Sept.

20, 2018


 Editors’ Note [Dec. 18, 2020]: In 2018, The Times released a

12-part narrative podcast series called “Caliphate” on the Islamic
State terrorist group and its operations. While parts of the series
involved a broad examination of the group’s tactics and influence,
multiple episodes were driven primarily by the confessional tale
of a Canadian man of Pakistani origin who called himself Abu
Huzayfah and claimed to have been a member of the Islamic State
who had taken part in killings in Syria.
During the course of reporting for the series, The Times
discovered significant falsehoods and other discrepancies in
Huzayfah’s story. The Times took a number of steps, including
seeking confirmation of details from intelligence officials in the
United States, to find independent evidence of Huzayfah’s story.
The decision was made to proceed with the project but to include
an episode, Chapter 6, devoted to exploring major discrepancies
and highlighting the fact-checking process that sought to verify
key elements of the narrative.
In September — two and a half years after the podcast was
released — the Canadian police arrested Huzayfah, whose real
name is Shehroze Chaudhry, and charged him with perpetrating a
terrorist hoax. Canadian officials say they believe that Mr.
Chaudhry’s account of supposed terrorist activity is completely
fabricated. The hoax charge led The Times to investigate what
Canadian officials had discovered, and to re-examine Mr.
Chaudhry’s account and the earlier efforts to determine its
validity. This new examination found a history of
misrepresentations by Mr. Chaudhry and no corroboration that he
committed the atrocities he described in the “Caliphate” podcast.
As a result, The Times has concluded that the episodes of
“Caliphate” that presented Mr. Chaudhry’s claims did not meet
our standards for accuracy.
From the outset, “Caliphate” should have had the regular
participation of an editor experienced in the subject matter. In
addition, The Times should have pressed harder to verify Mr.
Chaudhry’s claims before deciding to place so much emphasis on
one individual’s account. For example, reporters and editors could
have vetted more thoroughly materials Mr. Chaudhry provided for
evidence that he had traveled to Syria to join the Islamic State,
and pushed harder and earlier to determine what the authorities
knew about him. It is also clear that elements of the original fact-
checking process were not sufficiently rigorous: Times journalists
were too credulous about the verification steps that were
undertaken and dismissive of the lack of corroboration of
essential aspects of Mr. Chaudhry’s account.
In the absence of firmer evidence, “Caliphate” should have been
substantially revised to exclude the material related to Mr.
Chaudhry. The podcast as a whole should not have been produced
with Mr. Chaudhry as a central narrative character.
A fuller description of what The Times has learned about Mr.
Chaudhry was published on Dec. 18, 2020.

In the war on terror, who is it that we’re really fighting?

“Caliphate” is a documentary audio series from The New York
Times that follows Rukmini Callimachi, who covers terrorism for
The Times, on her quest to understand ISIS. For more information
about the series, visit nytimes.com/caliphate.
The following is a transcript of Chapter 6. The episode was
published on May 24, 2018. The portions in italics were recorded
outside of a studio or excerpted from archival tape.
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Paper Trail
Andy Mills: Voice mail? Did it go straight to voice mail, or did it
ring first?
Rukmini Callimachi: I think it went straight.
Mills: It went straight to voice mail when I called him this
morning, too.
Callimachi: Let me try again.
[Phone rings]
[Music]
Voice Mail: Sorry, there’s no more room to record new ——
Mills: Ah, yeah. I left a few.
Callimachi: Oh, did you?
Mills: Can you just fill me in, on microphone, what’s going on?
Callimachi: So, about, about maybe an hour ago, I got a text
message from our source. We were supposed to go back to see
him this afternoon. He’d been delaying, and not responding to
our text messages. And out of the blue, he texted me at 11:37
a.m., saying: “I’m done with this. Sorry. C.S.I.S. just came to my
house and interviewed me. I’m done here.”
Mills: So, the morning after we interviewed Huzayfah, we were
supposed to meet back up with him.
Callimachi: Yeah.
Mills: But we can’t get a hold of him.
Callimachi: Right.
Mills: And finally, he sent a text saying that C.S.I.S. ——
Callimachi: This is C.S.I.S. This is the Canadian intelligence
branch.
Mills: Had contacted him.
Callimachi: Right.
Mills: And he’s saying that these authorities had questioned him,
talked to his parents. According to him, they went through his
computer.
Callimachi: Right. I mean, the timing of that was just really odd.
Mills: Yeah.
Callimachi: So, of course, the first thought was, was my phone
being tracked? Or perhaps was he under surveillance and didn’t
realize that he was being tracked? To this day, I don’t know if
there’s a connection between me seeing him and authorities
coming the next day. I tried to find out. One of the, the things that
Huzayfah sent me was a picture of the business card of the
C.S.I.S. agent who had interviewed him that morning. I called that
number repeatedly. I left messages. Nobody called me back. So,
normally, I would hang around. I would call my editors and ask
for a couple more days on the ground. I would try to go to his
house. I would maybe go to his place of work. I would see if I
could re-engage with him. But I didn’t have time to do that,
because at the very moment that we had gone to see Huzayfah
——
[Music]
Reporter: Iraqi troops could, at any moment, enter Mosul, which
has been under ISIS control for more than two years.
[Gunshots]
Callimachi: The battle to take back the city of Mosul ——
Barack Obama: This continues to be a difficult fight.
Callimachi: Was ramping up.
Callimachi: So, it’s 9:22 a.m. on Nov. 29. This is my first
morning in Iraq.
Callimachi: So I ended up taking five back-to-back trips to Iraq.
Callimachi: I’m in the car, and we’re just about to come to a
checkpoint. There’s a helicopter landing to the side.
Callimachi: To cover both the military operation, and to look for
the files — the internal records that ISIS had left behind.
Mills: The documents.
Callimachi: The documents, yeah.
