The story began at a police station in France. Two brothers presented themselves at the reception desk to report the disturbing disappearance of one of their family members who they suspected of having travelled to join the ranks of jihadists in Syria.
At the time, the French authorities had not yet put in place a phone hotline that would, a few months later, be available for those who wanted to raise the alarm about a relation they believed was implicated in jihadist activity.
The two brothers were from a practicing Muslim family. The youngest would later explain that at one point he had been tempted to adopt a strict observance of the religion. “I hesitated, but it didn’t suit me. There are too many prohibitions,” he said. At the police station he felt guilty and fearful over the fate of the missing family member who, easily influenced, was apparently recruited via the internet, drawn to the idea of dying as a martyr and finding a place in paradise.
The two brothers gave their statement to an ordinary police officer and signed it, watched over by a plain clothes official who did not present himself. The latter was in fact the deputy head of the local branch of France’s domestic intelligence agency, the DGSI, which was situated on the first floor of the police station.
The organisational structure of the DGSI is composed of a central head office, situated in the west Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret, below which are branches overseeing allocated zones across the country, under which in turn come regional agencies and, lastly, those in the départements, France’s administrative divisions equivalent to a county. In the case in point, the DGSI officer belonged to what a member of DGSI headquarters would later describe as a “small branch in a small département”.
After the brothers had given their statement, the DGSI officer called the agency’s HQ.
Up until the middle of 2013, the DGSI was far from overwhelmed with cases of French nationals leaving to fight in Syria, but by the autumn of that year there was a marked rise in their numbers. The DGSI central office became unable to cope with the hundreds of reports it was receiving and began instead dispatching them for further investigation to its local agencies in the départements.
While this meant an increased workload, it also represented a boon for intelligence gathering. “The truth is that we weren’t at all able anymore to infiltrate Islamist networks," one agent recalled. “The only information we were receiving came from relatives who denounced the person in their family who was on the point of leaving for Syria, or who was already there and who they wanted to have returned.”
To increase the harvest of information, the DGSI went about a programme of systematic interviews with those close to the would-be or missing jihadists, totalling 465 in just one year. The interviews were carried out with no judicial framework or coercive summons, and those invited for questioning were free to decline.
After the DGSI officer reported the case of the two brothers, his superiors ordered him that same evening to fix an appointment with them for an interview.
The brothers were questioned in the DGSI local office, on the first floor of the police station, by two operational analysts from the agency’s “T” service, a sub-section in charge of counter-terrorism. Also present were two senior officers from DGSI HQ and who included the head of “T3”, a unit dedicated to countering jihadist activity.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
The brothers were placed in rooms with no computers. They declined an invitation to smoke, but accepted an offer of coffee. The questioning of each followed the same pattern; they were asked about the background of the relative thought to have left for Syria, the reasons why they decided to report the events, and were the invited to give a portrait of themselves.
The eldest of the two, whose situation in life was the most stable, appeared nervous. He was polite, but ill at ease in talking to the agents. The youngest, a former drug dealer, appeared comfortable, and despite being aged less than 30, was much more at ease than his elder brother.
The meeting lasted two hours, after which an agent asked the youngest: “Can we see you again to talk about all that?” He knew what was behind the question: “Snitching is not my thing,” he said. “I’m a man.” Nevertheless, he did not refuse outright to have any further contact with them.
While interviews of the sort were frequent, here the head of T3 saw a potential opportunity in the younger brother.
The two local operational analysts were given the task of writing up a report on the discussions with the brothers, and they recommended attempting to recruit the youngest. DGSI HQ gave its go-ahead.
The top of each document concerning him was marked “C2”, which was the DGSI code for a human source of intelligence. The designation “C8” was used on documents relating to technical sources of intelligence, such as from phone tapping, phone records and computer files.
In the intelligence world, the recruitment of a source is subjected to a strict set of procedures and, as in the general work environment, the recruit is subjected to a trial period. They are coded and given a pseudonym. For the DGSI, the first letter of the pseudonym is allocated by HQ, under a computerised system that corresponds to a calendar date. For the younger brother, this was the letter “A”, and his chosen codename became “ABOMINOR”.
ABOMINOR became immersed in the jihadist world
At his first meeting with his handlers, the young man, who was then unaware of the codename given to him, proved to be demanding. The case officers asked him to connect with the French jihadist networks on social media, and for this he said he should be given the latest Samsung Galaxy smartphone, an “S4”, to be able to remain permanently connected to the internet. “He wanted to show off,” commented one DGSI operative who had studied ABOMINOR’s case history. “He has an outsized ego.”
