Sunday 7 December 2014
Abu Qatadah, a German-born Muslim convert, who has brokered our visit to the Islamic State, is almost as wide as he is tall, with a thick, reddish-brown beard. My photographer son Frederic and I load our bags into the bed of the white pickup Qatadah and his driver arrived in. The driver’s head and face are so thoroughly wrapped with a large grey shawl that only his eyes and the contours of his nose are visible. He murmurs a greeting in English in a strikingly rhythmic accent. For security reasons, we can’t use the main roads. The drive to Raqqa takes more than three hours.
Qatadah claims business is booming in Isis. Almost all the shops are open and lots of goods are being sold, above all at the markets. We notice the new construction. “In places that are not being bombed, life goes on as normal,” Qatadah tells us. Then he gives us a short lecture on Isis’s version of sharia.
For theft of goods worth more than $40 (£28), a hand is cut off. $40 is the price of a gram of gold.
Christians have to pay jizya, a protection tax. It comes to about $300 (£210) a year for poor people and $600 (£420) for the rich. But then that is the only tax. Christians are among the more prosperous inhabitants of the country. All they have to do is sell a couple of sheep to raise the money to cover the tax.
Muslims pay a zakat, or religious tax, based on their assets. Rich Muslims pay more tax than Christians. Poor ones pay less. The money is used for social programmes. In Raqqa, for example, Isis runs three hospitals.
At the moment, Isis finances itself mostly through assets seized in war, sales of oil and the zakat. In reality, Qatadah claims, there are no slave markets the way we imagine them. Slaves are part of the spoils of war and therefore either go to the fighters or are sold. A Yazidi woman is worth about $1,500 (£1,050) at the moment. About the same price as a Kalashnikov.
It is already dark when we arrive in Raqqa. We drive by a circular plaza we recognise from media reports. It’s surrounded by an iron fence. This is where the heads of decapitated enemies are impaled and put on display. I had imagined the eerie plaza to be much larger. Frederic is not allowed to take any photographs – the decision of the masked driver, who evidently has a lot of say.
Frederic asks what they did with the bodies of the hostages they killed; James Foley and all the others. “They were buried individually, or rather, tossed into the ground. Somewhere,” Qatadah answers impassively.
Tomorrow we’re supposed to be going to Mosul. Because our iPhones have built-in GPS systems that cannot be disabled, they would pose a security risk. Therefore, the phones are going to stay here. We won’t be able to retrieve them until we leave.
Qatadah explains that, at the end of our journey, all our video and photo files will be reviewed. That’s normal procedure in war.
We look grim. That was not what we agreed to. We try to negotiate a compromise. But our driver, still completely disguised – and who clearly has more authority than we first realised – repeats the requirement emphatically, and with stinging coldness. Then, jutting his head forward, he looks us in the eye and asks if we finally understand. His right eyelid seems to droop a little.
An icy silence fills the room. The tone and atmosphere have suddenly changed. Qatadah seems to find the whole situation rather uncomfortable.
Monday 8 December 2014
Our request to report freely without any censorship has been categorically denied by Qatadah’s superiors. The security risk is too high. A drone only needs a single photograph of an individual to be able to target that person and kill him.
Qatadah tells us we’re no longer allowed to go out and about in Raqqa. We have to stay in the apartment until we leave for Mosul. I ask if before we leave we can at least see the British hostage, the journalist John Cantlie, or the famous executioner Jihadi John. Qatadah’s answer is a resounding “no”.
Abu Loth – a wiry fighter who looks about 25, also German, with Moroccan roots – appears along with our English “driver”, whose face is still hidden. The driver immediately takes charge of the conversation. Basically, he doesn’t trust journalists, and if we don’t want to accept that, then we can go. “Do you think it’s smart to let somebody come, someone you don’t know, to invite him to your state, the state everybody is fighting against? And then you don’t control him?”
He suggests a compromise. On this trip, he’ll show us a couple of things we want to see. If we prove ourselves to be trustworthy, we are welcome to come back and visit another time. Then all restrictions would be lifted. As it is, we have already achieved a great deal and can count ourselves lucky. We are the first non-Muslim journalists to come here without having our heads cut off.