Reporter: The assault was sudden and violent.
Callimachi: And in the same period of time ——
Reporter: Actually a lone attacker who drove his vehicle over a
curb ——
Callimachi: ISIS and their sympathizers are attacking all over the
world.
Reporter: Then climbed out and began attacking victims with a
butcher’s knife.
Callimachi: Just a few weeks after we leave Huzayfah, there’s an
attack at Ohio State. A few weeks after that ——
Reporter: Believe it accelerated before driving straight into a
Christmas market in Berlin.
Callimachi: There’s an attack in Berlin.
Reporter: The New Year’s carnage in Turkey.
Callimachi: A week or two after that ——
Reporter: Thirty-nine were killed when a single gunman opened
fire in a packed nightclub.
Callimachi: There’s yet another ISIS attack, this time in Istanbul.
And it just didn’t stop.
[Siren]
Reporter: At least 20 people have been killed.
Callimachi: There were attacks in ——
Reporter: Double that number.
Callimachi: Bangladesh, Baghdad and Afghanistan.
Reporter: The Afghan capital, Kabul.
Callimachi: The Philippines, Australia, France, Egypt.
Reporter: It began in what is becoming a familiar horrifying way.
Callimachi: And just in the U.K., which up until this point had
had no ISIS attack, an ISIS supporter attacks in Westminster in
March. Another attacks at a rock concert in May. And then
finally, in June, there’s the gruesome attack on London Bridge.
Theresa May: This is, as we all know ——
[Music]
May: The third terrorist attack Britain has experienced in the last
three months. We cannot and must not pretend that things can
continue as they are. Defeating this ideology is one of the great
challenges of our time, but it cannot be defeated through military
intervention alone.
[Rumbling]
[Sound of car horn]
Callimachi: So, it’s around, uh, oh shoot, my watch is still on
American time.
Callimachi: So, during this time ——
Callimachi: We’re on our way right now to a town that’s ——
Callimachi: I was going all over.
Callimachi: Shukran.
Callimachi: I went to Jordan. I traveled to Turkey.
Callimachi: I’m standing outside on King’s Road in London.
Callimachi: Over to London to cover the London Bridge attacks.
Callimachi: Outside the home of one of the suspects. He is one of
the three attackers who killed ——
Callimachi: And so, it wasn’t until months later that I was finally
sitting on a flight coming back from London that I had a chance to
pull up my notes and methodically go over what Huzayfah had
told me. And it was at that point that I felt a sinking feeling in my
stomach.
[Music]
Callimachi: Something was off with his passport.
Mills: All right. Oh, boy.
Mills: Chapter 6. “Paper Trail.”
[Music]
Callimachi: O.K. And where’s the picture of his passport?
Callimachi: So, when I got back to our office here in New York
——
Callimachi: Tell me, when does he enter Pak — that entry stamp
is when?
Asthaa Chaturvedi: Sept. 17, 2014.
Callimachi: I sat down with Asthaa and other members of our
team ——
Callimachi: What does it say at the bottom? Something Karachi
airport?
Callimachi: To go back over ——
Larissa Anderson: Karachi?
Chaturvedi: Oh yeah, Jinnah International Airport, Karachi ——
Anderson: Is that what it says?
Callimachi: You can read it?
Callimachi: Every detail of what he had told us.
Chaturvedi: You see that there’s one at the bottom.
Callimachi: Right.
Callimachi: I mean, keep in mind, I’ve interviewed two to three
dozen of these guys, and with this project, I’ll have put three of
them on the record. Three. And the reason for that is that we can’t
take people at face value.
Mills: Mhmm.
Callimachi: We take what they say, and then you have to try to
see if you can find corroboration.
Callimachi: So this is Pakistan.
Callimachi: So with Huzayfah ——
Callimachi: So that makes this Pakistan, ’cause it’s the same
shape.
Callimachi: What he told us is that he goes from Pakistan to
Turkey, from Turkey to Syria, and then in reverse when he comes
out: from Syria to Turkey, Turkey to Pakistan.
Chaturvedi: Exit from Pakistan. 9th February.
Callimachi: Now, of course ——
Callimachi: When? February when?
Callimachi: There’s no stamp going into Syria. You’re being
smuggled into a rebel-controlled area.
Mills: Right.
Anderson: Wait, there’s not an exit stamp between these two,
right?
Callimachi: Yep.
Callimachi: And curiously ——
Mills: And there’s nothing from Turkey?
Callimachi: Right.
Callimachi: We don’t find any sort of entry stamp into Turkey.
[Music]
Mills: What the hell?
Callimachi: Initially, what we see ——
Anderson: So, this matches, if, if ——
Callimachi: We see the brackets of that trip. We see him leaving
Pakistan and we see him re-entering Pakistan in the dates that he
roughly told us he was there.
Callimachi: This matches his story.
Anderson: That matches his story.
Callimachi: But then I noticed another stamp.
Callimachi: There’s a stamp that says exit from Pakistan, 1st
July, 2014.
Callimachi: So, we have him exiting Pakistan on July 1st. This is
three days before Baghdadi walked into the Al Nuri mosque and
declared himself caliph. And I specifically asked Huzayfah where
was he on that day, and he said, “I was in Syria.”
Callimachi: So, how does that make sense, right? It doesn’t make
sense. So, I guess he goes home ——
Chaturvedi: That’s presumably his first time home.
Callimachi: Ugh, this stuff is really annoying me.
[Phone rings]
Chaturvedi: Does everybody hear that?
Callimachi: Yeah.
Callimachi: We then reached out to ——
[Phone rings]
Salman Masood: Hello?
Callimachi: Salman, hi. It’s Rukmini, calling from the New York
office.
Masood: Hi.
Callimachi: To my colleague Salman Masood, who’s been our
correspondent in Islamabad for years now.
