EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is excerpted from the e book Race Against Terror by Jake Tapper, revealed by Atria, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Printed by permission. Copyright © 2025 by Jake Tapper.
Spin Ghul’s want for jihad began when he was a baby in Saudi Arabia, the place his mother and father had remained after touring from Niger on holy pilgrimage. From his elementary college days, he was decided to grow to be a spiritual soldier, particularly after studying about the Soviet-Afghan War, and the way the Islamist holy warriors — the mujahideen — had been serving to defeat the USSR in the bloody battle.
After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, many mujahideen joined Chechen rebels to battle for independence, Chechnya being a majority-Muslim autonomous republic. The First Chechen War lasted from 1994 till the Chechens recaptured their capital metropolis of Grozny in August 1996, prompting Russia to agree to a ceasefire. Tens of 1000’s of Russian troopers, Chechen fighters, and Chechen civilians had been killed. In September 1999, the Second Chechen War broke out after 4 condo blocks in Russia had been bombed, which Russia blamed on separatist militants. Fueled with cash and fighters from Arab international locations, backed to a a lot better extent than the first time round, this conflict lasted for a full decade and included Vladimir Putin’s bloody siege of Grozny.
This was the battle Spin Ghul had wished to be part of, and it could ultimately set him on a path towards being half of an al Qaeda ambush towards American servicemembers in Afghanistan in 2003, main an effort to blow up the US embassy in Nigeria, and changing into the very first overseas terrorist ever tried in a US prison court docket for killing US troops in a conflict zone.
This account relies on authorized paperwork from his 2017 trial, together with a transcript of his 2011 confession earlier than an Italian court docket, and a number of interviews with these concerned in his case.
Ghul’s formative years had been bleak. The world of peasants — undocumented, primarily indentured servants — was even worse in Saudi Arabia for Black folks. In 2000, a buddy of his, Amran, who knew Spin Ghul favored navy magazines, gave him one he’d picked up. The journal had pictures of airplanes in addition to an image of the Pentagon.
Spin Ghul took the journal and requested his buddy, “Where can we steal an airplane and go hit the Pentagon with it?”
Amran took the journal again from Spin Ghul. He didn’t give his buddy an reply. He didn’t say sure or no. This wasn’t only a random remark, in spite of everything. Amran labored for the Saudi authorities, in an workplace run by a person named Suleiman.
Suleiman was one thing of a neighborhood jihadi legend. He’d fought the Soviets in Afghanistan throughout the Eighties and claimed to know Osama bin Laden. When Spin Ghul met him, Suleiman was nonetheless very a lot concerned in jihad, albeit in a distinct position. Suleiman recruited and despatched would-be fighters to websites of jihadi battle: Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Not that Spin Ghul had to be recruited for jihad. He was already dedicated to it. The journal sparked the second of motion and set the plans into movement, however the want was already there.
Suleiman launched Spin Ghul to a person named Mahir in the metropolis of Taif, Saudi Arabia. Using his beginning identify, Adnan Ibrahim Harun Adam, and a Niger passport, Spin Ghul obtained a visa in Riyadh, after which he and Mahir, a fixer and coordinator, flew collectively from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to Doha, Qatar, then on to Karachi, Pakistan, and at last Quetta.
From Pakistan, they drove a small automotive throughout the Afghanistan border. Mahir served as a liaison between Spin Ghul and members of al Qaeda. They didn’t speak a lot on their journey. Spin Ghul didn’t speak about his hopes for jihad or his plans till they arrived in Afghanistan and Spin Ghul joined a gaggle of different wannabe jihadis who had been connected with al Qaeda operatives. Spin Ghul was shuttled to an al Qaeda protected home close to Kandahar, Afghanistan, in August 2001, the place he and the new recruits awaited their subsequent task.
Day-to-day operations had been run by three al Qaeda operatives: Abdul Fida al-Yemeni, Usaid al-Yemeni, and Abu Zubair al-Haleidi. At the protected home, jihadis would talk with operatives out in the discipline and with informants from all through the space.
Of the three, Spin Ghul discovered Abdul Fida al-Yemeni to be the friendliest. Abdul Fida al-Yemeni had been in Afghanistan for some time already, having educated at the infamous al Farouq training camp.
He instructed Spin Ghul that he’d met “the Sheikh,” the legendary Osama bin Laden, and the Sheikh had mentioned a plan to assault America utilizing airplanes. A couple of days later, they had been all sitting round the protected home in September 2001 after they heard their associates fortunately shouting on the radio. They had been celebrating, ululating, crying “Allahu Akbar,” as a result of al Qaeda operatives had succeeded in hijacking 4 US industrial airplanes and flying them into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing 1000’s of harmless American civilians. Spin Ghul’s associates and fellow jihadis instructed them on the radio that they’d file the information and produce the videotapes to present them the scenes of carnage.
