanguard of Muslim resistance to the West and that there is no credible alternative to bin Laden and co. “as long as there is no movement in the middle that can satisfy the Muslim world's hunger for dignity” after years of supposed humiliation by America and its allies, especially Israel.

“There has been a failure of Muslim leaders to channel their people against America,” al-Faqih told me. “But bin Laden has shown that he can do it.”

He watched as I scribbled furiously in my notepad.

“There will always be new recruits,” he said matter-of-factly. “Al-Qaeda's structure can never collapse.”

The day before my meeting with al-Faqih, I had sat down with another wanted terrorist with links to that very al-Qaeda structure. I had obtained Yasser al-Sirri's mobile phone number from one of my European contacts and had called him a few days before leaving for London. At first, al-Sirri was highly suspicious. But after I mentioned the name of my contact, he agreed to meet with me, although he still sounded a bit reluctant. I had to chuckle to myself as I hung up the phone, seeing as my conversation with al-Sirri was likely monitored by intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic. Like al-Faqih, al-Sirri was the “real deal”—a wanted Islamic terrorist with ties to leading al-Qaeda members.

An Egyptian exile, al-Sirri has lived in London since 1994. Like al-Faqih, he received asylum in Britain after fleeing his native country under threat of death. In Egypt, al-Sirri belonged to Islamic Jihad, a brutal terrorist organization that seeks to impose an Islamic state in Egypt and was led by al-Qaeda's second-in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri. In 1993, al-Sirri was found guilty of participating in a failed Islamic Jihad assassination attempt against Egypt's prime minister that resulted in the killing of a 12-year-old schoolgirl. Al-Sirri was sentenced to death in Egypt for this heinous act, yet he now walks the streets of London a free man and collects welfare benefits courtesy of the British taxpayer.

Al-Sirri runs a small operation in London called the Islamic Observation Centre that he uses to announce the latest al-Qaeda messages via his sources within the group. Like al-Faqih, he has refashioned himself as an expert “analyst” of al-Qaeda, and he is quoted from time to time in the British media pontificating about the latest developments in the global jihadist movement. Many suspect that al-Sirri's little operation has done much more, however, than just document the jihad for his Islamist echo chamber.

The British government locked al-Sirri up in 1999 on terrorism charges. He was soon released and then arrested again in 2001 for allegedly helping to set up the murder of Ahmad Shah Massoud, an Afghan anti-Taliban leader who was killed by two al-Qaeda suicide bombers
days before the 9/11 attacks. Al-Sirri allegedly provided the two bombers with identification that named them as journalists, thus giving them access to Massoud. Inexplicably, a British judge later cleared al-Sirri of all charges and released him, labeling him “an innocent fall guy.”
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Although the Brits seem content to let al-Sirri operate with impunity, U.S. officials still want to get their hands on the pint-sized terrorist. The United States, like Egypt, has been trying in vain to extradite al-Sirri from Britain for years.

In 2005, he was found guilty in a U.S. federal court of relaying illegal messages to the imprisoned terrorist leader Omar Abdel Rahman, the notorious “Blind Sheikh” who masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
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Rahman, a close associate of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, is currently serving a life sentence in a U.S. Supermax prison in Colorado.

Liberal British judges refuse to deport murderous jihadists like al-Sirri over fears that they will be tortured back home and—don't laugh—that their human rights will be violated. Why they won't extradite al-Sirri to the United States is anyone's guess; perhaps they're afraid he'll be subjected to 4,000 calories a day, cable TV, and Korans-on-demand at that awful Guantanamo Bay prison.

What is clear is that al-Sirri maintains close ties to some very dangerous men. So as my cameraman and I waited for him to arrive for our meeting at a hotel in West London, I wondered who he might bring along. Perhaps he would be joined by Abu Qatada, al-Qaeda's spiritual leader in Europe, who was granted asylum and welfare benefits in Great Britain and had been photographed with al-Sirri on a London street in 2008.
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Alas, al-Sirri showed up alone. Short, slightly built, and sporting a long beard dyed red with henna in the tradition of Islam's prophet, Mohammed, al-Sirri wore a Palestinian-style scarf, or keffiyeh, draped over his shoulders. His eyes scanned the hotel lobby nervously until I waved, and he approached us. Having assumed I was a print journalist, he had not realized our interview would be conducted before a TV camera. Nevertheless, as
his eyes continued to dart around the room, he consented to sit down with me for an on-camera discussion. We adjourned to a small conference room in the hotel, and just like that, I had secured wanted terrorist Yasser al-Sirri's first appearance on a U.S. television network.

“The British government knows about my activities, my situation,” al-Sirri told me. “Everything is clear and I have done nothing to break the law.” Denying any wrongdoing, he blamed the British tabloid media for creating a false impression of him. He also, predictably, blamed America.

“Many times the American government uses the wrong people for spies or to get intelligence information,” he claimed. “Some people do business with the FBI [or] CIA and give them wrong information and sometimes the wrong decision is made.”

Speaking softly in halting English, al-Sirri did not make for great TV. I had read interviews with him from the 1990s and 2001 in which he quite openly supported jihad.
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But as we sat together in 2010, he had clearly learned to speak more carefully, lest British officials suddenly wake up and deport him back to Egypt. The only time al-Sirri did get slightly animated during our discussion was in his criticism of the former Mubarak government in Egypt. But given my goal of exposing British negligence in the face of jihadism, my interview with al-Sirri—although he was no sound bite machine—served its purpose. When the interview aired on CBN a few weeks later, I was flooded with e-mails from irate viewers who expressed shock that men like al-Sirri and Saad al-Faqih were living freely in a country that is arguably America's closest ally.
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also appeared in a segment on FOX News in which Sean Hannity expressed outrage over what I found in London. He and many others asked, “What's wrong with the Brits?”

The answer to Sean's question is this: liberal permissiveness and social engineering have transformed Britain, and especially its capital, into
“Londonistan.” During the massive wave of Islamic immigration that has flooded its shores over the past several decades, Britain became the go-to spot for asylum seekers from Muslim countries. British officials essentially welcomed men like al-Faqih and al-Sirri with open arms, and before long, wanted Islamic terrorists from across the Middle East and North Africa were living comfortably in London at British taxpayers' expense. Most simply continued their jihadist activities, confident that politically correct British authorities would not deport them back to places like Egypt and Jordan due to human rights concerns. The Brits' inaction outraged Middle Eastern governments, which were eager to get their hands on these enemies of the state.

“All of this happened under the assumption that if you allowed these people to operate in London, if you allowed them to do whatever they wanted to do, they would not be attacking Britain,” terrorism analyst Peter Neumann told me as we sat in his London office. “The government, quite cynically, thought that whatever happened in other countries, whatever these people were plotting in other countries, was of no concern to the British government.”