THE GUARDIAN.
Journalist Antonio Salas went undercover to infiltrate the shadowy world
of international terrorism, writes Giles Tremlett in Madrid.
Few undercover reporters have been prepared to sacrifice as much as
the Spaniard who goes by the pseudonym of Antonio Salas. Circumcision
was just one hurdle in passing himself off as a radical Islamist and
infiltrating the shadowy, interconnected world of international
terrorism. ''It was more painful than I expected. It is pretty delicate
for the first few days,'' Salas now admits, walking daintily around a
room at his Madrid publisher's offices. An invitation to a hammam
bathhouse during his five years undercover had, he said, persuaded him
the operation was necessary.
Salas's identity undercover was Mohammed Abdullah, a
Spanish-Venezuelan with Palestinian grandparents. He was convincing
enough to be invited on terrorist training courses and to become
webmaster to the most infamous of international terrorists, Carlos the
Jackal. That meant regular telephone conversations with a man thought to
be responsible for more than 80 deaths.
The Jackal would call from La Sante prison in Paris, where he
is serving a life sentence for murder. ''He was very worried about my
security,'' says Salas. ''It is a strange sensation when a
self-confessed assassin like Carlos the Jackal does that, and offers
their friendship.''
Salas decided to go under cover with his hidden cameras after the
bombings that killed 191 people on Madrid commuter trains on March 11,
2004. He had been as stunned as other Spaniards by the blasts, despite
the country's experience of the Basque terrorist group ETA. ''I wanted
to know what goes through the mind of a person who is capable of killing
for an ideology.''
Salas's previous undercover investigations - as a skinhead supporter of Real Madrid
football club, and in the world of prostitute trafficking - had taken
him to the heart of some of the most violent groups in Spain. ''My aim
was to understand terrorism in the same way that I came to understand
skinheads or prostitute traffickers.''
He learned Arabic and invented an elaborate cover story about
a dead wife: 25-year-old Dalal Mujahad from Jenin, tragically killed by
an Israeli bullet while pregnant. The real Dalal, whose name he found
in a newspaper archive, had died in 2004, victim of a stray bullet in a
shootout. In case anyone were to investigate, he added a Romeo and
Juliet touch: the marriage had been kept secret because his (false)
mother's family, from the nearby village of Burkin, backed Al-Fatah,
while Dalal's family were part of Hamas. Her death, he would claim,
pushed him towards radical terrorism.
''I took photos of myself in Burkin and in Jenin. Then I
asked Fatima, a girl I met when investigating prostitute trafficking, to
let me take photos with her as if she was my wife. We mocked up an
apartment in Barcelona to look as though it was in Palestine and took
photos.'' Salas also wrote out the Koran by hand and considers his
conversion to Islam to be genuine. He treasures the small booklet in
which he wrote Islam's most sacred text: ''It helped convince people,''
he says. ''Not many people carry their own, hand-copied version.''
The final part of his cover was to become a pro-jihad
journalist, contributing to radical publications. He travelled the Arab
world, from Egypt to Jordan and Lebanon, writing articles that would
help to seal his militant credentials. ''I even wrote a couple of
books,'' he says. It did not take long to gain a reputation.
Salas picked the Venezuela of President Hugo Chavez as his
base. ''I had been told Venezuela was a mecca of international
terrorism,'' he says. ''The FARC group from Colombia was there, as were
people from ETA.''
Numerous other small revolutionary groups had also set up
under Chavez's benevolent gaze. There Salas established himself as yet
another niche radical - flying the flag for Palestine and running a
local branch of Hezbollah. More importantly, he got close to the family
of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez - Carlos the Jackal.
''I only really knew about Carlos because of the films about
him,'' admits Salas, who is in his mid-30s and too young to recall the
Jackal's bloody kidnaps and assassinations in the '70s and '80s. ''But
here was an icon of international terrorism. He was Venezuelan and a
convert to Islam who had fought for Palestine. It was perfect for my
profile.''
He sought out the Jackal's two younger brothers, Vladimir and
Lenin - names given to them by their Leninist lawyer father. ''Vladimir
is the more active defender of his brother,'' he says. ''Lenin is a lot
more discreet. Later I met his mother, his nephews, and got in with the
family.''
He first spoke with the Jackal by chance, when Carlos rang
from prison while Salas was with the family. ''We started out talking in
Arabic and then in Spanish. I called him Ilich or 'Comandante Salim',
which is his Arabic name. He speaks six or seven languages and is very
intelligent. We would talk for up to an hour. He would not let me ask
questions - they made him angry. So I just let him talk. He even
confessed some of his killings and I have that taped.''
Salas began to work on a website that, among other things, campaigned to have the Jackal repatriated to Venezuela.
Salas soon discovered that Chavez himself was a defender of
the Jackal. ''For him, Carlos is not a terrorist but a revolutionary - a
model internationalist, like Che Guevara. Just as Che went to fight for
other peoples, so Ilich went to fight for the Palestinians. Whenever
Chavez mentioned the Jackal, I would record it and send it to him, which
he loved.''
Not that Salas agrees with Chavez's view of the Jackal. ''He
is considered responsible for 82 killings; I don't call that being a
revolutionary. I call him a terrorist.'' Though he would probably not,
he admits, say it to his face. ''It helps that he is in jail.''
Salas updated the Jackal's website from cybercafes, using a
different one every time. ''I imagine Mossad, the CIA and MI6 being
driven mad by the fact that the Jackal's page was updated from Portugal
one day, Syria another.''
As an independent journalist who pays his own way, he must
use his real identity when at frontiers or security controls. ''I have
never worked for any intelligence service, political party, or even for
any one media outlet,'' says Salas.
Repeated requests for hands-on training eventually saw him
invited to a camp in Venezuela, where he learned to handle weapons ,
including a Kalashnikov AK-103, an Uzi sub-machinegun, the American M4
carbine and a Belgian-designed FN FAL. He also practised with a sniper's
telescopic sight and received explosives training. ''There was nothing
glamorous about it. It was just a question of learning to kill better.''
His instructors included a Venezuelan army colonel, though Salas insists the camp was not run by the Chavez regime.
Salas came close to blowing his cover only once, when he met
the US journalist Jon Lee Anderson, who was in Venezuela promoting his
Che Guevara biography. It was a nerve-racking encounter. ''When he said
he had been to Burkin and started naming people there, I feared my cover
was gone.''
Anderson remembers the meeting: ''Burkin is an amazing place
in the hills above Jenin … I remember thinking there was something odd
[about Abdullah]; he was cautious around me and flustered, but Caracas
is full of wackos. It didn't occur to me to think he was a plant.''
Far from being made world-weary or cynical by his exposure to
such violence, Salas remains almost naively optimistic about the
results of his investigations - which have spawned Spanish bestsellers,
popular documentaries, even a feature film. After his previous two
books, he says, he received letters from people who had given up being
skinheads or frequenting prostitutes.
''I hope for the same thing with this,'' he says. ''In Spain
and Latin America there are a lot of adolescents - many of whom I saw
arrive at the mosque for the first time as children - who will feel the
draw of violence in a few years' time.''
So what conclusions does Salas draw from rubbing shoulders
with international terrorism? His answer is coloured by the fact that
half a dozen people he met during his investigation have since died -
often violently. ''I don't justify violence, but I can understand it. I
never found any glamour or sophistication in that world, nor anyone
especially intelligent - except for the Jackal. Terrorists really have
only two ends - they either die or go to jail. You have to be a bit
stupid to do that.''
Guardian News & Media
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