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 4. The episode was
released on May 10, 2018. The portions in italics were recorded
outside of a studio or excerpted from archival tape.
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Us vs. Them
[Music]
Rukmini Callimachi: Take me to the first execution.
Abu Huzayfah: This was in June. At that time, they were
celebrating a lot, of all the victories we’ve had in Iraq. And we
were reaching towards Mosul pretty fast. After that, Ramadi, then
straight to Baghdad. But what happened was, Albu Nimr tribe
was a local tribe that stood against, they said they stood against
Islam. They stood against the state. So, they killed a majority of
them in Iraq, and they brought back the important ones, back into
Syria. And we were the ones who had to carry out their execution.
[Music]
Huzayfah: They said — they told us that they are apostates from
Iraq, murtadeen. To me, a murtadeen was, like, the worst thing in
the world. That’s a guy who just turned away from Islam. And
they were being brought in to face punishment. They were being
brought in to — for justice.
Callimachi: And you felt that he really was — I mean, so, the
word “murtad” means an apostate, right?
Huzayfah: Apostate, yeah.
Callimachi: But the members of this tribe, they were Sunni
Muslims, right?
Huzayfah: They were Sunni Muslims, yes.
Callimachi: So that their only crime was that they had
contradicted ISIS.
Huzayfah: They stood up. They stopped us from getting to
Baghdad.
Callimachi: O.K. They stood in your way.
Huzayfah: They stood in our way. They wouldn’t let us take over
their city, their village. They wouldn’t let us go any further. They
stopped us. They put, they put up resistance that we didn’t have to
face. That’s what one of the guys described it as. They put — they
stood up against us when they didn’t have to. They could have
always conformed to us and lived comfortably. Or, you know,
lived normally. We didn’t, they didn’t have to go through it. But
they put themselves in that situation. They killed themselves.
That’s what they said.
Callimachi: And you believed that?
Huzayfah: I believed that, yeah.
[Music]
Andy Mills: Chapter 4. “Us vs. Them.” O.K., so he’s saying that
it’s June now.
Callimachi: Yeah.
Mills: Where is ISIS at this moment?
Callimachi: In June of 2014, we are moments before the
declaration of the caliphate. And we are right now on the cusp of
ISIS becoming the group that we know it to be — to be on every
Page 1 above the fold, on every newscast. And as I’m sitting there
across from Huzayfah in the hotel room, there are two things that
jump out at me when he says this. Number one is the us versus
them, and the heights that ISIS takes it to. The Albu Nimr tribe is
a Sunni tribe. This is the same sect as ISIS. These are the very
people that ISIS calls Muslims and considers the citizens of their
caliphate. But they have now been described as apostates, as
murtadeen. Why? Because they stood up to ISIS. The very act of
disagreeing with the Islamic State is essentially equivalent to
disagreeing with God.
Mills: Mhmm.
Callimachi: And the second thing is, he properly identifies the
crime that ISIS assigns to this group, and he’s using the correct
theological terms to refer to them. And that’s something that is
pretty in the weeds, right? Really specific. In addition to that, he
says that leaders of the tribe were also kidnapped and taken back
to Syria, and this is something that suggests insider knowledge.
[Music]
Callimachi: How does ISIS prepare you to kill people? Is there
anything ——
Huzayfah: They — we had dolls.
Callimachi: Dolls?
Huzayfah: Yeah, we had dolls to practice on. We also have
cutouts of ballistics gels. It would feel a lot like human. And
inside the ballistic gels, they’d have sacks where major organs
would be. And then you could just slice, practice, behead, stab
and, you know, just practice. And then we’d also fire weapons
into them to see what damage a bullet would do. So it kind of felt
like what a medical student would do.
Callimachi: This is something you learned in the training.
Huzayfah: Yeah. Yeah. You had to know how to slice a head off.
[Music]
Mills: When it comes to the act of violence itself ——
Callimachi: Yeah.
Mills: How is it — going into this, what is it that you know about
how ISIS gets somebody like Huzayfah, who’s kind of this
awkward kid ——
Callimachi: Yeah.
Mills: And turns them into someone who can actually take a
human life?
Callimachi: Right. So, what I know from reading the
interrogation records of numerous ISIS suspects who were
arrested on their way home, and from interviewing ISIS members
myself, ISIS seems to have a series of steps that they take people
through to essentially desensitize them to violence.
[Music]
Callimachi: So, first of all, they practice on nonhuman entities.
