generalspeaking

On a bright morning last May, a dead man lay on a plank on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson.

The sun was out.

The sea was calm.

And when the plank was lifted, the body of Osama bin Laden slid feet first into the North Arabian Sea.

Eighteen months later, the story of how the United States tracked bin Laden to a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan is still being told, and the latest book on the topic says it all began with the former prayer leader of a Montreal mosque.

In The Finish: The Killing of Osama bin Laden, American journalist Mark Bowden traces the raid on bin Laden’s hideout back to the interrogation of an “al-Qaeda operative” named Mohamedou Ould Slahi.
After joining al-Qaeda in 1990, Mr. Slahi moved to Montreal, where he mingled with a circle of North African immigrants active in the bin Laden network, including the so-called millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam. Arrested in Mauritania after the 9/11 attacks and subjected to “coercive interrogation,” Mr. Slahi gave up the name Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. He claimed al-Kuwaiti was dead, Mr. Bowden writes. He wasn’t. He was bin Laden’s courier and he would bring the CIA to the al-Qaeda leader.

“That name [al-Kuwaiti] gradually assumed a greater significance as it came up more often,” Mr. Bowden said in a telephone interview this week. But the former Montrealer offered it first. “In that sense, Slahi, I think, is the origin of their interest in that person.”

The killing of bin Laden on May 2, 2011 was a key moment. It signalled that those who wage wanton destruction to try to extort what they want from the world will fail. They will be found and dealt with, even if it takes a while.
Three major books about the killing have already been published, first Peter Bergen’s Manhunt, followed by No Easy Day by Matt Bissonnette (writing as “Mark Owen”), one of the Navy SEALS who took part in the mission.

Mr. Bowden, a former newspaper reporter probably best known as the author of Black Hawk Down, uses his hard-earned access to focus on the decade of intelligence-gathering and decision-making that led up to the Abbottabad raid. As such, he is the first to highlight Mr. Slahi’s role in identifying the al-Qaeda operative who was sheltering bin Laden next to a Pakistani military garrison.
Mr. Bowden also reveals an uncomfortable truth: that most of the detainees who provided the information that put the CIA on bin Laden’s scent were subjected to coercive interrogation methods, if not torture. “Torture may not have been decisive, or even necessary, but it was clearly part of the story,” he writes.

It was part of Mr. Slahi’s story.

A Mauritanian electrical engineer, he traveled to Afghanistan in 1990 and pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda. He says he left al-Qaeda in 1992 but U.S. authorities alleged he continued to serve as a recruiter.

According to the 9/11 Commission, while living in Germany in 1999 he sent three men to Afghanistan for training. Two of them later became 9/11 hijackers. But he has denied the allegation.

In November 1999, Mr. Slahi immigrated to Canada. He studied at the École Polytechnique de Montréal and during Ramadan he led prayers at the Al Sunna mosque, where members of a North African terror cell came to pray.
He lived briefly in a safe house used by members of the Montreal-based jihadist cell, and met Ressam, who was then preparing to bomb Los Angeles International Airport on the eve of the new millennium, but Mr. Slahi denied any role in the plot.

In his version of events, he came to the attention of counter-terrorism authorities after his cousin called him using bin Laden’s satellite phone. He also helped the cousin move money. “So look at me, I have contact with Osama bin Laden’s operative, who was helping launder money and is now in Canada attending a mosque where we believe a very dangerous group is attending and he is even the imam of the mosque, something is going on,” he said, putting himself in the shoes of his investigators.

That was a name written down in a log and one of many, many names. And I’m sure that they questioned him extensively and he mentioned lots of names

Even he agreed that it didn’t look good. And it looked even worse after Ressam was caught trying to cross the U.S. border with a bomb in the trunk of his rental car. After being questioned by police, Mr. Slahi left Canada in January 2000 and flew to Senegal, where he was taken into custody and transferred to Mauritania for more questioning about Ressam.

Eventually, he was released, but he was arrested again in Mauritania after the 9/11 attacks and rendered to Jordan. According to an Amnesty International report, he claimed he was tortured in Jordan until he falsely confessed to taking part in Ressam’s plot.

Eight months later, he was sent to Guantanamo Bay, where he became detainee 760. Amnesty said he was threatened with death and disappearance. He claimed he was tortured, beaten and sexually harassed, Amnesty wrote.

During all that, he mentioned al-Kuwaiti. It would have meant little at the time. “That was a name written down in a log and one of many, many names. And I’m sure that they questioned him extensively and he mentioned lots of names,” Mr. Bowden said.

The fact is, without a doubt, these guys, several of them, were tortured

But then the Americans heard it again, this time from a captive named Mohammed al-Qahtani, who described al-Kuwaiti as a courier close to Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, the number three in al-Qaeda and the 9/11 mastermind.

When Khalid Sheikh Mohamed was caught in 2003, he also spoke about al-Kuwaiti, although he down-played his significance and claimed he had retired from al-Qaeda. But then yet another detainee, Hassan Ghul, described al-Kuwaiti as an important courier and trusted aide to bin Laden.
Even then it was just a name. But in 2005, the Americans captured a senior al-Qaeda figure named Abu Faraj al-Libi in Pakistan and, interestingly, he claimed to have never heard of al-Kuwaiti.
Officials didn’t believe him. If four other al-Qaeda veterans knew him, so did al-Libi. The fact he wouldn’t acknowledge knowing him, together with Khalid Sheikh Mohamed’s attempt to downplay his importance, could mean al-Kuwaiti was someone special.

By 2007, Mr. Bowden writes, the U.S. had identified al-Kuwaiti as Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed. They found him three years later by tracing his phone and followed him to bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad.

“The fact is, without a doubt, these guys, several of them, were tortured,” Mr. Bowden said of the detainees who had identified al-Kuwaiti. “But nevertheless, several of them, in being tortured, tried to mislead the CIA. So I mean, they weren’t coughing up important details. It was really more the CIA discerning, on the basis of the various answers they were getting, that this was obviously someone really important because these key people were trying to hide him.”

Torture may not have been decisive, or even necessary, but it was clearly part of the story

In other words, bin Laden was not necessarily found because of torture. But at the same time, the U.S. cannot claim to have taken out bin Laden without having tortured anyone along the way. So like many successes in the fight against terrorism, it was a victory, but a tainted one.

As for Mr. Slahi, two years ago the U.S. District Court ruled that while he had fought with al-Qaeda, was an al-Qaeda sympathizer, had associated with a half-dozen al-Qaeda members and terrorists and had lived among al-Qaeda members in Montreal, the government’s case against him was too tainted by coercion to say that he was “part of al-Qaeda.”

The judge ordered his release but he remains at Guantanamo Bay, his lawyer said. She declined to comment on Mr. Bowden’s book. “Just turn me over to Canada,” Mr. Slahi said at one of his detainee hearings.

National Post
sbell@nationalpost.com