Masood: O.K. Basically, I got the number for the Canadian
passport.
Callimachi: Right.
Masood: So, I contacted my sources in the Federal Investigation
Agency.
Callimachi: Salman was able, through his sources in Pakistan, to
pull up the travel log of this Canadian passport.
Masood: My contacts got back, and they gave me a whole log of
his travel.
Callimachi: And it’s everything down to ——
Masood: There were records of the flights that he had taken ——
Callimachi: Where he went to, on what ticket number ——
Masood: His destination, the airlines he used, arrival details.
Callimachi: The exact — not just hour, but the minute that
Huzayfah left Pakistan. I mean, the only thing that’s missing is his
seat number, right?
Mills: Right.
[Music]
Callimachi: And this is where things really go haywire.
Callimachi: The exit stamp ——
Callimachi: So he arrives in Pakistan in late 2013.
Callimachi: Leaving Pakistan in early February 2014, which
Huzayfah had basically led us to believe was the moment when he
leaves Pakistan, gets on a plane and goes to Istanbul, and is
picked up by ISIS to enter Syria ——
Callimachi: He gets on flight PK 797, departing Lahore.
Callimachi: That’s him going back to Canada!
Callimachi: So the travel shows that he’s going to Canada. Then,
on the 28th of February, he returns from Canada to Pakistan,
smack in middle of the time he’s supposed to be in Syria.
Callimachi: So, we now see back-and-forth travel multiple times,
in the very period when he says that he is in Syria.
Callimachi: If this is actually him traveling, this completely
blows a hole into his entire story. So, what is going on? I don’t
know.
Mills: Well, let’s keep looking.
Callimachi: Let’s keep looking.
Mills: So, we’re gonna do multiple timelines. I’ll draw, like, one
timeline of the Canadian passport.
Callimachi: Yeah.
Callimachi: So, at this point, our entire team ——
Mills: Let’s put it all up. Let’s see where his inconsistencies are.
Callimachi: We’re all inside one of these walled-in glass
conference rooms in The New York Times.
Mills: What he says — so, this will be that.
[Marker squeaks]
Callimachi: We decided to make a timeline on — what do you
call that? A squeegee board?
Mills: A whiteboard.
Callimachi: On a whiteboard, right?
Callimachi: So ——
Mills: Let’s plot.
[Music]
Anderson: 15 entries.
Mills: 15 entries between 2014 and today?
Anderson: 2012 and ...
Callimachi: We decided, let’s plot every single entry stamp,
every single exit stamp, the country, the airline — every single
thing that we know.
Callimachi: O.K., so, we have — let’s start with his Canadian
passport, O.K.?
Mills: O.K.
Callimachi: I’m gonna do it in this color. Enters, enters Lahore,
is that right, Asthaa? So, this is, I would say — if I could have red
— this is the first thing that doesn’t line up. This is the next thing
that doesn’t line up.
Mills: Yeah.
Callimachi: Right?
Callimachi: And as we’re doing this ——
[Phone rings]
Ron Nixon: Hello, this is Ron.
Callimachi: I called on my colleagues at The New York Times.
Callimachi: Ron, hey, it’s Rukmini. How are you?
Nixon: Hey, I’m good. how are you?
Callimachi: On my colleague Ron Nixon.
[Phone rings]
Callimachi: On my colleague ——
Adam Goldman: Hello?
Callimachi: Adam, it’s Rukmini. Hey.
Callimachi: Adam Goldman.
Goldman: Hey.
Callimachi: My colleague Eric Schmitt.
Eric Schmitt: Hello. Eric Schmitt.
Callimachi: These are The New York Times’s top national
security correspondents. They have, between them, spent decades
making sources in the intelligence community.
Mills: Like, the C.I.A., the F.B.I., Homeland Security, stuff like
that?
Callimachi: Yeah, exactly.
Callimachi: So, what happened yesterday is, we were looking at
his passport again.
Nixon: Right.
Callimachi: I told them about Huzayfah. I shared details of his
story, and I explained ——
Callimachi: You see so, so his timeline is falling apart.
Callimachi: This hole in his timeline. And I wanted to know,
does anyone in your world know about this guy?
Nixon: I can try and run that down, yeah.
Callimachi: Thank you so much. O.K.? Cheers.
Goldman: O.K. All right, bye.
Callimachi: Next, right here in our office ——
Callimachi: O.K. Malachy is meeting us at my desk, so let’s go
there now.
Callimachi: We also reach out to ——
Mills: I’m Andy.
Malachy Browne: Andy, Malachy.
Mills: Malachy, nice to meet you.
Callimachi: My colleague Malachy Browne.
Browne: This is for a podcast?
Mills: Yeah. Pretty much just follow Rukmini around, recording
her every move.
Callimachi: So we shared with Malachy a video that Huzayfah
had given us, which he says shows him shooting a Glock into the
Euphrates River.
Mills: So could you describe what this is, and where you’re at in
the process right now?
Browne: We’re looking at a photograph of a man shooting a
weapon into the Euphrates River.
Callimachi: And Malachy ——
Browne: We’re trying to do two things, establish where this was,
and also when this might, may have happened.
Callimachi: He’s an expert on geolocation.
Browne: So, we’re using Google Earth Pro, which you can
download onto your laptop. And you can go back and see through
all the old satellite imagery that Google Earth has.
Callimachi: He’s able to basically take a picture that shows a
hooded figure — you do not see his face — and what, to you and
I, might look like very run-of-the-mill scenery ——
Browne: Yeah, so you can see these structures, the small little
houses. This one facing in his direction, and this one on the side
of the bank.
Callimachi: To find the exact GPS pin of where that location is.
[Music]
Callimachi: What your eye goes to in the video is, of course, the
shooter, but if you look really carefully in the distance ——
Browne: You can see a bridge in the distance.
Callimachi: There’s a bridge.
