Book Review | Inside The Jihad: My Life with Al-Qaeda: A Spy's Story

CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence
Studies in Intelligence, 2007

Inside The Jihad: My Life with Al-Qaeda: A Spy's Story

Omar Nasir. New York: Perseus Books Group, 2006, 337 pp., glossary, maps, index.

Reviewed by Hayden B. Peake, curator of the CIA's Historical Intelligence Collection

Omar Nasiri, a pseudonym, was a multi-lingual walk-in to the offices of DGSE (the French foreign intelligence service) in Belgium in the mid 1990s. A Moroccan member of the Algerian terrorist organization Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA), Nasiri was something of a maverick--he drank, smoked, went to night clubs, and enjoyed western women; attributes he never gave up. To maintain his lifestyle--and replace the money he had stolen from his GIA cell--he sold his services to the DGSE. For the next six years he reported on the cell's operations and membership, which included two of his brothers and his mother. Incredibly, Nasiri claims to have admitted to two cell members that he had contacted the DGSE. He asked for forgiveness and submitted to a test of his allegiance by successfully smuggling guns into Algeria, a feat that surprised his colleagues. When members of the Brussels cell were arrested, Omar "escaped." The DGSE helped him reach Pakistan and from there Afghanistan. He was trained in weapons and explosives in Al Qa'ida training camps for more than a year.

Nasiri's first Al Qa'ida assignment was to form a sleeper cell of Islamist recruits in London. He informed the DGSE, which, jointly with MI6 and MI5 in London, controlled his activities. These included attendance at local Mosques that served as sources of recruits. At some point he learned that members of his Belgian cell who who knew of his DGSE links were to be released from jail, and, fearing exposure and reprisal, he asked for and was denied French asylum and protection. Instead, he went to Germany to stay with a German girl he had met and whom he eventually married. The Germans were no more helpful than the French, however, and he was denied permanent resident status. Thus forced into menial work cleaning toilets he decided to write Inside the Jihad for the money and revenge. Not surprisingly, then, the book is hard on the DGSE, which Nasiri says "hung him out to dry" after faithful service.

Is his story true? The BBC thought it was good enough for a 45 minute documentary in November 2006. His US publisher said the facts they could check, for example the story of the cell members arrests, checked out. They also consulted former CIA terrorist specialist Mike Scheuer, who said the training story rang true.2

Nasiri concludes his memoirs by noting that "I am a Muslim. And to this day I would go to war for my faith.... Part of me remains a mujahid. I think the United States and all the others should get off our land, and stay off. I think they should stop interfering in the politics of the Muslim nations. I think they should leave us alone. And when they don't they should be killed, because that is what happens to invading armies and occupiers." (318-19) This we can believe.