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Morten the matchmaker sent a wife to al-Awlaki
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October 15th, 2012
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This article is more than 11 years old.
Woman recruited on Facebook to travel to Yemen to marry al-Qaeda terrorist
Before Morten Storm – the former biker, turned militant Islamist, turned PET double agent – led the CIA to top terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki, he provided the al-Qaeda leader with a Western wife, Jyllands-Posten newspaper reports.
Working in close connection with the CIA in 2010, Storm helped to arrange the sending of a woman, ‘Aminah’, to Yemen as a bride for al-Awlaki. ‘Aminah’ was to unwillingly help locate and track al-Awlaki, who would then be targeted for assassination, with tracing equipment placed in her suitcase without her knowledge by PET. According to Storm, al-Awlaki was at the time looking for a wife who was more ‘Western’ than the two wives he already had.
Storm found ‘Aminah’, a converted Croatian woman who wanted to marry al-Awlaki, through Facebook. Spying equipment was placed in her suitcase, but prior to leaving for Yemen, she received a message from al-Qaeda telling her to not travel with the suitcase.
Following Storm’s arrangements, he was congratulated by his immediate superior at PET and promised a reward. Storm received an SMS that read: “Congratulations brother, you have just become rich. Very rich.”
Jyllands-Posten reports that Storm received $250,000 for his role in finding a wife for al-Awlaki.
As new details continue to come out regarding Storm’s life as a double agent – including allegations from England that Storm was a boisterous, violent man who attempted to radicalise and sell drugs to the local Muslim community – PET has found itself under increasing scrutiny.
“If these allegations are true, it points even more than it did a week ago [when Storm came out with his story] that PET was active in its attempts to support the CIA's efforts to track down al-Awlaki with the goal of killing him,” Lars Erslev Andersen, a terror researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, told Jyllands-Posten. “But PET has said that [Storm’s role] didn’t contribute to the hunt for al-Awlaki. They have some explaining to do.”
Pernille Skipper, a spokesperson for the far-left party Enhedslisten, also wants answers from PET.
“There are two central elements we need to have answers to. One is whether PET has helped CIA with a plan to kill somebody rather than have him put in front of a court,” Skipper told Politiken newspaper. “The other is now whether PET has also used an innocent person as live bait. That’s not just a violation of rules, it is completely morally reprehensible.”
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