Babar Ahmad: The British Cyber-Jihadist

He now says he was "naive" to support the Taliban.

In an exclusive interview a British former IT support worker

who was jailed in the US for supporting the Taliban online

has told young Muslims not to be bullied into

Babar Ahmed from London was imprisoned after pleading guilty

after providing materials are posted to terrorism,

his website encourage readers to raise money,

good fighters and send equipment to the

You pleaded guilty in the States to providing material support

for terrorism and conspiring to provide material

And what that means is funds, personnel and equipment

for the Taliban, and as the judge said, it was not about you planning

a terrorist attack, it was about you giving support

via a website to the Taliban at the time they were protecting

Osama Bin Laden, before he carried out the 9/11 attacks.

It means you are a convicted terrorist.

The judge, one of the most senior judges in America, who sentenced me,

Judge Janet Hall, after seeing all the evidence in my case,

she said, "This man is not a terrorist."

At the time I pleaded guilty, I had been in prison for nine

I'd been in solitary confinement for about just over a year,

and the prosecutors offered me a deal.

They said, "Hey, plead guilty and you'll be back in England

Well, I view myself in the way that the judge described me.

She said, "This is a good person, he is not a risk to anyone,

and more importantly this man is not a terrorist."

So I mean, other people are entitled to their opinion about me,

but people who know me, and the judge who saw the evidence

against me, she came to the right conclusion.

She also said what you did was very serious, it's not the most serious

crime that can be committed, but you can't walk away

from the fact that what you were doing was enabling Osama Bin Laden

to be protected in Afghanistan and to train the men who actually

boarded the flight that drove into the Pentagon

You were, both by your voice and what you were asking people

to do, encouraging the Taliban to protect Bin Laden and indeed

to fight against the United States, who were trying to get Bin Laden.

She also went on to say that Mr Ahmad never believed

in or supported the views of Al-Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden,

so it was sort of like, by advocating support

for the Taliban, who at that time had, due to their failure to hand

over Bin Laden to the United States, in effect that is what was

Well, not knowingly, because at that time I didn't really

know what Bin Laden was about, but technically yes

that is what was happening at the time, that the Taliban,

due to their failure to hand over Bin Laden, and it wasn't known

at the time, and I didn't know at the time that 9/11

is being planned and what Bin Laden is really up to, so my support,

my advocating support of the Taliban was to help establish an Islamic

society, but I do accept that, with hindsight, that was

I did it in good faith, but in hindsight I regret doing

that, and it was naive of me to do that.

Because it was a complicated situation.

To be clear, then, you regret supporting the Taliban back then?

I think, during the 1990s, the late 1990s, after my experiences

in Bosnia, after meeting survivors from the Srebrenica massacre,

I think what the United Nations did at Srebrenica, there was a sense of,

we have to protect ourselves, and if we don't protect ourselves,

So your experiences, then, were they crucial in terms

of the motivation for the setting up of the websites?

Because what I saw in Bosnia, and at the end of the war in Bosnia,

then I lost a lot of friends, who died fighting to protect

And I considered them heroes, I still consider them heroes.

And I wanted the world to know about them, and so we made a series

of audio cassettes and books talking about their stories

Just preserving their legacy, just telling the world about these

heroes, these great men, who went and left their own lives

behind in order to help bring life to other people.

In 2001, an article was posted on one of the websites calling

for financial support for the Taliban government

You know, what you can do to help the Taliban was the headline,

and it talked about how people good, effectively, send $20,000 to them,

You didn't post that article, did you feel a responsibility

for its billing on the website, though?

I was the founder of the website, so even though I didn't post that

article, as the founder of it, I accepted criminal responsibility

for it in the United States, and that, together with another

article, was the sum total for which I pleaded guilty,

And did you agree with that article, what you could do

The article called for people to send equipment to the Taliban,

At the time, there was a risk that there might be

This is all happening way before 9/11, so the Taliban,

at that time, they are in government with three embassies,

recognised by three countries around the world, and they are involved

in a civil conflict with the Northern Alliance warlords.

So at that time, it was said that Russian troops might launch

a chemical invasion of Afghanistan and so the website published appeals

calling for gas masks to be given to the Taliban to help defend

themselves against a chemical attack.

One of the articles was still on the website after 9/11 am

when it was clear that Al-Qaeda was responsible for 9/11.

There was 4000 items of content that went on the websites.