Why are we so interested in this “Jihadi John, as you call him”, and Cantlie, the masked one wants to know. Why aren’t we interested in Muslims who are suffering in this country?
Despite his protestations, the theme of Cantlie seems to interest him. He leaves to speak with his superiors again to find out if we might be able to visit Raqqa after all, and whether a meeting with Cantlie might be possible, even without cameras. Our visit has been arranged by the central media department and by the caliph’s office. So no one wants to take any chances.
When Qatadah and the driver return, both look extremely sullen. Have their proposals been rejected? The driver sits down again on the armchair across from me. “Mosul or Turkey. That’s it,” he snaps disagreeably. And he sticks by his original proposal in the matter of Cantlie. I am mystified. He needs to treat us with more respect, I say.
The masked man ups the stakes. There will be restrictions in Mosul as well. I tell him calmly that the ban on leaving the apartment is completely unacceptable. Such a thing has never happened to me, not even when I visited the Taliban. “We aren’t the Taliban,” the masked man snarls. The only part of his face that is visible is that one eye with the half-closed lid. Meanwhile, Frederic is staring at the Englishman with a horrified look on his face.
I take the invitation from the caliph out of my pocket and say: “You gave us a formal invitation filled with grand words. Instead, you’re treating us like prisoners.”
“You are not prisoners,” the masked man yells in his rhythmic accent. “Prisoners don’t get to choose what they want for breakfast.”
“Change your tone right now,” I yell so loudly that he jumps.
The way he’s looking at us, there’s nothing he’d like better than to cut off our heads.
We try to extricate ourselves from this conflict without losing too much face and most importantly to return to a position where we can negotiate. So I tell the Englishman as calmly as I can that we are now going to return to our room to decide whether we wish to drive on to Mosul or turn back.
If we end the journey now, there’s a good chance Isis will change their minds and see a greater advantage in kidnapping or beheading us. That would be no worse loss of face for them than if, on our return, we describe how Isis’s word isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. It’s all too complicated for me. I don’t want to break off the journey because of a breach of etiquette. Apart from that, film and photos are also censored by western states in war zones for security reasons. We decide to continue with the journey, but to insist on changing the tone of our exchanges.
After a while, Qatadah comes into our room and asks if he can bring us anything. He obviously wants to smooth things over.
When he leaves, Frederic sits down next to me, white as a sheet. He whispers: “I’m not absolutely sure because I can’t check without my computer, but I think the masked Englishman is Jihadi John.”
We sit together in silence for a long time, just looking at one another.
Tuesday 9 December 2014
We have travelled in a small minibus to Mosul, in the heart of Isis. Five thousand Isis fighters control this city, which once had a population of two million. Fewer than 400 men were all it took to rout more than two divisions of Iraqi soldiers, 20,000 of them. Qatadah tells us it was only 183 men.
Mosul looks normal to us, just like other big cities in the Middle East – vibrant, with lots of traffic and countless people on the street. Did we just drive by an Isis traffic cop? I’m not sure, but that’s what it looked like.
Of course, as I look around, I don’t forget that countless Shias and Jews have been murdered in this city or driven out, and a zillion Christians have fled. Mosul is now a completely Sunni town. You can’t see the misery of those who were murdered or driven out.
We turn off into a side street to meet someone from the media department who is going to explain what will happen next. We’re led through a glass door into a small shop. This is where “Isis Publishing” conducts its business. The books and brochures piled up here will soon be distributed to mosques all over Isis territory. The latest flyers and brochures are laid out in a display case: “How to Handle Your Slaves”, “How to Swear Allegiance to the Caliph”, “How Women Should Behave and Dress”, “How to Look After the Poor”, “How to Be a Good Isis Fighter”.
Also on display is the first book officially published by Isis, Fiqh al Jihad (Understanding Jihad). Qatadah thinks that, if this book were found on me in Germany, I would be sentenced to at least seven years in jail.