Browne: But you can also see this road kind of stretching under
the bridge, and we see that just here in the photograph.
Callimachi: Beyond the bridge, there’s a small white-looking
dwelling. It could be a house. It could be some sort of
maintenance structure.
Browne: Right on the waterfront, then a, then a break.
Callimachi: You see a couple of shrubs.
Browne: Then more bushes.
Callimachi: And you see an embankment.
Browne: Right below this building here. And that corresponds
with what we see in this satellite imagery.
Callimachi: Oh, that’s brilliant. O.K.
Browne: You know, we’ve determined that this bridge is leading
into Raqqa.
Mills: That’s incredible.
Callimachi: That is incredible.
Mills: So you’ve just been looking at satellite images of bodies of
water around Syria all day?
Browne: Yeah! [Laughs] We’ve been going up and down the
Euphrates all day, looking at all these satellite images, so yeah.
Callimachi: So what Malachy is doing is he’s looking at footage
over time. He’s looking at it in this month, in the next month, in
the next month, in the next month. And what he shows us is that
everything lines up, except ——
Browne: And you can see that he’s standing on an island in the
middle of the river.
Callimachi: The island of sand or gravel that the shooter is
standing on ——
Browne: By using old satellite imagery, we can tell within a
three-month period of when that island appeared.
Callimachi: That doesn’t appear in the satellite imagery until
——
Browne: After November 2014 this island appears.
[Music]
Callimachi: After November 2014.
Mills: So if you go back to 2014, it just disappears?
Browne: It disappears. And ——
Callimachi: On 10/5?
Browne: Yeah. Exactly. So it’s not there now.
Mills: So if that picture is of Huzayfah, like he claims it is ——
Callimachi: Yeah. Yeah. He’s there far later than he told us that
he was.
Mills: I, I hate to be the one who says this, but what if — what if
this turned out to be the weirdest case of catfishing?
Callimachi: What is catfishing?
Mills: That’s, like, when somebody is online pretending to be
someone else, and then begins to rope people in real life into
intense situations, usually romantic, with that person’s invented
persona.
Callimachi: Yeah.
Mills: But if this turns out to be some sort of fantasy that he’s
living out, this is the most strange and profound fantasy I’ve ever
heard of.
Callimachi: Look, it makes sense to me that somebody that has
been in the caliphate, that if he’s trying to exaggerate a little, you
know, that if he’s trying to — “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I was there
when Baghdadi, you know, announced it, oh, my God!”
Whatever. That makes sense to me. But not going there at all and
making up all of those details about the Albu Nimr tribesmen,
about this execution, about what it’s like to hold the gun, about
what it’s like to actually whip somebody, about the fact that the
blood splashes back up on you, that would — I mean, that’s a
level of invention? It’s too much! I mean, it’s — he’s providing
details that nobody knows, you know?
Mills: Yeah.
[Music]
Mills: It goes three months, 21 days, two months, skip this, 15
days. But there’s eight months right here.
Callimachi: So we go back to the whiteboard, where we have
plotted out everything he’s told us.
Wendy Dorr: Look, look at all the holes! Look, this is five months
in Canada, and then, up here, it’s three months in Canada, 15
days in Canada, five months.
Callimachi: And we start looking for patterns.
Dorr: Do you see that eight-month period, Larissa?
Anderson: Yes.
Callimachi: And our editor, Wendy Dorr, starts to develop a
theory.
Dorr: I think he was there then.
Mills: Right here? Here’s where he starts posting online.
Dorr: He told you February? It was the same year. It just was
much later.
Callimachi: There’s one big gap of time, from September of
2014 until April of 2015. His, his Canadian passport has him as
being in Pakistan, right? It’s a stretch of seven, almost eight
months.
Mills: Would this work? Where, when is the video of them at the
Euphrates, supposedly?
Anderson: That’s November — November 2014 to February
2016.
Mills: So that puts it there, right here. That lines up. That
actually lines up, right here.
Dorr: I think he learned of the caliphate, he saw the shit was
happening, and he was like, shit, I’m gonna go.
Callimachi: So I wonder if he was telling us a curated story.
Mills: That theory would answer a lot of questions.
Dorr: He misrepresented when he went. He went in September.
Mills: What if that’s it?
Anderson: It’s like Occam’s razor, right?
Dorr: It’s what?
Anderson: It’s like, the simplest solution is the most likely.
Dorr: Yeah. Right.
Mills: Interesting theory, Wendy Dorr.
Callimachi: And right as we’re starting to think that things are
starting to making sense again ——
Huzayfah’s Father: [Urdu]
[Music]
Callimachi: We get a phone call from Pakistan.
Huzayfah’s Father: [Urdu]
Mills: Test. Can you hear us now? Are we getting any better?
Can you give a test, Rukmini?
Masood: I can hear you, yes.
Mills: You can hear me. O.K., great.
Callimachi: All along in this process, we’ve been talking to
Huzayfah over a series of encrypted apps. And one of these
encrypted apps listed the phone number that Huzayfah used to
register for that app, and it was a +92 number.
Mills: Yeah, can you give us an update of just — what’s the,
what’s the latest from Pakistan?
Masood: The latest is, uh, I ——
Callimachi: +92 is Pakistan’s country code. It was Asthaa, our
colleague, who picked this up.
Masood: Because we just had his Pakistani cellphone number.
Callimachi: So we sent that number to Salman.
Masood: So I went to my sources.
Callimachi: And he was able to take that number to his sources.
Masood: So using these sources, I got details of his Pakistani
national ID card number.
Callimachi: And with that national identity card, there was an
address.
[Music]
Masood: Yeah, I thought it was the grandparents, but when I
went there, there was a guy who was standing out in the street. I
asked him if, if he knew, and he said that he’s from that house,
and he’s the cousin of Huzayfah. So then I had a brief, you know,
chat with him, and I asked if I could speak with the father and if
he could, you know, give me his contact number. And two days
later ——
Huzayfah’s Father: [Urdu]
Masood: I managed to, you know, talk to him for, like, 20, 25
minutes.
