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Carlos the Jackal was my friend
Spanish reporter Antonio Salas infiltrated an international terrorist group and became a trusted confidant of one of the world's most infamous killers
Few undercover reporters have been prepared to sacrifice as much as the Spaniard who goes by the pseudonym of Antonio Salas. Circumcision was just one hurdle in passing himself off as a radical Islamist and infiltrating the shadowy, interconnected world of international terrorism. "It was more painful than I expected. It is pretty delicate for the first few days," Salas now admits, walking daintily around a room at his Madrid publisher's offices. An invite to a hammam bathhouse during his five years undercover had, he said, persuaded him the operation was necessary.
Salas's identity undercover was Mohammed Abdullah, a Spanish- Venezuelan with Palestinian grand-parents. He was convincing enough to be invited on terrorist training courses and to become personal webmaster to the most infamous of international terrorists, Carlos the Jackal. That meant regular telephone conversations with a man thought to be responsible for more than 80 deaths.
The Jackal would call from La Santé prison in Paris, where he is still serving a life sentence for murder. "He was very worried about my security," says Salas. "It is a strange sensation when a self-confessed assassin like Carlos the Jackal does that, and offers their friendship."
Salas decided to go undercover with his hidden cameras after the bombings that killed 191 people on Madrid commuter trains on 11 March 2004. He had been as stunned as other Spaniards by the blasts, despite the country's experience of Basque terrorist group Eta. "I wanted to know what goes through the mind of a person who is capable of killing for an ideology."
Salas's previous undercover investigations – as a skinhead supporter of Real Madrid football club, and in the world of prostitute-trafficking – had taken him to the heart of some of the most violent groups in Spain. "My aim was to understand terrorism in the same way that I came to understand skinheads or prostitute-traffickers."
He learned Arabic and invented an elaborate cover story involving a dead wife: 25-year-old Dalal Mujahad from Jenin, tragically killed by an Israeli bullet while pregnant with their child. The real Dalal, whose name he found in a newspaper archive, had died in 2004, when a bullet entered her house in a shoot-out. In case anyone decided to investigate, he added a Romeo and Juliet touch: the marriage had been kept secret because his (false) mother's family, from the nearby village of Burkin, backed Al-Fatah, while Dalal's family were part of Hamas. Her death, he would claim, had pushed him towards radical terror.