Wednesday 10 December 2014
I suggest we go into one of the small fish restaurants to eat masgouf – carp baked in a clay oven, a speciality from Baghdad. It isn’t exactly the cleanest place in town. But as long as the food tastes good, we don’t mind. There is water and, of course, Pepsi to drink. Everyone likes the fish, which is indescribably crisp on the outside and wonderfully moist on the inside. Except for Qatadah. He orders a different fish, which he doesn’t like very much.
When I have to cross a neighbouring room on my way to the toilet, I see our two drivers from Raqqa without their masks sitting with two of our local escorts. I apologise and continue on my way. The strongly curved nose of our driver sticks in my mind. As does his long black hair, which falls down the back of his neck.
On the drive back to our bungalow, we notice there is something up with our driver. He’s furious with us again – probably because I saw him without his mask. After we’re parked, he gives Frederic an unfriendly nod and signals that he should follow him. Bent slightly forward in a domineering manner, with his head to one side and his eyelid half closed, the driver stares hard at Frederic: “You will go and get your cameras now, including all your memory cards. You will give them to me. I will look at everything, make a copy for you, and give you your cameras back tomorrow morning. Are we clear?”
Frederic tries to tell him he’s not OK with that and that he needs his original memory cards back. We did not agree that Isis would make copies of his material. That is not going to happen under any circumstances.
Our driver is on the point of exploding. He is seething with rage.
Frederic sees that the situation could escalate at any time and he shrugs his shoulders. Then he gets his cameras and gives them to our poisonous chief driver before he blows up completely.
Confused, we go to our bungalow. Just before the entrance, Qatadah and I get into an argument about the behaviour of our driver. Suddenly, Qatadah starts shouting.
“We don’t give a shit how you are welcomed and treated in other countries in the Muslim world. They are all just kissing your ass. We will not kiss your ass,” he curses. “You are never satisfied. You are always asking questions. Challenging us the whole time, everything we do. And may I say, you are really pissing off some people here. We will not accept that.” Our Isis minders are a bundle of nerves. We are, too.
An even greater distance develops between us and our escorts over the next two days in Mosul, before we return to Raqqa and begin the long wait to cross the border. Finally, on Monday 15 December, we are given our mobile phones back, and left to run in the shadow of an armed Turkish watchtower, across a ploughed field and over the border.
A couple of days after our return, Frederic gives me a call. “Do you recognise this voice?” he asks. The voice I hear is unclear, but the rhythm of the speech seems familiar – it’s our “driver”. Frederic says: “That is Jihadi John, the executioner.”
Later, Frederic plays me the video where Jihadi John threatens to behead two kidnapped Japanese nationals. It’s as though someone has slapped me upside the head. The rhythmic, driving speech pattern, the mostly half-closed eyes, that piercing stare, the body language – exactly the same. Although the voice in the video has been electronically altered by lowering its pitch, for me there’s hardly a shadow of a doubt.
Frederic has one more surprise. He has found a YouTube video released by the infamous hacker group Anonymous, in which Jihad John’s voice has been restored as far as possible to its normal pitch. We can hardly believe how much it sounds like our driver. Recently published photos of Jihadi John show an incredible similarity to the man I saw – albeit briefly – without his disguise. They also match the outline of the masked face that sat across from me in the car for so many days.
None of this is 100% proof, and I would never pretend it is. But everything fits together. The way he appeared to have easy access to the journalist Cantlie. His irritation when I refused to take part in the propaganda show with Cantlie. His absurd disguise all day and all night. The way he freaked out when I happened to see him one day without it.
We have no doubt Isis will deny everything. After all, Jihadi John is one of the most sought-after terrorists in the world.
The next day, Frederic sends Qatadah the Anonymous audio. He asks whether the voice doesn’t remind him of our driver. The terse response comes right away.
“No.”
“Are you sure?” Frederic asks.
“Of course.” Qatadah replies.
•This is an edited extract from My Journey Into the Heart of Terror: Ten Days in the Islamic State by Jürgen Todenhöfer, published in English by Greystone on 21 April at £17.99
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