Masood: [Urdu]
Huzayfah’s Father: [Urdu]
Masood: He just portrayed his son as a curious kind of young
mind who spent a lot of time over the internet.
Callimachi: What did the father say to you specifically about
Huzayfah’s claim that he went to Syria, joined ISIS?
Masood: Yeah. I asked the father about Huzayfah’s alleged
travels to Syria, and he said that his son was never involved with
any militant or terror outfit.
[Music]
Masood: And he had just cooked up a story about his involvement
and his travels to, to Turkey or Syria.
Callimachi: I see.
Masood: I mean, he did try to sound very earnest. And he, you
know, he said Huzayfah was very studious, a very keen kind of
person by nature, and he mostly spent his time either at the
university or at his grandparents’ house. But, you know, now,
after I’ve spoken with the teachers, his story doesn’t really add
up.
[Music]
Callimachi: So Salman told us that he went over to the university
in Pakistan that Huzayfah had told us he attended.
Masood: Like, there was one teacher who said that she found him
very mysterious.
Callimachi: And right away, he finds two professors who
remembered him.
Masood: Didn’t really mingle with the rest of the class fellows.
Callimachi: They describe him as introverted, somewhat
antisocial. One of them even said that he seemed to have sort of
these blurry, bloodshot eyes.
Masood: She thought that he was on drugs. And he was mostly
absent from the classes.
Callimachi: Interesting.
Masood: And the teacher said she had a word with him about his
low attendance, also.
Callimachi: Uh huh.
Callimachi: Then Salman found a student who remembered
Huzayfah from one of the classes they had shared.
Masood: He also described him as somebody who was very
reserved — didn’t really have a lot of friends on the campus —
and also that he was not very regular in attendance.
Callimachi: And then he managed to find a school administrator.
Masood: And he also said the same thing, that — didn’t have a
lot of friends. Was not very regular in his attendance. Like, 50
percent of the time, he was absent from the classes.
Callimachi: I see.
Masood: And let me just tell you this.
Callimachi: From there ——
Masood: If you look at his transcript ——
Callimachi: He’s able to get his hands on Huzayfah’s transcripts.
And crucially, in that case file, we see ——
Masood: He misses one whole semester.
Callimachi: In this window that Wendy had identified as the
possible time when he went to Syria, there’s a period of time
inside of that when he doesn’t appear in the records at all.
Nixon: So the source is an official with the Department of
Homeland Security.
Callimachi: And it’s right around this time that we start hearing
back from our colleagues in Washington.
Goldman: You know, according to individuals I’ve been talking
to in law enforcement ——
Callimachi: Mhmm.
Goldman: There are three known facts about this guy.
Callimachi: They come back with basically three facts about
Huzayfah.
[Music]
Callimachi: Number one.
Goldman: He’s on the no-fly list.
Nixon: This person is on the no-fly list.
Callimachi: Right.
Nixon: And that the person is included on the no-fly list because
of terrorism-related activities.
Callimachi: That means that he can’t get on flights into or out of
the U.S., and in addition to that, he can’t even enter American
airspace.
Goldman: All right?
Callimachi: O.K.
Callimachi: That’s the first part.
Goldman: And ——
Callimachi: The second thing?
Goldman: He’s under investigation by Canadian authorities.
Callimachi: Officials believe ——
Goldman: He is a suspected member, or was a suspected
member, of the Islamic State.
Callimachi: Gotcha.
Callimachi: That he was a member of the Islamic State.
Schmitt: What two different officials in the U.S. government at
different agencies have told me is that this individual, this
Canadian, was a member of ISIS.
Callimachi: Number three.
Schmitt: In Syria.
Callimachi: They believe that he joined ISIS in Syria.
Schmitt: Two different sources in the American government have
confirmed that he was active in some type of ISIS activities in
Syria.
Callimachi: Got it.
Callimachi: And one of Eric Schmitt’s sources came back with a
possible timeline.
Schmitt: And he conducted certain activities inside of Syria
sometime in 2014, possibly early 2015.
Callimachi: Right. Got it.
Callimachi: That timeline also fits with Wendy Dorr’s theory.
[Music]
Schmitt: The officials did not disclose what those activities were,
but they were clearly aware who he was.
Goldman: To be on the no-fly list is serious.
Callimachi: Right.
Goldman: It’s not only are you a threat, but you’re somebody
who’s operationally capable of doing so.
Callimachi: Got it.
Goldman: Which means you, you know, you have the means and
wherewithal to carry out an attack, or at least the government
believes that to be the case.
Callimachi: Right.
Callimachi: So after hearing from colleague after colleague, who
kept on repeating, you know, this information about Huzayfah,
the question that was just at the top of my mind is: Why are the
Canadians not arresting him? Why? Why haven’t they acted? And
what is it they know about him that maybe we’re missing?
[Phone rings]
Callimachi: So at this point ——
Voice Mail: The person at extension 4- ...
Callimachi: I started making phone calls to officials in different
parts of the Canadian government.
Voice Mail: Is not available to take your call.
Callimachi: I called the Ministry of Public Affairs. I tried to
reach out to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Voice Mail: Please leave a message after the tone.
[Beep]
Callimachi: I reached again out to C.S.I.S.
[Phone rings]
Operator: Thank you for calling C.S.I.S. How may I help you?
Callimachi: To the C.S.I.S. agent who Huzayfah had told me had
come to his house.
Callimachi: Yes, hi, sir, I’m trying to reach [beep], please, at
C.S.I.S., in the [beep] area.
Operator: Um, I can’t confirm or deny whether there is a [beep]
working here, but I can take some details.