A couple of days later, they had been loaded into a big truck and pushed to a training camp a couple of hours exterior Kandahar. It was the final time Spin Ghul noticed Abdul Fida al-Yemeni, who would ultimately be arrested by Pakistani safety forces, and despatched to Guantánamo Bay. It wasn’t clear what the plan was for Spin Ghul, although his impression was that he was going to be training in preparation both for American troopers coming to Afghanistan or for an al Qaeda assault on an American ship, comparable to the assault on the USS Cole, a suicide bombing in Yemen in 2000 that had killed seventeen American sailors.
One day, a Toyota truck pulled into the training camp, pushed by a person with a limp who was a prime al Qaeda official. Other jihadis got here and went. Senior al Qaeda operative Abu Faraj al-Libi was there, as was Osama bin Laden’s non secular adviser Khallad al-Kuwaiti, lengthy earlier than both man was captured and despatched to the detainee heart at Guantánamo Bay. Spin Ghul had problem discerning who was with al Qaeda and who had been simply run-of-the-mill jihadis.
Making these recruits jihadi warriors was, of course, the plan. The truck, Spin Ghul was happy to uncover, was headed for the notorious al Farouq training camp.
Abdul Bara al-Suri was the al Qaeda operative who initiated the training of new recruits, explaining the guidelines and legal guidelines of the camp. Al-Mohajiri, a Yemeni man, supervised their day-to-day training, taught with new zeal as a result of of the September 11 assault on the US. For a month or so, Spin Ghul and his fellow recruits had been instructed on how to use weapons, largely Soviet ones, Kalashnikov rifles and RPGs. They had been additionally educated in small arms and Uzi submachine weapons. They discovered how to function what was referred to as a “Pika,” a PK mild machine gun. They had been proven how to use grenades.
Realizing that his new path might shortly lead to loss of life, Spin Ghul approached an al Qaeda chief named Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi and instructed him that he wished to depart a wasiyya. For most Muslims, a wasiyya is their final will and testomony. To Islamist terrorists, it typically takes the kind of a video message recorded in the occasion that they’re killed, to be proven to their households and providing one final alternative to preach their zealotry and rattling their enemies from past the grave. It was the first time Spin Ghul ever recorded a video, and when he completed, Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi gave it to Abu Faraj al-Libi to ship to Spin Ghul’s household ought to he grow to be a “martyr.”
By the time Spin Ghul started training at al Farouq in the fall of 2001, alumni of this al Qaeda training floor included Mohammed Saddiq Odeh and Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-‘Owhali, both convicted in 2001 for assisting in the 1998 bombing of the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Saeed al-Ghamdi and Ahmed al-Nami, two of the four men who hijacked United Airlines Flight 93, which took off from Newark Airport and crash-landed in Pennsylvania; Wail al-Shehri and Waleed al-Shehri, two of the four men who hijacked American Airlines Flight 11, which took off from Boston’s Logan Airport and was flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center; “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh; and “Australian Taliban” David Hicks.
Recruits started by studying how to combine into navy life. Then they moved to training in largely Russian-made weapons, out there both as a result of they had been relics from the conflict that had led to 1989 or had been extra simply trafficked as a result of of proximity — Kalashnikovs, of course, but additionally AK-74 assault rifles and different variants, self-loading SKS carbines, RPD and RPK mild machine weapons, and extra.
From there, Spin Ghul and his classmates went to a brand new camp with extra seasoned educated fighters. After passing via Kandahar, they had been put right into a automotive and pushed to a protected home in Kabul, Afghanistan, then to the Malik training camp, the place they had been taught to use mines and mortars. Then they had been taken to a camp referred to as “Maskar 9” or “Camp Nine,” the place they had been instructed in how to take benefit of terrain and geography, in addition to how to detonate TNT and different explosives.
At Maskar 9, Abdul Wakil al-Masri was the commander. Indeed, he was the commander of all al Qaeda forces in the north. It was at Camp Nine the place Adnan Harun Adam grew to become “Spin Ghul,” or “White Rose.” A younger Pashto cook dinner gave him the identify as an homage to a fallen Black fighter, a Somali killed throughout the conflict towards the Soviets, to whom they’d given the identify as an ironic twist on his darkish pores and skin. Al Qaeda was not with out racism towards non-Arab fighters.
Less than a month after the assaults of September 11, the US started retaliating towards al Qaeda and the Taliban-run authorities of Afghanistan for sheltering them. The American bombing marketing campaign started on October 7, 2001, in Afghanistan, and that’s when al Qaeda leaders divided the jihadis in Camp Nine into two teams. Spin Ghul and his group of jihadis moved right into a protected home in a small city referred to as Angoor Ada, the website of a border crossing between Pakistan’s Waziristan area and Afghanistan.
Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi would run this protected home. Day-to-day operations had been run by an al Qaeda operative named Abdul Faras, who additionally taught navy techniques. Another group of jihadis had already reconned the space, discovered a brand new US Army base, and attacked it with weapons and explosives. Spin Ghul heard about this battle and was prepared to be part of the battle.