But at the same time, the young man at first refused to be remunerated for his services, telling the handlers, once again, that, “I’m not a snitch”. They insisted that he should take the offered cash for his expenses, like his phone, and to buy presents. He relented, took the bank notes offered him and signed a receipt. ABOMINOR had officially become a DGSI informant.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
Dressed in non-religious apparel, the young Muslim, who abstained from alcohol as required by his religion, would meet his handlers in café-bars far away from his home neighbourhood, and also the town where the agents were based – which was not without logistical problems, given that the DGSI regional offices on average had one car available for every four agents.
The meetings always involved two DGSI operatives and their informant, and were never one-to-one. The cafés were chosen several days in advance, and had to have a relatively discreet back room with an emergency exit. The DGSI agents would circle the meeting place beforehand, noting down car registration details, which would be double-checked against those they would come across at future meetings.
The conversation with their informant would begin every time with the same questions: “How are you?” and “How is your family?”. Like with other informants, they would assess the mood, chatting about things like the results of a football club, before easing into the subject at hand – and in the early stages, there were not that many to discuss.
ABOMINOR, who infrequently attended his local mosque, spent his evenings on social media, passing on to the DGSI the kunya – the component of an Arabic name – used by those jihadist sympathisers, supporters of the so-called Islamic State group, he corresponded with on Facebook or Twitter. His handlers gave him the identities of certain individuals they were interested in targeting in the local département, and he would then attempt to find out more about them, not always successfully.
But with his gift for the gab, ABOMINOR was able to hoodwink jihadists already in Syria. As the months passed, he became settled in the field, and some of those he initially communicated with were to unknowingly provide him with a cover to enter into contact with new sources of information: he would tell them that he knew 'Abu so-and-so', which they would check and have confirmed, thus tricking them into believing he was one of their own.
Eventually ABOMINOR would be contacted by jihadist combatants in the Middle East who wanted him to pass on messages to people in France with whom they were close. His contacts within the Islamic State (IS) group were confident in him, using him to serve and inform them, although in fact the opposite was true.
ABOMINOR, who would later talk about “my cases” like a proper intelligence officer, and speak of “us” when referring to the DGSI, became immersed in the world of jihad, studying reports by the French and international media to better understand the movement and the mentality of those involved in it. From his computer, he provided French domestic intelligence with an eye and ear in Syria, allowing them to track certain events taking place there. One was when he informed the DGSI that IS were planning to retreat forces to the Syrian cities of Raqqa and Deir ez-Zur, a move aimed at redeploying them in an offensive to gain other ground in the country and Iraq.
He was able to provide detail about daily life within the caliphate, including the internal rivalries between ethnic groups. He reported that the French nationals who joined IS forces were poorly regarded for not involving themselves enough in combat, and were mostly given policing roles far from the frontline.
The increasing flow of information from ABOMINOR was such that his DGSI case officers stepped up their meetings with him to as many as four per week, on top of their daily phone chats. Each contact the informer made was the subject of a report in which their identities were hidden behind codenames. The reports, on white paper, would begin with a description of the context in which the new contact was encountered and also an assessment of their psychological state, followed by the information gleaned.
The documents would then be studied by analysts who would notably look for any evidence that ABOMINOR was manipulating his handlers. After that, the reports would be sent on through the hierarchy until eventually arriving in the hands of the senior directors of the DGSI. Those chosen to be in turn submitted to the presidential office, the Élysée Palace, the prime minister’s office and ministries would be transferred onto blue paper (reports from the external intelligence agency, the DGSE, are set out on yellow paper).
Several “blued” reports on information provided by ABOMINOR would be handed to the Élysée. One of these was given to then president François Hollande in preparation for a meeting with his US counterpart Barack Obama. But that report might never have been submitted, for just a few months earlier the DGSI had doubts about ABOMINOR, when it considered ending its relationship with him.
Sending bugged mobile phones to IS in Syria
ABOMINOR’s activities on social media were picked up by US intelligence. The CIA warned its French allies he was a danger, that he was in contact with senior members of the IS group.
Agents from the DGSI office handling ABOMINOR were sent on a daily basis to a communications interception centre situated in a neighbouring département. This had the laborious name of “the regional interception centre of the inter-ministerial control group” (centre d’interception régional du groupement interministériel de contrôle), or GIC, where “administrative” phone taps were carried out (as opposed to “judicial” phone taps, which are those employed in criminal investigations under the authority of a magistrate). Ordinarily, the agents would visit the centre once per week, but the US warning over ABOMINOR had sounded alarm bells within the DGSI and now they had placed him under surveillance.