Callimachi: Could I just be transferred to his voice mail, please?
Operator: That’s what I’m trying to say. That’s not our process.
Callimachi: I got nowhere.
Operator: We take the information, and we pass it on, and he
may or may not contact you. So, um ——
Callimachi: O.K.
Operator: May I have your name?
Callimachi: Uh, sure. My first name is Rukmini.
Callimachi: Eventually, I got a hold of people in the ministry that
is in charge of dealing with people like Huzayfah, and they said
that their official position is not to comment on ongoing
investigations.
[Phone rings]
Callimachi: And that’s when I reached out to an old source of
mine.
Mubin Shaikh: Hello?
Callimachi: Hey, Mubin, it’s Rukmini. How are you?
Shaikh: Hey, how are you?
Callimachi: A man named Mubin Shaikh.
Reporter: Joining me now, Mubin Shaikh.
Callimachi: Mubin is ——
Reporter: A former Islamic extremist-turned-undercover
operative.
Callimachi: A Canadian citizen.
Reporter: He was born and raised in Canada, and yet, in his
teenage years, he became fully immersed in the teachings of
militant jihadism.
Callimachi: He’s a former extremist himself.
Reporter: He later renounced his jihadist beliefs and became a
C.S.I.S. and R.C.M.P. operative.
Callimachi: When he was an undercover operative for Canadian
intelligence, he helped dismantle one of the most famous terror
cases in Canada, called the Toronto 18.
Mills: Hmm.
Callimachi: Now ——
Shaikh: I am like a, a triage counselor.
Callimachi: He works to deradicalize other former extremists.
Shaikh: My job is to make sure that the public is safe, and that he
is not a threat to the public.
Callimachi: And the reason I was calling him specifically is, I
had actually introduced him to Huzayfah after we left Canada.
Mills: Right.
Shaikh: My intention and my mind-set was to help him.
Mills: And could you just tell me a little bit, like, why you did
that?
Callimachi: Look, it’s hard to know what, as a reporter, you’re
supposed to do in this situation. We are journalists. We’re not an
extension of law enforcement, and so going to the police is
something that is not an option in our field. At the same time, I
was concerned as we were leaving this hotel room, and at a
minimum, it seemed to me that this is a person that needed help.
Callimachi: So I’m recording this call.
Shaikh: O.K.
Callimachi: So Mubin was able to confirm a couple of key
things, some of which I’d already heard from Huzayfah in the
conversations I had with him since we left that hotel room.
Shaikh: I actually just met with investigators yesterday.
Callimachi: The most crucial ——
Shaikh: They’ve come and talked to him.
Callimachi: Is that he confessed to Canadian authorities.
Shaikh: They’ve talked to his father. They talked to his mother.
Callimachi: About the broad arc of what he did in Syria, minus
the murders.
Shaikh: Yeah.
Callimachi: Then why haven’t they arrested him?
Shaikh: It’s not, it’s not enough.
Callimachi: It’s not enough?
[Music]
Shaikh: It’s not what you know, it’s what you can prove in court.
Callimachi: I see.
Shaikh: You need to show beyond a reasonable doubt, not just by
implication.
Reporter: Maher Arar, an engineer, husband and father ——
Callimachi: So, Mubin tells us about a Canadian-Syrian.
Reporter: Accused by U.S. officials of being affiliated with Al
Qaeda.
Callimachi: The Canadians had intelligence that he had some sort
of connection to Al Qaeda.
Reporter: A charge Arar vehemently denied.
Reporter: He was sent for 10 months of hell in a Syrian prison.
Callimachi: He was eventually brought back to Canada.
Reporter: There is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has
committed any offense or ——
Callimachi: The charges were dropped against him, and
Canadian law enforcement actually issued an apology to him.
Shaikh: And then the government had to pay him, like, I mean,
big bucks.
Callimachi: Interesting.
Shaikh: I mean, like, multimillion-dollar lawsuit.
Callimachi: This isn’t even the only case like this.
Shaikh: And there was a couple.
[Music]
Reporter: Sabrine Djermane, 21 years old, and El Mahdi Jamali,
20.
Reporter: The two were accused of planning to leave Canada to
fight with ISIS.
Callimachi: They’re posting on social media.
Reporter: Email exchanges, Facebook messages. There was also
evidence the two bought materials to build a bomb.
Reporter: There was a recipe for creating that bomb, found on
their bedside table.
Callimachi: This is a famous bomb-making recipe that was first
published by Al Qaeda. It’s been used in countless attacks.
Probably the most famous is the Boston Marathon attack. And yet
——
Shaikh: They got off.
Callimachi: A jury of their peers found them to be not guilty.
And it’s been yet another embarrassment for Canadian authorities.
Shaikh: This is the dilemma that we’re facing, everyone is facing,
all over.
Callimachi: Mhmm.
Callimachi: They want to bring cases to trial that lead to
convictions.
Shaikh: Because there is that doubt, they need more information.
Callimachi: I see.
Callimachi: I’m not in the room, so I don’t know what they’re
looking for specifically, but I’m imagining that they’re looking
for forensic evidence.
Mills: Right.
Callimachi: Something concrete. Something that places
Huzayfah in Syria, whether it’s his DNA, whether it’s a witness
statement from somebody who saw him there, documents that he
appears in, that kind of thing.
Mills: Mhmm.
Callimachi: And this is where I think we find ourselves now —
in the same spot as Canadian authorities.
[Music]
Mills: So what do we know?
Callimachi: So here’s what we know. We know that his story fits
the pattern both of how people are radicalized by ISIS and how
people end up joining this terrorist group. We know that U.S.
officials believe that he is an ISIS member, and that he joined
ISIS in Syria. We know that the Canadian officials have him
under surveillance.
Mills: We know that he has this deep, insider knowledge.
