Free A Kidnapping in Milan: The CIA on Trial by Steve Hendricks Page A

like the high priest of the mujahidin, and troops were apparently moved by his antebellum harangues. In combat they proved fearless or nearly so, but their first assaults were debacles. Men whose dearest wish is to be martyred are not necessarily assets under fire. They are wont to charge fortified machine-gun positions without a preceding artillery bombardment or covering small-arms fire. Their efficacy is then hindered by being cut in half. It would take time for the commanders of the Islamic Brigade to convince their men to sell their lives dearly.
    Martyrdom, however, was good for recruiting. Hardly had a martyr, if martyred spectacularly, departed for his seventy-two wives than tales of him spread across the Islamic world. (The hadith, contrary to common report, does not specify that the seventy-two are virgins.) As such tales multiplied, Shaaban began to draw men from not just Milan but across Italy, then from other European countries, then from throughout the Arab world. There is a story of an Egyptian peasant, one Mahmoud al-Saidi, who desired to make jihad in Bosnia and asked his village elders how he might do so. Go to Milan, they told him, and seek out Anwar Shaaban. So al-Saidi sold his only cow to pay the airfare.
    At its peak, the Islamic Brigade may have numbered five thousand men and was supported by tens of millions of dollars—by some accounts, hundreds of millions of dollars—that flowed through dozens of Islamic charities. Eventually the Brigadiers learned to fight. They won small battles, then larger ones, often with ugly consequences. After taking a village, they might smash the pews of its ancient church, burn its relics, and deface centuries-old murals by excising the head of a Madonna or modifying the genitalia of her Son. Worse might be in store for the villagers. When the Brigade took the Croat town of Miletici, with the loss of one of their fighters, they told their Croat captives that their dead comrade’s life had been worth those of four infidels. They selected four young men of the town, tortured them horrifically (the face of one was sliced off), and slit their throats. As the blood rushed from them, the executioners caught it in bowls and ladled it back over their heads. After another battle, at Podsijelovo, they tortured several Serbian fighters, then paired them off, armed them with knives, and ordered them to fight each other to the death. Those who refused or who became injured were decapitated with chainsaws or cleavers. Those who survived were made to kiss the severed heads, which the mujahidin nailed to trees. The Islamists evidently videotaped some of the sport at Podsijelovo; recordings of it were reported to have circulated among the faithful. A witness to another battle said that afterward the holy warriors and their wives took turns shooting two Serbian prisoners, then decapitated them and played soccer with the heads.
    “They like to kill,” said a Bosnian soldier who fought with them. “Whenever they could kill with their knives, they would do so.”
    Shaaban’s martial endeavors were not restricted to Bosnia. He also sent recruits to al-Qaeda’s training camps in Afghanistan. He showed them how to get visas to Pakistan on religious grounds, then arranged their travel, often by way of an intermediate point like Geneva or Zurich so as to cloud their point of origin. In Islamabad or Peshawar, al-Qaeda would take charge of them. One recruit Shaaban directed in this manner was L’Houssaine Kherchtou, a baker from Morocco who had come to Milan to make money, not war, but who was won over to jihad by Shaaban. Sent to Pakistan, Kherchtou was tutored by al-Qaeda in surveillance, electronics, and the use of rifles, anti-aircraft guns, mines, and explosives. Some of the lessons supposedly took place at bin Laden’s house in Peshawar. After a tour of duty in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda sent Kherchtou to Kenya and Sudan to become bin Laden’s personal pilot, but when al-Qaeda cut off