Wanted man ... Zarqawi led a rogue's life before he found religion / Reuters (File)
By John Elliott and Nick Fielding
June 06, 2005
FAMILY photographs of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi are to appear in the first biography in English of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The book includes pictures of Zarqawi with his Jordanian bedouin mother and father, both of whom are dead. Other photographs show him shortly before his journey to become a fighter in Afghanistan and in prison in Jordan in the 1990s.
Zarqawi's group in Iraq has been linked to numerous insurgent atrocities, including several beheadings of hostages.
The biography, Zarqawi: The New Face of Terrorism, claims that Zarqawi, as part of an attempt to build a Europe-wide network of sympathisers, has developed close links with an Islamic cleric under house arrest in Britain.
"With Osama bin Laden out of circulation or incapacitated, Zarqawi ... is probably the most important figure within the radical Islamists," said Jean-Charles Brisard, the book's author and a French terrorism investigator.
Mr Brisard recounts how Zarqawi, now 37, was expelled from school. He worked in a paper plant and then as a maintenance worker before drifting into crime.
According to the book: "Those who knew him in those years say that he drank like a fish and covered his body with tattoos, two practices condemned by Islam. They called him 'the green man' on account of his many tattoos."
Zarqawi was later convicted for wounding with a knife. He was also arrested for shoplifting, drug dealing and a rape allegation.
His mother was so concerned about his criminality she enrolled him at a local mosque.
There, under the tutelage of a radical preacher, he decided to travel to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet occupiers. By 1989 his conversion to radical Islam had begun.
Since then Zarqawi has spent two periods in Afghanistan and two in Jordanian prisons.
In 2000-01 he began to build his own network based at Herat in western Afghanistan.
The book says Zarqawi has used his European network to recruit fighters to Iraq and to make contact with Abu Qatada, a Jordanian cleric now under house arrest in Britain.
Qatada was described by a Spanish judge as the spiritual guide for al-Qaeda and bin Laden's personal representative in Europe.
Mr Brisard has previously published the controversial book Bin Laden: the Forgotten Truth, which argued Washington planned its "war on terror" years before the September 11 attacks on the US and that an American desire for access to Central Asian oil blinded it to national security concerns.
Meantime a former personal bodyguard to bin Laden has revealed how the al-Qaeda leader survived at least three assassination attempts in Afghanistan and rejected several requests to return to his native Saudi Arabia - including one delivered in person by his mother.
Abu Jindal, 35, a Yemeni who claims to have worked for bin Laden from 1995 until 2000, said he was given the authority to kill the terror chief if he seemed about to be taken by his enemies.
"I was the only member of his bodyguard who was given this authority," he said when interviewed in Yemen by London-based Arabic newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi.
"I took care to keep the two bullets in good condition and cleaned them every night ... If enemy forces surrounded Sheik Osama and there was no possibility that he would escape, I was to kill him before they could catch him alive," he said.
Abu Jindal said there were at least three assassination attempts during his time with bin Laden in Afghanistan.
The first was in 1998 by a young Uzbek, allegedly sent by the Saudis and offered a reward of 2 million Saudi riyals - $730,000 at today's rates - and Saudi nationality.
"He was only 18 and had been deceived. He was crying in a very pathetic manner and said, 'I made a mistake'. Finally, Sheik Osama said to release him."
Following another failed assassination attempt in Jalalabad, Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader, convinced bin Laden to move to the comparative safety of Kandahar in the south.
"At one time the Saudi Government sent his mother and his half-brother by a special Saudi plane that landed at Kandahar airport," said Abu Jindal.
The ex-bodyguard, whose real name is Nasir Ahmad Nasir al-Bahri, served a short prison sentence after returning home. He is now free, although closely watched by the intelligence services.
