The Strange Case of the White Jihadist of Timbuktu
Was Abdul Jalil al-Fransi an al Qaeda fighter -- or a French spy?
BY HARALD DOORNBOS, JENAN MOUSSA | APRIL 12, 2013
Gilles Le Guen seemed like France's worst nightmare. He was a white
Frenchman who could move around the country at will and had pledged his
loyalty to al Qaeda's branch in North Africa. He had even fought alongside
the jihadists during their occupation of northern Mali. But the story may
not be so simple: Al Qaeda began to suspect that he was, in fact, a spy sent
by France to infiltrate its ranks, and it launched an investigation to
determine his true loyalties.
We know all this from a handwritten 10-page document in Arabic left behind
by the extremists in the legendary northern Malian town of Timbuktu as they
fled an impending French attack in January.
The document shows that Europeans did join al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb
(AQIM), but that the organization's leadership treated these "white al
Qaeda" with the utmost suspicion. Particularly following a Danish convert's
deadly betrayal of al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, the terrorist
group has good reason to be suspicious of white jihadists. The same applies
in Syria, where hundreds of fighters with European passports -- Arabs and
converts -- are joining extremist opposition groups.
Almost all jihadi fighters who conquered Timbuktu in March 2012 were Arabs
from Algeria, Morocco, Mali, or Mauritania. They were turban-wearing,
battled-hardened men belonging to AQIM who waged their jihad in one of the
most unforgiving places on Earth -- the Sahara, the world's largest desert.
Among this hardened group of fighters, Le Guen stood out. He was a convert
to Islam, a former ship captain, an ex-employee of Doctors Without Borders,
and he carried a French passport. He and his Moroccan wife arrived in
Timbuktu shortly before the town was captured by AQIM and its local Malian
partner, Ansar Dine. As the extremists approached Timbuktu, many black,
non-Arab Malians and Western tourists fled in panic. But Le Guen and his
wife chose to stay.
The Frenchman immediately joined al Qaeda's desert force. Le Guen's comrades
even gave him an Arabic nom de guerre: Abdul Jalil al-Fransi, or "Abdul
Jalil the Frenchman." In Timbuktu, he received military training from AQIM
and recorded a video message in French in support of the group's holy war.
The video of Le Guen sitting next to a Kalashnikov appeared on YouTube on
Oct. 9, and he looked every bit the confident Islamic warrior.
One month later, however, Le Guen was in trouble -- serious trouble. His new
friends had heard from an al Qaeda fighter that Le Guen received a telephone
call from the French Embassy in Mali's capital, Bamako. This, of course,
raised suspicion among AQIM ranks: Was Abdul Jalil al-Fransi a true
jihadist, or was he a French spy?
On Nov. 10, Le Guen was arrested and interrogated by al Qaeda forces in
Timbuktu. His Moroccan wife was also questioned. One day later, the group
opened an investigation into his case and appointed its notorious commander,
Abdul Hamid Abu Zaid, as the lead investigator. (Clearly such work wasn't
Abu Zaid's calling, as Gilles Le Guen's name was misspelled in Arabic
throughout the entire document as "Gilles Leon.")
Opened on Nov. 11, the investigation began with the testimony of an al Qaeda
fighter from Mauritania who went by the nom de guerre Abu al-Dardaa
al-Shanqiti. The fighter said he met the Frenchmen at the militants' Abu
Haretha camp, where Le Guen "entered a training session on heavy weapons and
showed patience while practicing."
The "Abu Haretha camp" is the former headquarters of Mali's military police
and was used by the militants after the security forces fled town. AQIM
transformed the building there into one of its headquarters and used the
site as a military training camp. During the French invasion, it was one of
the first targets of French airstrikes and is now fully destroyed.
The Mauritanian fighter said that Le Guen had told him that the French
Embassy had been in touch with him. He added that he considered Le Guen a
good man but someone who was "not well versed in the concept of allegiance
[to Islam]."
