Zarqawi: Delinquent to extremist

2004-11-08 23:13

Zarqa, Jordan - Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terror suspect who is the most wanted man in Iraq, graduated from delinquency to Islamic extremism after one of his sisters had a visionary dream.

Those who knew Fadel Nazzal al-Khalayleh, as he was named at birth, as a teenager in his hometown of Zarqa, north of Amman, remember a hot-headed youth, always armed with a pen-knife and a tattoo on his arm.

At 22, Zarqawi married a cousin on his mother's side while working as a clerk for the Zarqa municipality.

Six months later he left his impoverished town for Pakistan where he worked for the mujahedeen newspaper Al Bayan Al Marssus.

He quit three months later "because the pay was very low and he was dreaming of being a (Muslim) fighter," said Jordanian Abdullah Abu Rumman, one of Zarqawi's jail mates in Jordan.

Three years before Zarqawi was tried and sentenced in 1994 to 15 years in prison for membership in an illegal group and arms possession, he met Mohamad al-Makdessi, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin and founder of a salafist group.

Zarqawi was impressed by Makdessi's teachings, after meeting in Pakistan and and decided to join his radical Islamist group "Al-Muwahadin" (Unificators).

His became a radical for two reasons, those who know him said.

He was "shocked" by the social openness that emerged in conservative Jordan with the arrival of tens of thousands of Palestinians who fled Kuwait after Iraq invaded the Gulf emirate in 1990.

Dream

Abu Rumman said he was also marked by a dream one of his sisters had.

"She experienced a 'ro'yah', a vision that the faithful have. She saw a sword coming from the heavens and bearing the word 'jihad' (holy war) on one side and a verse from the Koran (the Muslim holy book) on the other.

"The verse said 'God will never abandon you and will never forget you'," Abu Rumman told AFP.

"This vision convinced him that he had a calling for an important role."

During the first eight months of his imprisonment, Zarqawi memorised the Qu'ran and continued to study the holy book during his incarceration at Swaqa prison 1995-1997.

Abu Rumman, jailed in Swaqa in 1996 for criticising the government's handling of a bread riot in the southern town of Karak, said Zarqawi began encouraging other detainees to join Al-Muwahadin.

This prompted the authorities to transfer Zarqawi to Jafer prison, until his release under a general amnesty in May 1999.

By then, his influence over other detainees has grown so much that he took over the group's control from Maqdessi, said prison doctor Bassel Ishaq Abu Sabha.

Zarqawi went to Peshawar, Pakistan in 2000 but a few months later the authorities decided to expel him to Jordan, where he was sentenced to a new 15-year jail term for conspiracy to plot attacks during millennium celebrations.

Bin Laden

He slipped into Afghanistan where he met Osama bin Laden and stayed with him until the end of 2001, when Zarqawi moved to Iraqi Kurdistan to join Ansar al-Islam, a group linked to bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network.

"Zarqawi declared war against the United States after they bombed the Taliban, whom he admired very much. Mullah Omar was his hero," a man who knew Zarqawi in those days told AFP.

Zarqawi celebrated his 38th birthday in October with a $25m bounty on his head for a string of attacks against civilians and troops in Iraq.

- AFP