A Kidnapping in Milan: The CIA on Trial (11 page)

“There is only one God, and Muhammad is his Prophet,” said Abu Omar, perhaps in benediction of the unknown event at the hot mosque.

“I will send you the whole explanation with a brother. I only recommend to you the union and Hizb al-Tawid.”

“I need only directions.”

“If God wills, they will reach you. It’s a matter of days, because at this moment the sheikhs are traveling in Algeria, in Morocco, and in Bosnia. Calm and patience: you must never run. . . . One needs only to instruct and study and organize things that may interest us. Study the streets, because war must be studied.”

Italian investigators would later say they never learned the identity of the man from Germany.

ALI SHARIF’S
WORRIES
about Abu Omar continued to grow, as did those of the imam and president of Viale Jenner, respectively Abu Imad and Abdelhamid Shaari, whose combined influence at Via Quaranta was profound. Several times the three men warned Abu Omar to be less flagrant in his pronouncements, but Abu Omar would not be restrained. Toward the end of the summer of 2002, their disagreements reached a climax, not recorded by the police, and afterward Abu Omar limited his time at Via Quaranta to a few hours a week. Later he stopped going entirely. He continued to attend noon prayers at Viale Jenner.

For occupation, he founded the Islamic Media Center, which consisted of himself, a computer, and a printer and through which he aspired to become the voice of righteous Islam in Italy. The center’s primary output was an occasional newsletter called
Islamic Truth
, which commented on current affairs in language simple enough for a poorly educated people to understand. He distributed the newsletter to mosques in northern Italy, some of which posted copies in their foyers. They also posted his photo galleries, as he called them, which were printouts of politically themed pictures he had downloaded from the Internet—pictures, for example, of Israeli massacres of Palestinians or American massacres of Afghanis. As a rule his galleries were gorier than the family-friendly violence on offer from most Western newspapers.

He also became an itinerant imam, preaching at radical mosques across northern Italy. Mosques in Parma, Cremona, Como, and possibly elsewhere seem to have asked him to become their regular imam, but he played coy.

“It’s very difficult, so difficult,” he told a suitor from Cremona. “Three other mosques have called me, but I find myself in a very difficult situation, so very difficult. . . .Very, very.”

He described his anguish at some length, like a kid in an ice cream shop.

“I can’t relate to you just how awkward it is,” he said.

On the phone, he usually said nothing of importance, and DIGOS apparently had no bug in his flat. But investigators followed him in and out of Milan, often fruitfully. On a trip to Parma, for example, he was picked up at the train station by three Kurds whom DIGOS had thentofore known only a little about and had believed to be mostly harmless. Their contact with Abu Omar prompted a more thorough investigation, which revealed them to be part of a pan-European network that, in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, was recruiting Islamists to serve the terrorist group Ansar al-Islam in Iraq. American missiles would eventually destroy Ansar ’s main camp in Kurdistan, and scores of documents forged in Italy would be found among the ruins. Their bearers had lived mostly in Milan and Cremona. Ansar’s recruiters in Italy sent perhaps a hundred men in all to Iraq, and other European recruiters sent perhaps a few hundred more. At least five suicide attacks in Iraq were believed to have been carried out by “Italian” Islamists. After one attack, the martyr’s brother in Milan called their mother in Tunisia to tell her the good news. She agreed it was a most wonderful thing and said she had had a vision of her sacrificial son, which was a good omen. The son in Milan said a rich man was going to give the family
€
8,000 in reward, and mother and son agreed that half of it might be used to renovate the house. Another Milanese recruit, a young North African named Kamal Morchidi, apparently took part in a rocket attack on Baghdad’s Hotel al-Rashid. (
Morchidi
and
al-Rashid
, it happens, are synonyms that can be translated “He who follows the right path.”) The target of the strike may have been Paul Wolfowitz, the American undersecretary of defense, who was then in residence and whose unstinting advocacy for the Iraq War helped bring death to a number of innocents that most terrorists can only dream of killing. Wolfowitz survived the strike, but Morchidi died either during it or shortly afterward. His father said he had been a normal, loving son until he started attending the mosque on Viale Jenner, after which he became increasingly dark of mood. Then one day he simply disappeared. The father went to the mosque and demanded its leaders tell him where his son was, but he learned nothing. The next thing he heard, his son was dead. In Milan young Morchidi had lived on Way of the Unknown Martyrs.

