May-September, 2001: Future Terror Detainee Journeys to Afghanistan

Binyam Mohamed, a 23-year old Muslim of Ethiopian descent residing in London, flies to Pakistan to experience Islam in its “purest form” as practiced by the Taliban. Mohamed, who was abandoned by his family in London when he was 15, is a former heroin addict and desultory college student who turned to the local mosque as a way to avoid his drug-using friends. He will later claim, “I really had no idea what it was” that the Taliban espoused; he goes to Afghanistan on the advice of some in the mosque. After arriving in Pakistan, he sneaks into Afghanistan in the back of a truck. He will later say that he learns about the Muslim rebels in Chechnya from sympathizers in Jalalabad, and determines to aid the Muslim cause, but, he claims, as an aid worker, not a terrorist or Taliban fighter. Yet he agrees to undergo basic training in Afghanistan for fighters. He will later say: “I was told that the Russians don’t separate between aid workers and those doing the fighting, and that if I wanted to go to Chechnya, I needed basic training. I was so young, I didn’t question it. I didn’t expect to fire a gun except in training, let alone kill someone.… I would never have taken up arms against British or American soldiers, let alone attacked civilians. I wanted to protect civilians, not kill them.” He completes a 45-day “boot camp” course, where, he will later say, he learned nothing to do with terrorism, such as bomb-making techniques. But instead of traveling to Chechnya, he goes to Kabul, where he contracts malaria. He is in the hospital when he learns of the 9/11 attacks. He thinks Afghanistan will soon be under attack from Western forces, and, he will later say, decides to leave for London before the fighting can start (see September 2001 - April 9, 2002). “All I wanted to do was to get back to London, to the country that I thought of as home, to continue my education and find a job; to get back to my life, minus the drugs,” he will say. [Daily Mail, 3/8/2009]