So, obviously, you know, a lot of them, they stayed

It's easy to put everything in the context of 9/11, whereas,

at 4000 items of content on the website, 98%

were about Bosnia and Chechnya, and then right at the end

of the life of the website there were these two article

supporting the Taliban, which, of course, I mean,

in hindsight that decision to put those articles on the website

and to advocate support for the Taliban, then I regret that,

With the hindsight of what is actually going on in Afghanistan

In late 2001, again, after 9/11, Azzam posted

"We believe the word of Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban

as Muslims when they say they had nothing to do with this terrorist

attack, over and above the word of a lying disbeliever like Bush.

If they did it, they would proudly say so, because they are not afraid

What did you think of those sentiments at the time?

Here lies the naivety of taking people's words at face value.

And strange and odd as it seems now, at the time I never believed that

Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were behind 9/11.

They only accepted responsibility for it, I think it was about four

years later, in 2005, where Bin Laden made a statement

saying, yes, we accept responsibility for that.

So even though much of the rest of the world knew it was Al-Qaeda

Well, there was assumptions, and me as a Muslim,

You know, if I have to take sides, Bush said, "You are either with us

So after that, it wasn't really about Al-Qaeda,

it was about this country, you know, the Taliban,

they are being attacked, and if I'm going to take sides,

then obviously I'm going to take their side.

It doesn't mean that I support Al-Qaeda or Bin Laden,

because of my experience in Bosnia where, you have a Muslim nation

that is attacked by a foreign invading army, then my sympathy

would be with the Muslims, obviously.

How would you describe the Taliban now?

Well I was wrong to advocate support for them, obviously.

You have always made it clear that you condemn 9/11.

Do you understand why the American authorities might think otherwise?

Do you think the start of cyber jihad is, the images have been

adopted and are used in a different way. More gruesome and sophisticated

way backers but like Islamic State. I don't think so because the

websites were. The conflicts in Bosnia there for invading armies had

invaded a Muslim country and were killing civilians. What is happening

today is that people are killing civilians and they are filming it

and putting it on TV, like the complete opposite of what websites

stood for. There is no link at all? Of course not. One of the tapes your

website hosted and you narrated was called in the heart of the Green

birds and it had stories as you spend of battles in Bosnia and

people who were killed, years later that tape was found in possession of

some of the London bombers and even now there are quotes from that

cassette in social media posts from British infighting for so-called

Islamic State. What you think of that? I will say what David Cameron

said the responsibility of those who murder innocent people lies with

them themselves. I have heard that this cassette, the London bombers

had come I also heard there was an article from the BBC News website

found on their computer. We cannot say what actually was there a reason

or their motivation, but to say that someone has the tape about heroes

who gave their lives protecting innocent people in Bosnia and use

that as motivation to killing innocent people on the streets of

London, you need quite a lot of mental gymnastics to get from there

to there. Would you say to young British booze limit men and women

who, like you did 20 years ago, felt angry about the way some Muslims

were being treated in parts of the world? -- what would you say to

young British Muslims. I felt outraged, not angry, it is a

difference. It is not a crime to feel outraged at injustice, but

ultimately we are responsible for our actions, and it is important

that before people decide to take a course of action, before you

translate your outrage into action, think deeply and carefully about

what you are doing and do not allow yourself to be a pawn. Do not allow

yourself to be used by other people, do not let anyone believe you, the

only way to Paradise -- don't let anyone believe that the always

Paradise is by bringing misery on other people. Make your old mind up,

be smart and intelligent and do your research and make your own mind up.

That is what I would say. What if those young people make their mind

up and think I am going to go and join Islamic State? If that is what

they do, as long as they understand the risks they are taking to their

own lives, they could end up in prison, disabled, war is no joke. I

have been in a war and I've been on battlefields, and no one should be

under any illusion that war is some kind of glorified thing that you see

in a video with music in the background and it's all going to be

nice and good. Before you decide to put yourself in that situation.

These are real risks. Sometimes in people's eagerness to want to do

something. And it's important that before

people decide to take a course Don't allow yourself to be used

by other people. Don't let other people bully

you that the only way to Paradise is by bringing misery upon innocent

people who have done nothing to you. Make your own mind up,

be smart, be intelligent, do your research and make your

own mind up. And what if those young people

make their own mind up and think, From what I've heard of people

getting journalists and cutting the heads off on TV, I do not recognise

this, it is alien to me. Jihad is to be Islamic history.

Or do not go and join a group of people for whom there

I would be really emphatic in saying that.