They use dolls. They use mannequins. They make them very
lifelike. And then they put them on kitchen duty. The ISIS
fighters are told to go and slaughter the chicken or slit the throat
of the lamb that they’re going to have for dinner. The next step is
a communal killing. In the group execution, there’s some level of
anonymity because you’re one of several people who are doing
this, and there’s a camaraderie — I hate to say it, but there’s,
there’s a support system, in the sense that you’re all doing it
together. You’re all doing it on cue. There’s something
mechanical and automatic and communal, you know, about it.
Callimachi: So, describe to me what happened that day.
Huzayfah: So, we’d have regular routine. Wake up, prayed,
breakfast. And they brought us out just before afternoon.
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Callimachi: He then says that ——
Huzayfah: This was done in the center of the city.
Callimachi: They all went out to a public place.
Huzayfah: They gathered people for this. And they told us that
we’re gonna stand in this certain formation.
Callimachi: And according to his telling ——
Huzayfah: And the guys are going to be in front of us. One shot
clean to the head. Just finish them off.
Callimachi: What he was about to do was something he was
going to do with the people he considered his brothers. These are
the people that he trained with, that he had every meal with, every
one of the five daily prayers. The people that he slept in the same
dorms with. And now they are taking a human life. And they’re
going to do this together.
[Music]
Huzayfah: And then what happened is a few hours, a couple of
hours later, a few hours later, they brought in these old men.
They had blue uniforms on. They were, like, jumpsuits — full
uniform. Blue color. Navy blue, you could say. They were
blindfolded and handcuffed, roped behind their hands. And they
just came in in a line and sat in front of us.
Callimachi: And they bring them out in a single file and make
each prisoner kneel in front of each executioner.
Huzayfah: No emotions on them. They looked like animals to me
at that point.
Callimachi: He, he was facing you?
Huzayfah: No, he, he was facing the other way. But when he
came in, he was normal. You would — like he accepted his fate
kind of type thing.
Callimachi: And then they’re supposed to wait.
Huzayfah: The guy in the distance, in front of us, would give us a
cue.
Callimachi: For a signal.
Huzayfah: And then he would just say, “Fire.” At first, you
know, you have to, you have to bring yourself to do it. You’re,
like, O.K., I’m finally killing someone now. This is maybe the next
step to being a front-line fighter, and I already had some goals
for being a front-line fighter. I’m, like, O.K., so this is, I guess,
the next stepping stone for me.
Callimachi: And the interesting thing is that Huzayfah has this
moment where he’s standing behind the man that he’s about to
execute, and for a second, it looks like the social pressure might
actually not work.
Huzayfah: You start slow. You’re like, O.K., just slowly, you can
do this, this — don’t worry, he’s a murtad. You’re killing him for
a reason. This is justified. You can do this. You’re not going to be
held accountable.
Callimachi: In Huzayfah’s telling, he can’t pull the trigger.
Huzayfah: You bring yourself to do it. You’re like, O.K., now,
now. But you can’t bring the pressure.
Callimachi: And it’s at this moment when he looks down.
Huzayfah: They looked like regular good Muslims. They had
their beards.
Callimachi: And realizes he’s, he’s just a guy.
Huzayfah: They were old. And they were tribal guys.
[Music]
Huzayfah: Slowly, you can do this. You’re killing him for a
reason. This is justified. You can do this. You’re not going to be
held accountable. They put themselves in that situation. They
killed themselves. And you kind of just have to close your eyes
and do it. And just shoot.
Callimachi: After you pull that trigger, does he just fall?
Huzayfah: Um, you feel the pressure from the gun and
everything. And you’ve, you, I guess you feel bits coming back at
you when — from his head, I guess. Then they fall forward, and
when it calms down, sort of, you could see where the damage is
and everything.
Callimachi: Did you look?
Huzayfah: I peeked, yeah. But I just kept looking down at his
feet. I didn’t want to look at his head. And then I, uh, I kept
thinking, “We killed them.” Like, they were middle-aged men,
and I’m just a kid.
Callimachi: Did you guys have to pick up the bodies, or did
somebody else do that?
Huzayfah: No, that was — someone else came and did that. And
there was a truck, a large truck, and it just gathered them and
took them away. But we had to load them up. You know, get them
piled — from that line into, like, I guess, a pile.
Mills: And then you just put them in a pile, and you turned
around and went back to your place, or ——
Huzayfah: Uh, yeah. Yeah, we were told to take a break for a bit.
We could go back, take the day off.
