Hatred at Home: al-Qaida on Trial in the American Midwest

5. On the Move

 5 On the Move By 1989, paul Laws was immersed in his new life as a Muslim convert. On February 1, he filled out paperwork to change his name to Abdulmalek Kenyatta, taking his middle name as his last name, citing “religious reasons” as his motive. Abdulmalek, a common Muslim name, was appropriate for a convert: it means “servant of the king” or “servant of the master” in Arabic, with “king” or “master” usually a reference to Allah.1 A Franklin County probate judge approved the name change on March 16. Almost exactly one year later, on March 28, 1990, three days before his twenty-sixth birthday, Laws applied for a U.S. passport under his new name, seeking expedited processing for a trip he planned to take in April. He received his passport just two days later, on March 30, a turnaround time difficult to fathom in the post-9/11 era. As a high school student, Kenyatta had been surprised to learn of Christian assaults on Muslims in the Crusades. Now the passionate convert left the United States for Pakistan and his own crusade, one being waged in neighboring Afghanistan.2 kenyatta stayed for a time at the al-Qaida–affiliated Beit alAnsar guesthouse in Peshawar, Pakistan, the resting spot for the faithful founded by Abdullah Azzam and bin Laden in 1984. There he met bin Laden’s former personal pilot and got to know another member of al-Qaida whose responsibilities included logistics and transporting people to and from training camps in Afghanistan. It was likely Kenyatta was not the only African American in the camps in Pakistan or Afghanistan: subsequent reporting, trial testimony , and other research into the camps and events leading to 9/11 turned up several other black Americans who made a similar trip. Around that time, Kenyatta went to Afghanistan and learned On the Move  how to use assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. He was also taught small-unit tactics and hand-to-hand combat techniques. Kenyatta was still abroad when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait on August 1, 1990, followed by the massing of U.S. and allied forces in Saudi Arabia in response, a gathering of nonbelievers on Islamic soil that was anathema to many Muslims.3 Around the middle of 1991, Kenyatta formally joined al-Qaida and stayed for a time at another Peshawar guesthouse, Beit ur Salam, reserved exclusively for members of the group. During this time, Kenyatta obtained further training, including map reading, climbing, rappelling, military history, and explosives. He made no bones about his purpose in being there: he told another guest he was there to “fight jihad.” He was so passionate about his adopted cause that he told another member of al-Qaida he was furious the organization would even consider scaling back its military operations. Let me be clear, he said. Al-Qaida should continue those operations, and I’m committed to them even if they’re not. Though Kenyatta traveled abroad too late to meet Azzam, he was linked to the cofounder of al-Qaida—and, inadvertently, to Rauf, who had met Azzam—through the places he stayed, the training he received, and the ideology he was exposed to. Kenyatta’s journeys at this time are difficult to track. But sometime in February 1992, he apparently went again to Afghanistan, where he met a man named Mohammedou Ould Salahi. Like Maqsood Khan, the close friend of Rauf, Salahi became a pivotal figure in Kenyatta’s life.4 Salahi, sometimes referred to as Slahi, a native of the West African nation of Mauritania, had gone abroad in 1988, first to Germany, where he studied at the University of Duisburg. In 1990, he traveled to Afghanistan to fight against the communists still controlling the country following the Soviets’ 1989 withdrawal. He spent six weeks at the alFarooq training camp in Kandahar and swore allegiance to al-Qaida. In 1991, he returned to Germany to continue his studies, then came back to Afghanistan the following year with two friends, including Karim Mehdi, a Moroccan national. Salahi met Laws and fought as a member of an al-Qaida mortar battery in a battle in Gardez, Afghanistan.5 following this trip abroad, Kenyatta returned to the United States and to Columbus for a short time, teaching martial arts at the  hatred at home mosque on Riverview. By early 1993, he was overseas again, arriving at the U...