After the Streatham attack, former al-Qaeda member Aimen Dean feared his worst prediction was coming true. Photo / AP
Former al-Qaeda member turned MI6 spy, Aimen Dean, believes the UK Government needs to go even further after the Streatham attack.
When Streatham attacker Sudesh Amman ran out of a high-street shop and began indiscriminately stabbing passersby last weekend, Aimen Dean worried that his prediction was coming true. A former al-Qaeda member turned MI6 spy, Dean had told me days beforehand of his certainty that the next big terror threat to civilian life was offenders leaving prison.
"They could form the next wave of lone wolf attacks in the UK," said Dean, just over a week before the incident in south London. "It's a problem we're facing right now."
Dean's fears weren't unfounded – it was the second such attack in as many months, following Usman Khan's fatal stabbing of two people at an offender rehabilitation conference near London Bridge. In the wake of the attacks, the Government has announced plans to increase prison sentences for people convicted of terrorism offences, and has said it will introduce emergency legislation to prevent their early release. But new data shows demand for prison spaces will outstrip supply by 2022.
"The dangerous message Amman and Khan have sent is that if you're a convicted terrorist, you either go out in a blaze of glory or you're watched for your whole life," says Dean. The release of more such convicts in coming months and years means, he warns, that "the appeal of this kind of atrocity will intensify" – here and across France, Germany, the US, Canada and Australia, where prosecutions for terrorism-related offences are highest.
When we meet in January, 41-year-old Dean speaks rapidly and with authority on subjects from Islamic history to deradicalisation. On the latter, he is well versed, having undergone "a very strange career progression from trainee Imam, to jihadist, to terrorist bombmaker, to spy, to banker" – as well as host of Conflicted, a podcast about the Middle East, which returns for a second series this week.
Born in Saudi Arabia as the youngest of six boys, Dean's world fell apart when his mother died of a brain aneurysm when he was just 14. He sought solace in religion, which his brothers believed "was the perfect life I could have led, because there would be no bad habits like drinking and smoking. It didn't cross their minds that it would lead me to the path of jihad."
At 15, that 'respectable crowd' encouraged Dean to travel to Bosnia to join the Mujahideen Brigade, where he witnessed horrific violence, including his friend decapitating a prisoner. Once the war ended in 1995, he was recruited by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, architect of the 9/11 attacks, to join al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. There, he met Osama bin Laden "for about two hours, and he talked about his vision to fight the Americans," Dean recalls. Bin Laden roused them with plans for glory. "It's different when you hear the plan from when you see it in practice."
After al-Qaeda's first major terror attack in 1998, when suicide bombers killed 224 at US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Dean "realised the foolishness" of their mission – understanding for the first time that "a group of 400 people in the mountains did not have the right to hijack the decision of war and peace for 1.5 billion people." So he fled to Qatar in search of "a quiet life" – entering the country on a fake passport – and was picked up by security services, who gave him the choice between prison or spying for the Americans, French, or Brits. Dean chose the latter, based on familial connections to the British Empire.
Dean, then 20, would go on to spy on al-Qaeda for eight years, working for them as a bombmaker in Afghanistan, and travelling the world to conduct business on their behalf. "Fear was always in the back of my mind," he says, "but if I was willing to risk my life for al-Qaeda's wrong cause, I would be a hypocrite if I didn't risk my life for the right one."
The information he gathered foiled terror plots, such as a deadly poison attack on the New York subway, and landed on then-Prime Minister Tony Blair's desk. His biggest regret, he says, "is that I had information something big was about to happen [in summer 2001], but I didn't know what." Even if they had stopped 9/11, he believes it would only have been a matter of time before a similar attack occurred.
An American journalist blew Dean's cover in 2006. But after initial anger, he was relieved; MI6 smuggled him to a safe house, and as time wore on, he could start to live a normal life. When an outgoing MI6 boss offered him a job in counter-terrorism and money laundering at a global bank, he jokes, "I exchanged one form of terrorism for another: al-Qaeda to banking." Now, he advises governments, as well as banks, on terrorism, in addition to his podcasting duties.
With this background, it is perhaps strange that Dean believes there "is no such thing as a rehabilitated jihadist" – he sees himself as different because he left of his own volition. "The only way [a jihadist] can demonstrate that they've renounced violent extremism is if they have sung like a canary and provided damaging intelligence on the networks that recruited them."
The other test is for them to show they put loyalty to their country above religion. "I don't believe in deradicalisation," says Dean. "The efforts are riddled with naivety and a lack of understanding."
Prison is the safest place for violent extremists, Dean adds, and more places should be built to house convicts. "Use the deterrent of much longer sentences and make them serve the minimum in its entirety unless they show remorse and cooperation," he says. "If you need another Belmarsh, build one."
To halt the spread of extremism within prison, he continues, "Conditions need to be harsher, with less time for them to congregate."
But he would never take his expertise into that area, either, pointing out that Jack Merritt and Saskia Jones, the victims of the London Bridge attack, were "two well-meaning people stabbed by the person they helped." Jihadists are "extremely treacherous," he says. "Unless they have come completely clean, cooperated fully and done damage to their previous cause, you can't trust them."
As a Tory voter, Dean supports the Government's increased sentences for terrorists and ban on ISIS recruits coming home, as in Shamima Begum's case – who last week lost the appeal against her citizenship being revoked. But he thinks the security services should work more closely with the police to see if suspects will share information about recruitment networks. "If Shamima Begum wants to come home, she needs to talk about her entire journey," says Dean. "Her body language and words don't indicate she is willing to cooperate with the authorities and renounce her old ways."
The UK should also set up a processing centre in Cyprus – which would not be like Guantanamo Bay, he says – because "if you don't exercise control over them in a safe environment, they will show up somewhere else with false identities and be a greater menace."
Dean may have distanced himself from al-Qaeda, but it haunts him. He lives with diabetes, which he developed from the stress of being undercover in Afghanistan, and there is a fatwa calling for his head. In 2016, two men attempted to assassinate him when he was in Bahrain for a family wedding, but the security services foiled the plot. The only way he can sleep at night is by loudly playing audiobooks on repeat.
"It annoys my wife, but she puts up with it," he says. Happily married since 2014, Dean and his wife – who he met through a mutual friend, and to told his full story on their second date – have two children under four.
On a bookshelf at his London home, Dean has two signed copies of his autobiography, Nine Lives: My Time As MI6's Top Spy Inside al-Qaeda, one for each child. In them, he has written the note: "This is your father, this is what he did. First of all, don't repeat his mistakes. Second, follow his example in correcting those mistakes."
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