[Pause]
Huzayfah: I threw up a lot that day. I couldn’t get the smell of
that stale, iron-y, bloody smell off of my hand, and, like, I kept, I
kept smelling it.
Mills: Was there any emotional training as a part of this?
Huzayfah: Yeah. They said that — they’d, they’d say to us, “You
know, it’s gonna be hard for you guys.” They said, “First time,
it’s gonna affect you a lot. You’re gonna be sad. You’re gonna be
sick. And you might even faint from the blood. But, what you have
to do is, you just have to drink down those emotions. Remember
you are doing this for God. Remember you are carrying out what
it says in the Quran, and what you have to — what your duty is as
a Muslim.”
Callimachi: And you, I mean, you didn’t question that?
Huzayfah: I didn’t, no. I didn’t question that.
[Pause]
Huzayfah: After that, I called in a few days sick — like, I just told
them, I’m sick, I can’t go out, I’m sick, and this and that.
Callimachi: So the way Huzayfah tells it is that he’s in his dorm,
and he’s been given this R and R time.
Huzayfah: And, you know, when, while I did that, while I was
just at home, this is when they started coming in.
[Music]
Callimachi: Then, a commander comes to see him.
Huzayfah: It was a Libyan guy. He was a pretty big commander,
and he’s like, so, you — he asked me what you wanted to do with
ISIS and everything. He’s like, “You can’t be police for a long
time. Come on, you’re a muhajir. You immigrated to these
lands.” And, like, I know. I wanted to be a front-line fighter. And
I heard of Rayat al-Tawheed. That’s a British battalion.
Callimachi: What’s it called?
Huzayfah: A British battalion, Rayat al-Tawheed.
Callimachi: Rayat al-Tawheed. O.K.
Huzayfah: Yeah. But he’s like, how about you instead recruit
people? Your family, friends come here, live under the Khilafa.
Why don’t you start recruiting? We need North Americans. And
we need them to come in and fight for us. But we also need them
to go back. So he’s like, “There’s a seminar coming up. Come,
attend that.”
Callimachi: And do you remember roughly when this happens?
Huzayfah: Yeah, this was in, um, July.
Callimachi: So, according to him, around a month after the
execution ——
Huzayfah: Front-line fighters came in and took up our positions.
Callimachi: Fighters come and take over the position that he had
held.
Huzayfah: Checkpoints and this and that.
Callimachi: And he and the other members of the Hisba, the
religious police, are trucked to a place outside of Aleppo.
Huzayfah: 70 or 75 trucks.
Callimachi: And they go inside of a building ——
Huzayfah: And I think it was a government building.
Callimachi: And it is there that he suddenly looks around and
sees people from all over the world.
[Music]
Huzayfah: And there was a lot. There was Australians there.
There was British nationals, Belgians, French.
Callimachi: From Asia, from North America, from Europe.
Huzayfah: There was also Central Asian, couple of Americans,
two or three other Canadians.
Callimachi: You were sitting on the floor, or what was —— ?
Huzayfah: Yeah, we were sitting on the floor. And up there, they
had, like, just on the wall, a projection of Google maps, and, you
know, the battlefield map and everything.
Callimachi: They put Google maps to show what?
Huzayfah: To show how possible attacks could be carried out.
[Music]
Mills: So what is this meeting that he’s attending?
Callimachi: O.K. He says it’s a meeting of the Amniyat ——
Huzayfah: So, we all went to this seminar. This was held by the
Amniyat, Amniyat al-Kharji.
Callimachi: Which is essentially the secret service of ISIS. But
he doesn’t just say the Amniyat. He says Amn al-Kharji.
Huzayfah: Amniyat al-Kharji, which is those who — their
external operations.
Callimachi: The Amn al-Kharji is essentially the body inside the
secret service of ISIS that is dedicated to carrying out attacks
overseas. This is the group that we believe was behind the Paris
attack, the Brussels attack, the Bardo Museum attack in Tunisia,
maybe even the Bangladeshi attack.
Mills: And when you say that, like, they carried out the Paris
attacks, like, what does that look like?
Callimachi: So the Paris attack ——
[Music]
Reporter: Nov. 13th, 10 ISIS operatives attacked Paris.
Callimachi: Was led by 10 attackers.
Reporter: Right now, we’re learning more about the suspects
behind the deadly Paris attack that left 129 innocent people dead.
[Siren]
Reporter: One was a French extremist, known to the authorities.
Callimachi: They were mostly foreign fighters, Belgian and
French nationals ——
Reporter: The documents show their journey began in Raqqa,
Syria.
