In Italian Jail, Al Qaeda Suspects Curse U.S.

Three weeks ago, Italian police arrested seven alleged members of an Al Qaeda cell accused of recruiting fighters and sending them and funds to training camps in northeastern Iraq run by Ansar al Islam, a terrorist group recently routed by U.S. and Kurdish troops.

After the arrests, detectives in an anti-terrorist police squad in Milan put two suspected leaders of the Italian network in a holding cell equipped with a listening device.

The following dialogue, according to wiretap transcripts in a court document, took place April 1 between Cabdullah Ciise, a.k.a. Mohamed, and Radi Ayashi, a.k.a. Merai. Ciise, a 28-year-old Somali, was arrested while visiting from London, where he allegedly helped finance a terrorist cell involved in a car bomb attack on Israeli tourists in Kenya in November.

Ayashi, 31, is an Egyptian based in Milan who allegedly helped send recruits to Iraq with the help of bosses in Syria.

The two men kept up their morale by insulting their captors and reciting extremist rhetoric. And although they are part of an allegedly sophisticated network spread across Europe and the Middle East, they talked frankly and apparently without thinking that their jail cell might be bugged.

Mohamed: What a situation!

Merai: God sees them. You be calm.

Mohamed: I’m calm, but inside me there is so much confusion.

*

Mohamed: I have doubts about the damned telephones. If it’s like this it’s a huge problem because the others who are waiting for me, Abderrazak, Abu Zaied, Abdelkarim, they are wanted by most of the secret services, especially Abu Zaied by the French.

Merai: I don’t think so. Because I don’t use the phone much, I’m always changing the [phone] card, and the calls we made together we made from outside.

*

Merai: Enemies of God, sons of dogs. Stupid questions. Have you been in Iran? What’s the problem if I’ve been in Iran. Have you been in Syria? Stupid questions.

Mohamed: They told me I was Sudanese.

Merai: You tell them yes, no, maybe, I forgot, give them the runaround. These people here, servants of the Americans, they are slaves.

Mohamed: Yes, yes.

Merai: Now they’ve put Iraq in the middle, the American and Israeli dogs, God curse them and their allies, including the Italian government ....

If they ask me if I fought in Afghanistan, I’ll tell them yes. So what? Is there a problem? They are armed, and they are scared of us.

*

Merai: Surely they’ll ask you about people who were in Afghanistan, they want the bosses. Curse them. They like 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 sensation of dying a martyr. God, help me to be your martyr.

(They recite verses of the Koran.)

*

Merai: Do you know the jihad hymn against the Americans?

Mohamed: Yes!

Merai: By Sheik Faisal. Come on, let’s recite it together.

(They recite the hymn.)

*

Mohamed: But usually, when they make an arrest, do they put two guys together?

Merai: No!

Mohamed: And so why did they put us together?

Merai: They did a raid, and surely everything’s full.

Mohamed: Strange.

*

-- Sebastian Rotella