Some within the agency were uncertain about their informer, with suspicions that he may in fact be a double agent for the jihadists, and wanted to end the collaboration. The agency went about a review of his activities, checking whether he really was reporting back to it on all of his contacts and not hiding relations with anyone within IS.
While the head of the T3 branch finally decided that the collaboration should continue, on the basis that if the frequency of his contacts with the jihadists had attracted US attention it meant he was doing his job, his communications were nevertheless placed under surveillance by the GIC, along with those of his wife, his parents and his brother. During 18 months, the DGSI agents would travel to the interception centre, transcribing into reports his many conversations – for ABOMINOR proved to be quite a chatterbox.
As part of the operation, the DGSI gave the informer a computer which they could hack at distance. No suspect communications were ever found, and after having regularly supplied the agency with information of strategic interest, he would soon be involved in operational activities.
Enlargement : Illustration 3
One Saturday morning, an aspiring jihadist turned up at Charles-de-Gaulle airport near Paris with a ticket for a flight to Turkey. His intention was to cross the Turkish border with Syria to join the ranks of IS. Unknown to him, he was being shadowed by the DGSI’s “Roissy group” of agents who are permanently based at the Paris airport. They had made sure that the jihadist would get through the check-in and passport control procedures unhindered. In his hand luggage he was carrying two mobile phones that, unknown to him, French intelligence was keen to have delivered in Syria.
The operation was organised at the behest of the French external intelligence agency, the DGSE, which wanted to plant the phones (which even switched off could pick up conversations in the immediate vicinity, as well as providing geo-localisation of those carrying them) within IS. The DGSE had no viable manner of smuggling the phones within Syria, and turned for help to its sister agency, the DGSI, which in turn called on the services of ABOMINOR.
The latter, in contact with the would-be jihadist, asked him to buy mobile phones for the ‘brothers’ in Syria, and directed him to the manager of a mobile phone shop – who was in fact working for French intelligence. The manager easily convinced him to take the two phones that had been prepared by the DGSE. “He would have made a very good salesman,” commented an intelligence officer with knowledge of the events. “He knew how to manipulate people, to sell them anything.”
The result was a success, and the two spy phones, travelling via the unwitting jihadist leaving for Turkey, would eventually provide intelligence from inside Syria over a period of several months.
***
It was during the evening of one weekend when a police patrol was called out to an apartment on a public housing estate where a man and woman had been engaged in a loud row. The police officers were let into the apartment where they tried calming the man, who was agitated to the point where they threatened to take him into custody. The man asked if he could make a phone call, and after a few words explaining the situation to the person at the other end, he passed the phone over to the senior officer present.
The person on the phone introduced himself as being from the first-floor offices of the police station which are protected by an armoured door that “only opens with a biometric pass”. The officer, who understood he was talking to a DGSI agent, was told that the man from the apartment was a contact, and was asked to overlook the altercation the police had been alerted to. They could meet on the Monday to talk more about the situation, he said. The officer declined, agreed to drop the matter of the row, but warned the voice on the phone that he should rein in his contact, because if they were called out again for a disturbance at the home things would be different.
The row was between ABOMINOR and his wife. The tensions between the couple were running high; she was unhappy at his behaviour, roaming the neighbourhood and spending hours on the internet since resigning from his regular job, occasionally leaving for secret meetings yet bringing home unexplained cash at the end of the month. She suspected he had gone back to criminal activity, unaware that in fact he was now remunerated with a monthly 2,000 euros by the DGSI.
The DGSI handling agents decided to break the normal security rules and arranged a meeting with ABOMINOR’s wife at home. They could not run the risk of losing their informer. They introduced themselves as police officers, without further detail on what type of work they were involved with. They told her that her husband was a protected contact of theirs, that he was engaged in no wrongdoing and that he was in no danger.
At the time, their informer was in reality involved in preventing a terrorist attack.
The failure to prevent the November 2015 Paris attacks
One evening ABOMINOR contacted one of his DGSI handlers to tell him that he had just learnt that a jihadist was about to travel back to France from Syria to carry out an attack against a synagogue. The informer then spent weeks trying to gather precise details of the plan, while agents from the DGSI surveillance branch, called “S”, carried out a 24-hour watch over the jihadist after he arrived back in France.
Someone in the terrorist’s family became aware of the plot and reported it to a local police station. The attack appeared imminent, and in face of the emergency he was arrested. He was detained for having joined the IS, and would never be charged with preparing an attack, leaving him unaware that his plan had been revealed.
