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"I took photos of myself in Burkin and in Jenin. Then I asked Fatima, a girl I met when investigating prostitute-trafficking, to let me take photos with her as if she was my wife. We mocked up an apartment in Barcelona to look as though it was in Palestine and took photos." Salas also wrote out the Qur'an by hand, and considers his conversion to Islam to be genuine. He treasures the small booklet in which he wrote Islam's most sacred text: "It helped convince people," he says. "Not many people carry their own, hand-copied version."
The final part of his cover was to become a pro-jihad journalist, contributing to radical publications. He travelled around the Arab world, from Egypt to Jordan and the Lebanon, writing articles that would help to seal his militant credentials. "I even wrote a couple of books," he says. It did not take long to gain a reputation. "I remember the first time I dropped off some newsletters at a mosque in Tenerife, the police arrived with flashing lights and sirens and they soon had me pinned against a wall."
Salas picked the Venezuela of President Hugo Chávez as his base. "I had been told Venezuela was a mecca of international terrorism," he says. "The Farc group from Colombia was there, as were people from Eta." Numerous other small revolutionary groups had also set up under Chávez's benevolent gaze. There, in what the New Yorker journalist Jon Lee Anderson calls "the parallel reality that is the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela today", Salas established himself as yet another niche radical – flying the flag for Palestine and running a local branch of Hezbollah. More importantly, he got close to the family of Ilich Ramírez Sánchez – Carlos the Jackal.
"I only really knew about Carlos because of the films about him," admits Salas, who is in his mid-30s and too young to recall the The Jackal's bloody kidnaps and assassinations in the 70s and 80s. "But here was an icon of international terrorism. He was Venezuelan, and a convert to Islam who had fought for Palestine. It was perfect for my profile." He sought out The Jackal's two younger brothers, Vladimir and Lenin – names given to them by their Leninist lawyer father. "Vladimir is the more active defender of his brother," he says. "Lenin is a lot more discreet. Later I met his mother, his nephews and got in with the family."