The role of wives in final destiny of top two al-Qaeda leaders

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil: Other than their Yemeni backgrounds, another commonality between Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki was that they both were tracked and killed soon after their wives joined them, when both of them already had two each. If Osama bin Laden’s first wife is suspected of reuniting with him in Abbottabad ‘for final duty to perform for my husband,’ when he was already living with the two, Yemni-American Anwar al-Awlaki was trapped by his desire to have a third wife from Europe. Orla Borg, a journalist from Denmark who earlier broke the story of a Danish intelligence agent infiltrated to al-Qaeda and played the role of a matchmaker for al-Awlaki, shared these details giving a presentation at Global Investigative Journalism Conference which started here on Saturday. The topic of his discussion was “how to cover the national security”. It centred around one point that any information related to the national security must be fully documented. Agent of Danish intelligence agency, PET, Morten Storm, who infiltrated to militants posing himself as Muslim-convert, had approached to Borg’s newspaper, Jyllandsposten, to spill the beans. Storm was outraged after the CIA refused to acknowledge his credit in tracking down al-Awlaki, one of the world’s most wanted militant killed through drone strikes. The CIA instead tried to silence him with $250,000 for arranging al-Awlaki’s marriage with a western blonde from East Europe that Storm approached through Facebook knowing she was die-hard fan of the cleric. While Danish journalist shared the story to tell that how he spent 120 hours interviewing Storm and verified his documents lest he was not planting him a baseless story, the details themselves are interesting. Storm would introduce himself as Danish Murad in Islamic centres he visited and the militants he met. He managed to cultivate contacts with al-Awlaki, a Yemeni-American cleric whose sermons turned many Muslims radical who were later found carrying out terror activities. Faisal Shehzad, Pakistani-American, implicated for attempting to detonate at Times Square (New York), was also influenced by al-Awlaki, among others.Although al-Awlaki already had two wives, he wanted to have third marriage with a Croatian-Muslim girl, Aminah, who had expressed fervent admiration for him and wrote at her Facebook page that she was ready for dangerous things like suicide bombing. The Danish agent, Storm, approached her at the Facebook and arranged her marriage with the Yemeni-American cleric who had shifted back to Yemen and the CIA was making attempts to hunt him down. Storm’s efforts to connect Aminah with al-Awlaki were intended to locate his position. As the arrangements were finalised and she was ready to depart for Yemen to meet her future husband, Storm installed chips inside her suitcases to track the location once she would meet al-Awlaki. Meanwhile, CIA carried out her surveillance until she landed at Sanaa (Yemen) airport. As she was received by al-Qaeda operatives, Aminah was asked to abandon all the belongings in suitcases fearing that some surveillance gadgets might not have been fixed somewhere. Same had happened when Osama bin Laden’s first wife, Khairee Hussain, came to reunite with him after over a decade as she was sent to Iran following 9/11 when the al-Qaeda top leader had to go in hiding moving from one to another place. She was strip-searched, all her belongings returned to ensure she didn’t carry any chip installed for tracking her movement. Later, during hot exchanges with Khalid, Osama’s son from second wife, Khairee told him that purpose of her reunion was “one final duty to perform for my husband”. As Khalid shared this line with Osama, he said resigning to fate: “So be it. It would be a favour, wouldn’t it; putting me out of my misery? And that is a wife’s duty.” Osama then also advised his two other wives and children to leave the compound sensing danger but they refused. As for as al-Awlaki’s case is concerned, her would-be wife was also strip-searched. She was later married to the Yemeni cleric, short before he was killed with her in a drone strike. The CIA took the credit of tracking him down without acknowledging the role of Storm, the Danish agent, who rang to the newspaper to tell his story. Sensing a propaganda stunt and especially when Storm had played a dubious role as a double agent, Jyllandsposten newspaper wanted to confirm details through proof. Storm produced a video of al-Awlaki and e-mail exchanges with him, postcards from intelligence agents, an audiotape of a CIA agent he knew as Michael and a photograph of $250,000 in $100 bills — money he says the CIA paid him for his role as marriage broker. As the story appeared, it started a new debate about the role of Danish intelligence agency as complicit in killings of target of another country. A new legislation was introduced holding the agency to account for its unauthorised role, though no inquiry was ordered into Storm’s case as doing so would have implicated the present and past government, said Danish journalist, Borg.