The early chapters of this series focus on a man we refer to as Abu Huseyfa al-Khanadi, who claimed to be a member of ISIS and said he had committed multiple murders while in the Islamic State.
In several episodes of the series, we documented his story, as well as our efforts to verify aspects of it.
In September of 2020, two and a half years after this podcast was released, the Canadian police arrested Josefa, whose real name is Shairoz Chowdhury, and charged him with perpetrating a hoax.
That charge led the Times to conduct its own investigation, which found a history of misrepresentations by Chowdhury. 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 Chowdhury's claims did not meet our standards for accuracy.
In this feed, we've published a conversation with the executive editor of The Times, Dean Bakay, where he discusses the original reporting in Caliphate and what The Times has found in its re-examination of the story.
Chapter one, The Reporter. Good.
Yeah, I'm just like... Can you give me five?Can you be back there?
I'll just meet you in that room.With your stuff.
Hello, hello.Do I need to bring it closer?
So, Rukmini, before I started following you around all the time, I knew that you were a reporter.I knew that you talked to terrorists on the internet.Right.I knew that ISIS was your beat.
But I don't think I had any idea what that reporting actually looks like.Right, right.
Hey Hawk, when you hear that it's outgoing, outgoing.
I didn't know you are going right up to the front lines of the war against ISIS.
There's a building that appears to have been airstriked.
And as the coalition soldiers are pushing ISIS back.
Have these buildings been cleared?
You are right there, directly behind them.What are you doing right now?
I'm trying to get out some trash bags.We're about to go into the building.
And you pull out garbage bags, like trash bags that you've brought from home, and you just start picking stuff up.
A bunch of computers, hard drives yanked out.
Like garbage out of buildings.
So we basically have an ISIS camp right here.So we're in the right place.
And when I tell people about that part of your job, they almost always ask two questions.First... There's a backpack right there and I really want to search it, but I'm a little scared to put my hand inside it.Isn't that dangerous?
It could be booby-trapped, huh?Could be.And I'm always like, yes, very dangerous. There are explosions.That's close.And gunfire.Hey, smoke.You see this?And airstrikes.
How many airstrikes have you worked for?Three or four?
Three or four?Try, like, ten.And the other question they ask is, how is that worth it?
Like, what do you say to that?
So look, every reporter that covers conflict and war knows that you have to be there.You have to be on the ground if you want to try to understand the story.And as for me, I'm trying to understand ISIS.
And one thing I've learned is that if you're able to get to the buildings that they occupied right after they are liberated, and I mean right after.
Rukmini, can you describe what you're doing?
Well, we're in a room off the side of a church that ISIS had used as a base.I'm looking at a notebook here.You often can find the documents that they left behind.
Look at this one.It's a little diary.It's like day by day.
These are not documents that are meant for publication.So look, this is where they slept.This is a prayer mat.And then over there, these are the rockets that they manufactured. Imagine if you walked into my home right now, right?
If you walked in right now, you would probably find my Bank of America statement.If you found that, you would find all of my daily transactions.You would know what diet I have.
You would know that I have a penchant for buying a certain kind of rice milk.You would know the stores that I go to shop at.So you might conclude from that that I'm probably middle class.
If you walked over to the bookshelf, you would find books in Romanian, in English, and in French.And you could deduce from that that I most likely speak three languages or that members of my family are bilingual or trilingual.
If you went upstairs and you went into my bedroom and you found my diary, you would find my most private thoughts.
And you're saying you do that.
And so I do this.So I am doing that to ISIS and Al Qaeda.Right.I am looking for ISIS's diary.
I am looking for their internal correspondence, their receipts, their personal tips with co-workers, some of which end up getting sent to the equivalent of ISIS HR.The things they're struggling with that they're writing letters back and forth about.
And so the documents. are generally what you are using to answer this question, who are we really fighting?
You drove to Syria with your friend from Bremen, right?Of course, I'm a journalist, so I also want to talk to them.
That's incredibly difficult, but I've been able to speak to around two dozen of them, both in prisons, in Europe.What did he do before ISIS came here? And in jails in both Syria and Iraq.
He worked four months with them as a mechanic.
Those interviews have been crucial for me in understanding the general framework of how ISIS works and the motivations that push people to join them.But many of those interviews have also left me frustrated.
They tied him and put him, bent him over his chair.Because... And he chopped off his head.
The overwhelming pattern is that they'll have witnessed an execution.They'll have witnessed a beheading.They'll have been present when a stoning took place.When you saw those things, did you feel sick to your stomach?What was your reaction?
I was shaky because I was shocked.
But they never took part in it themselves. It seems to me that many times along the way you said no.They weren't getting suspicious of you at this point?
Over and over, this is the story they tell.When they did so, he said, I don't want to work with you anymore.
So he quit. They were a cook, they were a driver, they were a translator.So Bashir, do you want to tell me what really happened or do you not want to be interviewed at all?
They present themselves as having been witnesses to horror, but never having carried out the horror themselves.I've lost interest because he's contradicted himself so many times that I just can't tell that anything he's saying is true.
That's usually how it goes.
Did you guys consider, you know, in these suicide attacks, like the Paris attacks, obviously children and women were also killed.How did they justify that?
They said that they use the exact same justification for every attack.It's that they do it to us, so we do it to them.They bomb our women and children indiscriminately, we do it to them.
So at a certain point, you decide that you want to quit.Yeah.Was there one moment or a series of moments?
The second time I did the kill, I killed someone.