Callimachi: Who traveled to Syria, went through all of the steps
that Huzayfah has elucidated for us — the training camps,
graduating to actually carrying out real executions — and then
were sent on a mission to attack Europe.
Reporter: Greece says this man arrived on its shores, claiming to
be a refugee.
Callimachi: Coming back through Turkey to Greece, Greece into
Eastern Europe.
Reporter: They traveled the same refugee route as thousands of
people from war-torn countries.
Callimachi: They then went to Belgium, and they spent several
months in safe houses there, where they collected the equipment
that they needed.
Reporter: The explosives used in the Paris attacks require an
experienced bomb maker.
Callimachi: They built the bombs that they were going to use in
their suicide belts. They collected the automatic weapons that
they were going to use. And then ——
[Archival tape of attacks]
Callimachi: Nov. 13th, 2015. They set out in three units.
[Archival tape of attacks]
Callimachi: One hit the Stade de France. Another one ——
Reporter: At around the same time, in central Paris, gunmen
began opening fire on diners in cafes and restaurants.
Reporter: Shooting as many people as they could before blowing
themselves up.
Callimachi: And the final group ——
Reporter: The worst of the carnage happened at the Bataclan
theater.
Callimachi: Went inside the Bataclan concert hall and carried out
the carnage there.
[Archival tape of attacks]
Mills: And you’re saying that each step, transportation, safe
housing ——
Callimachi: Yeah. Communication, to transportation, to the
location of safe houses, to the tactics that they were going to use,
to the formations they were going to go in, to the assignments
they had that night — we believe that it was this unit inside ISIS
that organized all of that.
Huzayfah: They said they had a lot of people coming in. Europe
was a piece of cake to send people back.
Callimachi: And he’s there with them.
[Music]
Huzayfah: French Embassy was giving away passports to these
guys like water.
Callimachi: That’s what they said?
Huzayfah: Yeah, that’s what — they said that it’s easy.
Callimachi: And at this point, they tell them that they’re all set
for France. Europe in general — they’re doing well.
Huzayfah: The work is just getting you to North America. That’s
where we need people going back. We need North Americans
going back.
Callimachi: And then at that point, the presenter turns to the
North Americans in the room, and they say ——
Huzayfah: They had an envisionment for something as
spectacular as 9/11. They wanted to outdo Al Qaeda, make their
mark.
Callimachi: That they have something specific and spectacular
that they want to do in this region.
Huzayfah: They were just telling us examples, showing us
examples of how these things could be carried out.
Callimachi: When it comes to the details of the attack, he didn’t
have them. And that’s because, he said, this was an informational
meeting, where the purpose was to teach them how such an attack
could be carried out. And to do that, they started to show them
pictures of monuments.
Huzayfah: They gave us ideas of, um, where we could get into,
like, restricted areas.
Callimachi: There’s color-coding. There’s graphics.
Huzayfah: One green line would be going in, red line would be
going out. They would map out possible escape routes and routes
to get there.
Callimachi: There’s descriptions of tactics.
Huzayfah: And what they are for us who aren’t familiar with it.
Callimachi: And there’s a lot of talk and brainstorming about
targets.
Huzayfah: And then they would tell us the type of attacks we can
do. Doing shooting attacks ——
Callimachi: Concerts, uh, schools ——
Huzayfah: Cyberattacks ——
Callimachi: And the thing that they considered to be the cream of
the cream ——
Huzayfah: They preferred martyrdom.
Callimachi: Is where the person goes in, does as much killing as
they can, and then is killed in a standoff with police.
Huzayfah: Martyrdom is the highest level you can attain, and for
them, it’s the most honorable thing you can do.
Mills: How are you feeling hearing all this?
Huzayfah: Um, I didn’t like, I didn’t, I didn’t like it. I didn’t like
the fact that we’re going into their land and killing them. In my
mind, the Khilafa was something that’s to be regional. Why
interfere with all these other countries? I didn’t like the fact that
we were sacrificing fighters. Why don’t we just keep our vision
here?
Mills: Rukmini?
Callimachi: Yeah.
Mills: Why don’t they just focus on the state and build up the
state the way Huzayfah wants? Why attack the West?
Callimachi: O.K. So, you have to understand that ISIS is
working on several different levels. Their first goal is what you
just said. It’s the establishment of an Islamic state — it’s in their
name.
Mills: Mhmm.
Callimachi: So, their goal is to create their own proto-state, their
own nation, which happens to be headquartered in Iraq and Syria.