Callimachi: Right. Deep, insider, in-the-weeds knowledge that I
can say has taken me more than five years to gain — and even
then, there were things he taught me.
Mills: Hmm.
Callimachi: Where, you know, that there were things that he said
that I didn’t initially know, and that later, upon reflection and
upon research, I realized were true about the group. Let me just
end on the things we know. We also know he lied to us. We know
he lied to us about the timeline and about how he got into Syria.
Callimachi: O.K., Huzayfah. Are you there?
Abu Huzayfah: Yes.
Callimachi: So I had to go back to Huzayfah and see if he had
any explanation for this.
Callimachi: Your dad actually called my colleague this morning,
Pakistani-time, when you and I were both most likely asleep.
Huzayfah: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, uh, I know about that.
Callimachi: O.K.
Huzayfah: I know about that conversation.
Callimachi: So your dad, your dad is saying that you made up the
whole thing.
Huzayfah: He said that, right?
Callimachi: Yeah.
Huzayfah: O.K., good. I actually told my parents to say the
opposite, ’cause yeah, um, it is what it is. For me, I’m not gonna
incriminate myself any further.
Callimachi: I just — I guess I’m just asking you, if you made this
up, if this whole thing was an invention, I guess just tell me, you
know? So that ——
Huzayfah: Oh, I’ve been hoping that — I’ve been hoping I can
say that this whole thing is bullshit, just so I can say that when I
— once they come around to a prosecution, that you cannot prove
anything, because they cannot prove anything. All right, I’m
actually — I wish people would say I’m lying. You know, that’s —
I actually wish that C.S.I.S. thinks I’m lying, that F.B.I. thinks
that those are lies, and whatever the rest of the agencies are — I
actually wish that. I really wish that, Rukmini.
Callimachi: There’s a moment on tape when I ask you, “Were
you there when Baghdadi declared the caliphate on July 4th?”
And you said, “Yes, I remember them handing out candy.”
Huzayfah: Yeah. Um, I, I had — I said that I was there during
that time, but ——
Callimachi: Huzayfah, I understand that you’re trying to protect
certain details, but when you do that, and you start contradicting
yourself, everybody immediately goes, “Oh, my God, he’s a liar,”
right? And then it takes away from every other thing that you say
that is true. Do you understand?
Huzayfah: Yeah.
Callimachi: Can you please tell me?
Huzayfah: I — [sighs] I entered, uh, I entered late, after the
entire timeline. After September 2014.
Callimachi: After September 2014?
Huzayfah: Yes.
Callimachi: Why were you telling us this earlier timeline?
Huzayfah: Pre-caliphate.
Callimachi: Pre-caliphate?
Huzayfah: Yeah. They don’t — they say it’s that people who went
before can at least be said they went for humanitarian reasons.
Callimachi: Right.
Huzayfah: People who went after the caliphate say they went
purely for the caliphate.
Callimachi: Yeah.
Huzayfah: That’s one thing I kind of was hoping would make a
bit of a difference.
Mills: So, what he’s saying is essentially that he told us a
different timeline.
Callimachi: Yeah.
Mills: Because he didn’t want to be associated with some of the
worst elements of what we know about ISIS?
Callimachi: Right. It made it look more innocent. You know, he
was joining this group that then still had this aspirational, you
know — rebels fighting Assad’s soldiers, standing up for the
Muslim people, at the same time that they had this dream of a
caliphate — before ISIS became this infamous group that we
know it to be. That is now wrong, right? That last part is now
wrong. He joins them when the infamy of ISIS is well known.
Huzayfah: Yeah.
Callimachi: O.K.
Huzayfah: But I did leave because I don’t want to die. Um, I
wanted to apologize to all you guys that I lied that first time.
Callimachi: I understand, Huzayfah.
Huzayfah: About the dates. But the stress that I am in, and then
C.S.I.S. did show up the very next day.
Callimachi: Yeah. I understand.
Huzayfah: Yeah.
[Music]
Callimachi: So that’s how we left things on the phone. But at the
same time, I continued getting these panicked messages from
Huzayfah, saying things like, “Rukmini, I can’t breathe.” He was
expressing to me how stressed he was by the idea of us publishing
the confessions he had made, to the point that he finally just one
day flat-out said, “Whatever is published, I’m just going to deny
it.” I mean, I can only imagine that, from his point of view, when
we emailed him and then called him and then went to see him, we
happened to show up in this window of time when he thought that
he had slipped through the cracks.
Mills: Yeah.
Callimachi: And as the investigation has unfolded, and as he
realizes that he is in trouble, I think he’s become more and more
anxious about his future.
Mills: So what about what we don’t know?
Callimachi: Right. So here’s what we don’t know. Beyond the
general window of time, we don’t know the exact day that he
entered Syria, nor the exact day that he left. In fact, we don’t
actually know how he got into Syria. Did he go through Turkey?
Did he go through Istanbul, as he said he did, or did he maybe go
through another city, like, say, Ankara? And what passport did he
use? We know it’s not his Canadian one. We’ve ruled that one
out. He had a Pakistani passport, but that was long expired. Did
he use a forged document? A fake passport? And once inside
Syria, we know what he said occured, but we don’t have
secondary confirmation of almost any of that. And so we don’t
know if the atrocities that he has described are the sum total of
what he did. To basically fact-check what happened to him when
he was inside the caliphate, we need somebody who had eyes on
him, somebody in Syria who was there alongside him and who
saw what happened. Now, here’s the problem with that: We know
that, that according to him, he was a member of the Hisba.
Civilians told us that when the Hisba was patrolling the streets,
they were looking at the ground. They would try to not make eye
contact with them. The second thing is, we know that the Hisba,
when they carry out atrocities, executions, they mask their faces.
Mills: Right. Even Huzayfah said that he would wear a mask.