No God tolerates terror and misery being brushed innocent people on the

half of the course. You spent eight years fighting extradition and

argues you should be tried in the UK court, if you had been tried, would

you have pleaded not guilty? Absolutely, if I was put on trial in

this country as I was asking for eight years I would have pleaded not

guilty and I would have gone to trial because at most I was facing a

sentence of about two years if I found guilty. In the super max

prison in America I was there for two years and lived through complete

hell, those two years with the darkest years of my life. Every

minute of every day from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to

sleep was a battle. If you can sleep. I saw one suicide attempt per

week, three in one day, inmates who had gone crazy and were just banged

the doors and shout and scream all day and all night. At that point I

had been imprisoned for one half years without trial and far away

from home in a foreign country and prosecutors come to me and say,

please guilty and you will be home within the year. Any person in their

right mind would just sign on the dotted line and that is what I did,

I don't regret pleading guilty, I'm not taking that back, it was the

best decision of my life and I am proud I made that decision. But at

that time I did not care what anyone thought of me, I just wanted to get

back to my family, and here I am. I'm glad I made the right decision.

It's like you want it both ways, you pleaded guilty, you could

effectively come home sooner to Britain and now you are here it is

like that is irrelevant? .Com I want to make it clear I have no regrets

on pleading guilty in America, pleading guilty in America was the

best decision of my life because it allowed me to come home. I'm not

saying that I should not have pleaded guilty, according to the

laws of the US I was guilty and that is why pleaded guilty. Talk to us

about two years of solitary confinement? Describe what that

actually means in practical terms? It means you are in yourself for 23

- 24 hours per day by yourself. You are let out for one hour in an

underground pit underground concrete, where you cannot see in

the distance. If something is bothering you you cannot speak to

anyone or text anyone, you cannot shout at anyone, you just have to be

alone with your thoughts and toss and turn until the morning. I'm a

member there was an inmate next to me and he tried to commit suicide,

there was blood all over his cell, it was like one centimetre deep, and

going past the cell there was so much blood it's not like a

picture's. After I got back I went into a bridge across match-up and it

straightaway took me to that memory of the blood in that cell, even now

in the pictures I smell the blood. Those were dark days and I will not

lie to embellish it, those were the darkest years of my life. During

that period I would have done anything to get out of that place

and get home and I made the right decision and I am home. When you

were extradited to the states you were hooded, I understand, as you

were led to the plane. Why? I don't know. When I got to the Royal Air

Force Base it was Metropolitan Police officers that first applied

the Black tells the mask and you must be before I the police van and

the officer came back and said I'm sorry, we need to put these on you

and I remember saying you know you are allowed to do this? Blindfolding

is banned in Europe. He said I'm really sorry, it's the Americans.

That is the way they wanted done so we have to do like that. He was

scared, the Met police officers rescued of the Americans -- were

scared. This was in a row Air Force Base in East of England. So they put

these blacked out goggles on me and the earmarks and left me with

handcuffs to this building and after that I was handed to the Americans,

who did the same, they blindfolded me and put earmuffs on me and put me

in shackles before they led me to the private jet, and I stayed like

that for the first hour of the flight and when I landed an hour or

two after -- are too when I landed they put me back in it. Why? I do

not know but after I complained to the British Consulate in Boston they

contacted the Foreign Office, who contacted the US Government and they

stopped doing that. The next person who was extradited after me did not

get a. Now you are back I wonder if you think you are being monitored by

MI5? I hold not. I think MI5, they have much more things on their plate

then to be following me or monitoring me, they've tried calling

me in a few times asking if I'm interested in working for them and

I've told them I'm not a rat, it is not who I am. Since you have been

back? A few times, about three times they have called me. They have not

been aggressive, they've been polite and courteous and asked me and

respected my decision that I do not wish to work for them or meet them.

You said you would not do it because you are not a rat? What do you mean?

It is not who I am, I'm not a spy or informant who goes into communities

and tells other people about it. Most people are not like that. The

intelligence services occupy a dark world, and I think it changes their

most people, some of them become dark people because of the work they

do and I have no desire to be part of that world. Many people supported

your desire to be tried here in the UK, what did you think of that level

of support? I received over 10,000 letters from the public who shared

their lives with me and gave me hope. 150,000 people signed a

petition calling for me to be put on trial in this country. I think those

people are heroes, because I had no choice but to try and survive my

ordeal, but every single one of them had a choice, and they did not have

to support me. They went out of their way to support me. I am

touched by that. Why are you speaking to us today. I wanted to

share my experience and did not want to do it as soon as I got back. The

last six or seven months I think I'm ready to start talking about my

experience and I feel I have a message that perhaps some people

might want to hear and some might benefit from. Thank you for speaking

to us. Thank you, your welcome. We asked the police about the

acquisition of aiding and they told us all and -- they told us: We

approached MI5 about the claim they tried to recruit him that they had

no comment to add. The full interview is on our programme paid

online -- programme