Le Guen also had money. "He told me his mother sends him money," Shanqiti
added. "And two months before he told me he likes to buy a car, because he
received 1,000 euros from his mother."
In addition to having contact with the French Embassy and a ready supply of
funds, Le Guen was asking questions about a sensitive topic for the
jihadists. "He always asked about the situation of the [Western] hostages
and what we will do after the attack of the enemies," the Mauritanian
fighter told the investigators,
The investigators then ask the Mauritanian witness about Nawal, Le Guen's
Moroccan wife. "Yes, his wife asks a lot of questions, like: 'What will the
brothers do if the war starts? Where will they go to?' Yesterday when I met
her after she was accused and after her husband was arrested, she was still
talking about the same topics."
After this, Le Guen himself was questioned. Abu Zaid, the top AQIM
commander, stepped in to interrogate him personally.
Le Guen was asked to introduce himself. The Frenchman mentioned he had
converted to Islam in 1982 or 1983 in Tunisia, while working on a ship.
The investigators asked for more details. "I was the captain of the ship,"
the Frenchman said. "In that year I quit my work. I returned to France. My
wife became a Muslim when I married her. She used to work in factories, and
then she moved to agriculture. In 1999, I divorced this woman after she gave
birth to two sons: 16-year old Abdul Karim, and the first son is called
Sinbad and he is 18. They are now in France."
The investigators weren't satisfied. They reported that they had decided to
repeat the investigation. In the page where they wrote down the basic
information about his name and occupation, they included a question: Did Le
Guen ever serve in the French Army?
"I served in it when I was 18, and my military rank was: deuxième classe,"
Le Guen claimed, giving a low rank. The investigators write in brackets the
word "soldier" next to his answer.
Le Guen claimed that he had forgotten the names of the weapons with which he
trained in the French Army. When the jihadists pressed him, he ventured that
he had shot an M7 machine gun.
The repeated investigation led to many pages of notes on Le Guen's personal
life. They reveal details about his life as a ship captain, his troubled
family life, and his broken relations with his siblings. During the course
of the investigation, Le Guen also revealed that at one point he went back
to France to work for the international NGO Doctors Without Borders and was
stationed in Ethiopia's capital of Addis Ababa for six months. "They took me
because I know languages like French, English, and Spanish," he said.
Doctors Without Borders' operations advisor, Fabrice Weissman, confirmed to
us that Le Guen had worked with the organization in 1985 as a logistician.
Weissman added that Doctors Without Borders had no contact with him after
that and had no idea Le Guen was living in Timbuktu. "We discovered the
presence of a French jihadist with a past history with MSF after the release
of his video on YouTube," he said, using the organization's French acronym.
The AQIM investigators' main interest was, of course, the apparent telephone
contact between Le Guen and the French Embassy. During the interrogation,
the Frenchman admitted he was indeed contacted by his embassy, but he
maintained the discussion was harmless. He asserted that a neighbor in
Timbuktu had fled the city and subsequently gave the embassy his number.
"They called me, and I told the embassy I am facing no problems in
Timbuktu," he explained.
The French Embassy in Bamako confirmed it had called French nationals in
Timbuktu after al Qaeda overran northern Mali and asked them to leave the
area. However, embassy press officer Didier Nourrisson claimed the embassy
did not contact Le Guen. "We don't know anything about him," he said. "We
have no idea about his motives. We don't know where this man currently is."
And that's where the 10-page investigation into Le Guen ends. The document
does not report a verdict, so it remains unclear whether AQIM considers the
Frenchman to be a spy or a real jihadist.
But there is a third possibility. During the investigation, the Mauritanian
witness suggested that Le Guen might have been mentally ill. "I noticed that
maybe sometimes he passes through psychological conditions and maybe he is
psychologically disturbed," he said.
Spy, jihadist, or madman? Whatever the truth, ever since Gilles Le Guen was
taken into custody by AQIM, nothing has been heard of him or his wife.
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