Callimachi: Even Huzayfah, even Huzayfah said that. So the
chances of us being able to find someone who happened to be on
the sidelines of one of these executions from the civilian side, and
who would remember him, is close to nil. So the only other group
that could have had eyes on him is the Islamic State itself.
[Skype call rings]
Callimachi: And on that front, I haven’t given up yet.
Kassem Hamadé: Hello.
Callimachi: Hello, Kassem.
Callimachi: I’ve made contact through intermediaries with two
different ISIS officials.
Callimachi: Is Abu Abboud al-Raqqawi with you?
Hamadé: Yes.
Callimachi: We’re working with Kassem Hamadé. He’s a foreign
correspondent for a Swedish publication called Expressen.
Hamadé: O.K., continue.
Callimachi: Awesome.
Callimachi: These are his sources. He’s the one who put us in
touch them, and when I say put us in touch with them, I don’t
mean that he just picked up the phone. It took weeks of
coordination and travel to make this happen.
Callimachi: If we showed him some pictures, could he take a look
and see if he recognizes the person that we’re looking at?
Callimachi: One of them was an emir of the Hisba in Raqqa.
Mills: An emir is like a boss — a manager kind of thing?
Callimachi: It’s more like a general, like a commander.
Hamadé: [Arabic] Yeah, I will show him the picture.
Callimachi: Thank you very much, Kassem.
Hamadé: No problem.
Callimachi: Over WhatsApp ——
[Whatsapp sound]
Hamadé: O.K.
Callimachi: We sent him the pictures that we have of Huzayfah,
both recent ones and then ones that date back to the time when he
would have been in Syria.
Hamadé: Look at the pictures.
Unidentified Speaker: [Arabic]
Hamadé: [Arabic]
Callimachi: He said that Huzayfah was definitely not in his own
unit, but ——
Hamadé: He’s saying that he doesn’t know who this guy is. But
this guy ——
Callimachi: Yes.
Hamadé: He has seen him before.
Callimachi: I see.
[Music]
Callimachi: He had seen him inside the caliphate before.
Mills: Hmm.
Callimachi: Can he try to see if other people recognize him?
Hamadé: Yeah. [Arabic]
Unidentified Speaker: [Arabic]
Hamadé: Yeah, he can do that.
Callimachi: That would be wonderful.
Hamadé: O.K., my friend.
Callimachi: O.K., Kassem, thank you. Thank you very much for
your help. Take care, now.
Hamadé: Good luck. Thank you. Bye-bye.
[Skype call hangs up]
Callimachi: Through that emir ——
Mills: Are you recording, Asthaa?
Chaturvedi: Yep.
Callimachi: We were able to then get in contact with another
ISIS official. I asked our colleague Abduljabbar to translate for
us.
Abduljabbar Yousif: Testing, testing, one, two, three.
Callimachi: This ISIS official was an administrator in one of
ISIS’ offices in Raqqa that was in charge of handing out IDs to
new ISIS recruits.
Unidentified Speaker: [Arabic]
Callimachi: He saw the pictures of Huzayfah.
Mills: What is he saying?
Callimachi: And he said ——
Yousif: He’s saying, “I know, I remember this guy. I am 100
percent sure.”
Callimachi: 100 percent, he remembers him.
Yousif: “He is the guy who we gave him the ID.”
Mills: Hmm.
Callimachi: He remembers handing him his ID when he came
into the caliphate.
Yousif: “I remember 100 percent that he took the ID card from
us.”
Mills: He’s saying Huzayfah?
Yousif: Yes.
Unidentified Speaker: [Arabic]
Yousif: “90 to 95 percent, he is Canadian.”
Callimachi: He said, “I’m pretty sure he is Canadian.” And this is
before our team had explained to him that he is Canadian. He
added that he was there for not very long, and that he then
disappeared. And the reason he remembers him — because this is
a person that must have processed probably dozens of ISIS
recruits. Why would he remember this guy?
Unidentified Speaker: [Arabic]
Callimachi: And he said that the reason he remembers him is
——
Yousif: You know, the investigative unit, they published his, his
photo.
Callimachi: Interesting.
Mills: That’s what he says?
Yousif: Yeah.
Callimachi: He said that when Huzayfah escaped, there was an
internal notice — basically, like, an internal “Wanted” poster —
with this picture that was circulated among ISIS members so that
at checkpoints, they would look for him and try to arrest him.
[Music]
Callimachi: Now, here’s the difficult thing. We’ve just spent
month after month after month trying to confirm the account of
just one ISIS member, Huzayfah. These are two other ISIS
members who I haven’t even met.
Mills: Right.
Callimachi: Their stories have not been vetted, and what I’m
trying to do right now is I’m trying to see if this second man, the
one who remembers seeing this “Wanted” poster — if he is able
to help us find this paperwork. So that’s where we’re at.
Mills: And where, where exactly is that that we’re at? Like,
where is it that we’re leaving Huzayfah for the time being?
Callimachi: I suspect that if it’s true that he really did go to
Syria, as U.S. officials seem to be quite certain of ——
Mills: As he told us he was.
Callimachi: As he told us he was.
Mills: Yeah.
Callimachi: And if he did the things there that he told us he did
——
Mills: Right.
Callimachi: At some point, something will emerge.
Mills: Hmm.
Callimachi: A picture, a piece of paper.
Mills: This “Wanted” poster, maybe?
Callimachi: Yeah.
Mills: And until then?
[Music]
Callimachi: Yeah. Until then, my notebook remains open.
Mills: So now what?
Callimachi: Right. Now, Mosul.
Mills: You ready?
[Airport announcement: May I have your attention, please? This
is the last and final boarding call for all passengers traveling on
Turkish Airlines Flight TK 12 to Istanbul. At this time we kindly
ask all remaining passengers to please proceed immediately to
Gate … ]
Mills: We’re gonna be the last two, Rukmini.
Callimachi: I know.
[Music]