Enlargement : Illustration 4
During the summer of 2015, a year that began with the jihadist massacres in Paris at the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine and the kosher supermarket Hyper Cacher, the DGSE passed on two reports to the DGSI about terrorists who had been trained in Syria to commit further attacks in France. ABOMINOR was asked whether, among his contacts, there were any jihadists who had returned to France from the Middle East and who had the profile of a terrorist operative.
The informer’s list of contacts grew over the months, when he communicated with members of the IS group’s own secret services, the Amniyat, with low rank jihadists and also their superiors, all of various nationalities. He came into close contact with at least four jihadists who, it later emerged, were close to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Belgian-Moroccan IS operative who was to become notorious as the ringleader of the November 13th 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris which left 130 people dead and more than 400 wounded. But at the time, ABOMINOR knew nothing of Abaaoud, who would die in a shootout with French police two days after the Paris massacres.
A few months before those attacks, the informer had had fleeting exchanges with members of the group who carried out the carnage. The November 13th atrocities, which included random shootings of people at café terraces, the mass murders of concert-goers at the Bataclan theatre and also suicide bombings, had a heavy effect on ABOMINOR who, like so many of those in the French intelligence agencies, felt he had failed in his task.
***
ABOMINOR is now no longer a DGSI informer, as a result of a blunder which came close to exposing him. Those who are in prison thanks in part to his activities know nothing of him, or even his existence. Others are dead. For after the November 13th 2015 attacks in Paris, the DGSI informer put all of his energy into his task.
He would help prevent a second probable mass killing attack, but in order to protect his identity, it is not possible here to detail the circumstances. During a period of more than three years, he provided a rich flow of information and increasingly took great personal risks in doing so. On several occasions, he met in France a terrorist sent by the foreign operations branch of IS in the Middle East. In order to convince the IS Amniyat operatives that he was not an infiltrated agent, he even sent them a copy of his identity card on which figured his personal address at the time. At a given moment, his actions during his mission were to be validated at the highest level of the French state. Several jihadists in Syria suspected of playing a role in organising the November 13th 2015 attacks were subsequently eliminated after having communicated with him.
Such was his role that when his true identity was in danger of being revealed, with his life placed at risk, the DGSI abruptly ended his activity and organised his relocation. The state secretly settled his unpaid rent. His case officers gave him a bonus payment which, while unconfirmed, several sources have said totalled more than 30,000 euros in cash (which the agents had to count in his presence). As always, he signed a receipt. He also signed a pledge that he would never discuss his role with foreign intelligence services, nor with journalists.
He who said “I did my duty” would again offer his services to the DGSI. He was told he would have to apply to join the police training school. But as a former drug dealer, that was not an option and he took his leave.
On May 24th 2016, speaking before a French parliamentary commission of inquiry into the circumstances of recent terrorist attacks in France, DGSI chief Patrick Calvar spoke of the use of informers. “It is particularly difficult, as you can imagine, to find volunteers to help us by travelling to Syria, Iraq or Libya – and one could mention other theatres of operations. Therefore we work principally within our [national] territory […] This is done in a well defined legal and deontological framework.”
According to a senior judicial source, ABOMINOR does not benefit from the official protection afforded to someone given the status of “collaborator with the justice system” which was inscribed into French legislation in 2004 under what is known as the “Perben II” law.
ABOMINOR’s true identity is mentioned in the case files of certain judicial investigations, buried under a list of names on a phone bill. He has also been questioned as a witness, in connection with the path of the member of his family who travelled to Syria. These are statements like so many others, in themselves insignificant amid the mass of anti-terrorism legal paperwork. A name among hundreds of others.
How many others are there in the same situation? How many unknown heroes are amid the thousands of pages of statements given to investigations, overflowing with the disarray of those whose family members headed off to join IS?
Mediapart is aware of at least four mass-murder terrorist attacks which were planned since the November 13th 2015 massacres and foiled thanks to information passed on by individuals from the entourage of a terrorist. There was also the case of a jihadist jailed in France who agreed to give the French military intelligence agency, the DRM, the locations of the homes in the Syrian city of Raqqa of several IS members who planned terrorist attacks in Europe. Some of those were then bombed by coalition forces. The jihadist informer, meanwhile, was handed a prison sentence for his previous activities.
ABOMINOR has rebuilt his life, anonymous and far from his former home, and holds down a regular job. His own family remain unaware of the role he played over several years in the fight against terrorism, and the lives he contributed to saving.
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.