The investigators of DIGOS eventually concluded that Abu Omar was an important recruiter for the Ansar network. They drew their conclusion partly from what other terrorists said—one, for example, said he heard Abu Omar sound the call for recruits in Parma, and he thought Abu Omar may have supplied travel papers for their journey to Iraq—and partly from the activities of the people Abu Omar associated with. One of Abu Omar’s closer associates was an Egyptian named Radi El Ayashi, known as Merai, who seemed to be the leader of Ansar’s efforts in northern Italy. Abu Omar was also involved, although at more of a remove, with one Maxamed Cabdullah Ciise, known as Mohammad the Somali, who apparently raised and laundered funds for Ansar from London. The Italians arrested Merai and Mohammad when the latter came to Italy for forged documents, and, on the slim chance they might talk, put them together in a bugged holding room. It was a ploy Jihad manuals warned about, but the pair were carelessly revelatory.

“We do not know each other,” the Somali proposed to his friend.

“You do not even need to say it,” Merai said. “They already asked me if I knew you, and I answered that I met you at the mosque.”

“Fine, let us stick to that version, because they have nothing on me. . . . But quite honestly here in your place there is something wrong. I am astonished by the business of the bag”—which held potentially incriminating evidence. “How could they know it was there? How did they bring me the bag? Why are they asking me where the training camps in Syria are? I am speechless.”

“You know, they try to get you to speak. They try to make you believe that they know everything, but they know nothing.”

“When we were arrested and they put me in the car and pointed a pistol at me, they told me they had gathered information on me and they had spoken to the Americans. I told them they were enemies of God, to take their hands off me. After that, they asked me what my true nationality was.”

“Take them for a ride,” Merai counseled. “Tell them you are Egyptian. Let us thank God they did not find the passports. I have few things at home. I have only money, but the rest is hidden.”

“The Moroccan passports?”

“Nothing. When they took us, I had nothing on me. I had given everything to Brahim”—the librarian of the mosque on Via Quaranta.

“How about the Moroccan passport that they prepared for you and that they gave you when we sat down?”

“Brahim has it. He knows what to do. I am not so stupid as to keep it on me. When we get out of here, you disappear at once and I will do the same. If you need support, Brahim knows where the money is hidden too. I have never had anything on me. If you want to take the passports, take them. He knows all my hideouts, and he knows all my movements. Sometimes even we forget where we have hidden things. He is a tomb.”

“First let us get out of here, and then I will try to get to Romania because I have support there. I am sorry to put the question to you again, but are you sure that this is the first time you have been brought here? Are you not under surveillance?”

“I would know if I were under surveillance. . . . I do not think I am, because I do not use the telephone very much. I constantly change my phone card, and the phone calls that we made together, we made them from outside.”

“I hope that is true, that they do not have any phone calls, because if that were the case it would be a problem for the brothers.” And it was: the U.S. National Security Agency had intercepted several calls from pay phones in Italy to satellite phones used by Ansar captains in Syria. The Italians had intercepted similar calls.

“But,” the Somali continued, “I think you are under surveillance.”

“That may be true. Who is not under surveillance? All they have to do is see you once and they watch your movements.”

“No, brother. Now, I remember well Quaranta-Quaranta. I recall a guy who told me it was better to go to Afghanistan or Iran than to go to Via Quaranta. This is the most dangerous place after London because it is known worldwide for the training of terrorists and for logistical and financial support. It is well known for being in the firing line. The whole world knows Quaranta-Quaranta.”

“The enemies of God, sons of dogs . . . are terrorized by us. Sooner or later, maybe tomorrow morning, they’ll have news because both the Americans and Israelis will pay.”

“The enemy of God came to touch my Quran.”

“And did you let him?”

“No.”

“Tell him to leave and not touch it even with his finger.”

“He told me he wanted to check it, and I told him I would open it page by page. He made me open it three times.”

“They love life. I want to be a martyr. I live for jihad. In this life, there is nothing. Life is afterward—above all, brother, the indescribable feeling of dying a martyr. God, help me to be Your martyr!”