But they don’t plan to end there. The caliphate is supposed to
spread to a number of major places. They’re supposed to take
over the city of Rome. They’re supposed to take over Mecca and
Medina in Saudi Arabia. They’re even supposed to take over
Jerusalem. But there are some ISIS fighters that have gone even
further, where their aim seems to be global domination. At one
point, I even saw ISIS fanboys, as we call them, sympathizers,
putting out a map of the world where they had the black flag of
ISIS over every single country. And one of the flags was, I
remember, it was planted on Greenland. I remember thinking, I
remember thinking, wow. That’s, like, that’s really bold, man. If
you’re gonna take, if you’re gonna take ISIS to Greenland. You
know?
Anwar al-Awlaki: Attacking the non-believers in their territories
is a collective duty.
[Music]
Callimachi: And this desire of theirs ——
Awlaki: So now we’re talking about attacking them in their land.
Callimachi: It comes down to prophecy.
Awlaki: Rassulullah Salla Allahu Alalihi wa Sallam says the war
between the Muslims and the Romans never ceased to exist. And
who are the Romans?
Callimachi: The prophecy is that this end of times battle is set
into motion after Roman troops set foot in a little place in Syria
called Dabiq.
Awlaki: When I say the Romans, I’m translating “ar-Rum.”
Callimachi: Now Awlaki and their ideological leaders ——
Awlaki: “Ar-Rum,” in the Arabic sense, means European people.
Callimachi: They explain that Rome, back then, back when the
scripture was written, it actually meant Westerner.
Awlaki: So it’s not limited to a political entity or a geographical
entity. Therefore, Europe and its extensions would fall under “ar-
Rum.” The U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand — they are
going to be your opponent and your enemy as long as you’re
living on the face of the earth.
Callimachi: So they’re looking for this clash with Western
civilization.
Awlaki: Jihad is a mandatory call.
Callimachi: And they’re looking for ways to incite it.
Awlaki: ’Til none remains in the world but a Muslim, or one who
has submitted to Muslims.
Callimachi: How long did the seminar go on for?
Huzayfah: Like three hours, around.
Callimachi: Three hours and then they bus you back?
Huzayfah: No, three hours and then we just slept. And they — we
had rooms, houses given to us in groups of 20s. We’d stay the
night there, and then we’d be back in Manbij. And most of the
guys that were there were kind of like me. They hadn’t been on
the front.
Callimachi: Had not been?
Huzayfah: Had not been on the front.
Mills: So, when you went back after the three-hour presentation,
and you go back to sleep ——
Callimachi: What was the conversation like?
Mills: Yeah, what was the conversation like?
Huzayfah: It was, like, I guess, regular guy stuff. We’d just talk
about, like — except that would be the overshadow of the
conversation, would be what we just heard.
Callimachi: So he tells us that he leaves this meeting. And in his
telling of it, he’s feeling uncomfortable with what has happened.
Huzayfah: I was, I was against it. But I — so I just kept quiet as
a listener type of thing.
Callimachi: But in the next beat, he then describes how he and
his buds go back to their dorm.
Huzayfah: Me and some guys, we’d just be talking about these
big landmarks in the world, and O.K., how cool would it be?
Mills: You’re talking about major landmarks — to blow up?
Huzayfah: Yeah, to attack. To blow up.
[Music]
Callimachi: And they just started fantasizing about ——
Huzayfah: I talked about, like, N.S.A., and I’d talk about the
White House.
Callimachi: Blowing up the White House, carrying out the next
9/11, attacking a senator’s office.
Huzayfah: Even the monument. I’d even talk about, like, presid
—— like, candidates, cabinet members or senators type thing.
And we were just, like, daydreaming, kind of.
Callimachi: And they’re talking about it in this kind of giddy,
fantasy kind of way.
Reporter: Scenes of carnage at six different locations across
Paris.
Callimachi: But remember, it is this very group that has shown
us time and again that they can turn these fantasies into reality.
Reporter: Deadly explosions at a packed sports stadium, machine
guns at a rock concert.
Reporter: He appears to have followed almost exactly to a T the
instructions that ISIS has put out.
Reporter: Police say as many as 40 hostages are still being held
inside a restaurant. The ISIS-affiliated news agency is reporting
that these gunmen are Islamic State commandos. However, the
State Department is saying ——
Reporter: ISIS set up an intricate logistical support system for
these terrorist cells throughout Europe.
Reporter: Today, officials disclosed he had been planning an
attack for nearly a year.
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