They recited verses of the Quran together and sang an anthem to jihad. A little later the Somali fretted, “But when they arrest people, do they usually put two of them together?”

“No!”

“So how come they put us together?”

“They conducted a roundup, and all the cells are undoubtedly full.”

“Bizarre.”

Both men were convicted of crimes related to terrorism.

By February of 2003 the investigators of DIGOS thought they were a couple of months shy of having enough evidence to arrest Abu Omar. They were, however, in no hurry to do so, because they wanted to see where else he might lead them.

On Monday the seventeenth, one month before the United States invaded Iraq, Abu Omar stepped out of his flat and set off down Via Conte Verde under a brilliant sky for the
dhuhr
. The dhuhr is the second of Islam’s five daily prayers and must be held neither earlier than midday nor later than when a shadow cast by the sun is twice its midday length. At Viale Jenner the dhuhr was held just after noon. Abu Omar had with him his keys and mobile phone, his passport and residency permit, his social security and health care cards, and, because he intended to pay the rent that afternoon,
€
450. He never paid the rent.

NABILA GHALI
began to worry about her husband when by late afternoon he had not come home and had not returned calls to his mobile phone. She called friends who frequented the mosque, but they hadn’t seen him. Then she called friends who might have been in touch with him by phone, but they knew nothing either. She did not call the police. Next day, however, Abu Omar still not having returned, she seems to have contacted a branch of the municipal police, asked to report him missing, and been told that an absence of twenty-four hours did not warrant a missing-person investigation.

Abu Imad, the imam at Viale Jenner, was making his own inquiries. Although he did not have the greatest love for Abu Omar, neither did he like his disappearance. Nobody Abu Imad spoke to, however, knew anything of Abu Omar’s whereabouts, and none of the hospitals he called had a patient matching Abu Omar’s description. Finally Abu Imad called a lawyer, an Italian who had defended Islamists charged with terrorism, and three days after Abu Omar’s disappearance, the lawyer called DIGOS to ask whether the Italian government had detained him. A DIGOS officer said the government had not, and he encouraged the lawyer to send Nabila Ghali to file a missing-person report. Later that day, Ghali went to a police station and did.

The police asked the expected questions: Had Abu Omar ever gone absent before? Where had he gone in the week before his disappearance? Did he travel much? Was there any reason he might want to hide? Ghali told them her husband was a pious man and that in the week before his disappearance, he had left the apartment only on religious errands, some in town, some beyond. When he was in Milan, it was his habit to walk to the mosque to attend the dhuhr. When he left Milan, it was to preach. On the Friday before his disappearance, one of the brothers had picked him up and driven him to Gallarate, an hour from Milan, for the
jumuah
, which is the particular name for the more elaborate dhuhr on Friday. Abu Omar gave a sermon, and the brother drove him home that evening. On Saturday he was picked up by brothers who took him to speak at the mosque in Varese. He stayed overnight after his lecture, and on Sunday a brother took him to Como to speak at the mosque there. He returned to Milan that night. The police told Ghali they would open an investigation.

The next day was Friday, and at the close of the jumuah at Viale Jenner, Abu Imad made an appeal from the pulpit for information about Abu Omar. No one answered during the service, but afterward his wife told him that a sister had told her that another sister had heard from yet another sister that on Monday she had seen an Arab kidnapped. The sisters had not approached Abu Imad during the service because it was forbidden for women to cross from the rear of the mosque, where God had put them, to the front of the mosque, which He had reserved for men. The sister who witnessed the kidnapping had not been at the jumuah, and Abu Imad’s wife had not been able to learn her name or the name of the intermediate sister.

Shortly after this discovery, a male parishioner named Sayed Shaban told Abu Imad that a brother at the jumuah had told him the same story—a woman had witnessed a kidnapping. Shaban thought he knew who the woman was, but he would not name her or her husband. He said he did not want to get anyone in trouble. He also declined to tell Abu Imad the name of the brother who told him the story. Abu Imad asked Shaban to ask the witness’s husband to come to the mosque and speak with him, it being more correct to invite the man of the family than the witness herself. Shaban said he would try.