What are we going to call him?The Canadian?
He wants us to call him Abu Huzaifa.
This is his code name that he's chosen?Right.
This is his nonderger, as they call it.And every ISIS fighter has a nonderger.They don't enter the terrorist group with their own name.And the reason they do that is as a security measure to try to protect their identity.So Huzaifa.Abu Huzaifa.
All right.And how did you find him?
It started with Instagram. So he came to my attention through a researcher named Annette Agron.She, like me, trolls these chat rooms and these platforms.And she had gone online and found Abu Huseyfa's Instagram feed.
And in that Instagram feed, she was able to put together that Abu Huzaifa is a Canadian, that he had been inside the Islamic State sometime, we believed, in 2014, and that he had returned to Canada and was somehow living in the general population.
Did you ever see his Instagram?
Let's take a look.These are screenshots that you took?
These are screenshots that Anat took.He's taken it down since then.Okay.So basically his profile just shows the smiling kid. It looks like he's wearing, what, like maybe a workout shirt.
But if you go back through it, there are some things that are somewhat disturbing.So for example, he reposts an image of a knife.Hang on, let me find it.Here it is. To me, it looks like a combination between a screwdriver and a normal knife.
So it has this circular, this kind of spiral shape, so that wherever you insert it, it doesn't cut along just one edge.It cuts in a spiral direction.And there's a caption on the image that he reposted.The caption says, deadliest knife ever.
It takes a team of surgeons to seal the wound.Victim bleeds out in minutes.This is one evil knife.
So, Anat ended up doing a report on this, and she sent it to me, and I passed this on to our research team at The New York Times, and they were then able to cross-reference that material with his LinkedIn account.
On his LinkedIn account, we found his email, and I sent him an email expecting, like I always do, that these people are not going to respond to me.
What did you say in your email?
I said to him what I always say, which is, my name is Rukmini Kalimaki.I'm a reporter for The New York Times, where I cover al-Qaeda and ISIS.And I'm very interested to learn about the Islamic State and your experience inside it.
And of course, I sent this expecting, you know, the obvious, which is that either he would not respond or he would say no.But... Hello.Hello.It's Rukmini here from The New York Times.How are you?
To my true surprise, a couple of days later he responded.
In the email, you know, I very gently asked him for his phone number.Once I had his phone number, I asked him if he would let me call him.Then I called him, and then I asked him for permission to come to Canada to see him.
At every step, I thought he was going to say no. When would you come?I mean, that's kind of up to you.The fact that he said yes, and the fact that it had been so easy to find him, started to make me feel nervous.
I remember thinking, is there something I'm missing?Is this maybe a fake?
I did post on Instagram, but when I posted that, I posted it under the guise that it was private.I didn't think anyone would watch.I didn't think you would come across that.
Why does he want to talk to me?Why would he want to talk to me?But what kept me going is I could also hear the hesitancy in his voice.And so I had to take the chance. So the next step is you and I, you know, booked a ticket.And we flew to Canada.
We're not going to say where we went.You know, we set up ourselves in this hotel room.I texted him the name of the hotel, the address, the room number.
And he agreed to come after the end of his workday because he was working, I believe, at a restaurant.And then we started to wait. And he was initially late by 15 minutes, then 20 minutes, then 30 minutes.
He says rush hour.I'm texting him and wondering if we're going to be stood up.
About an hour now, it's gone by.
I mean, at a certain point, I almost gave up.I thought, this is it, you know, we've basically just thrown away a plane ticket to Canada.
And at some point, I remember that you turned around to ask me, do you think there's any chance that this person is dangerous?
Right, I asked you if you ever got scared.Do you remember what you did?
Have you ever been afraid?
Well, first... A vacuum cleaner suddenly flipped on in one of the hotel rooms around us, which scared me.
I had this really embarrassing thing happen.
And then... You're recording?
Should that not be?No, this is too embarrassing.
You had me turn off the microphone.I had you turn off the recorder, right?Right.And then you told me a story, and I think that... Would you tell that story now?
About the 911 call?Yeah.Yeah.Sure. So I don't usually scare easily, but in 2015, I get a phone call from the FBI.Are you Ms.Rukmini Kalimaki?Yes, I am.May I come to see you right now?I can be at your office in the next 20 minutes.
And we went into a conference room, not far from here, and the agent read a prepared statement.He said, you are the subject of a targeted threat from the Islamic State, and we can't tell you more.That was the first serious threat.
But it started to percolate, you know, somewhere, that they were noticing what I was doing. Since then, I've seen how I've become a presence in their online chat rooms.They talk about my reporting.They dissect my tweets.They sometimes insult me.
And these insults, if I can just say so, sometimes are pretty funny.I think they've figured out that I'm sensitive about my weight.So they sometimes call me Oinkmini instead of Rookmini.It's Oinkmini like pig.Fatmochi.Oinkmini Fatmochi.
I'm sorry to laugh.It's so funny because I'm... I mean, there's something ironic about being fat shamed by ISIS, you know.So, you know, they'll make jabs about how I've put on a couple of pounds based on my latest, you know, TV appearance.
But then sometimes what they say is dead serious.
So, for example, when I was in Mosul a couple of months ago, they started talking about how they were hoping that I would get killed in Mosul, just like the Kurdish journalist who was killed there at the same time in the city.
But then, let's see, what are the others?
Do you have like a folder on your phone where you keep the threats?Is that what I'm looking at here?Yeah, exactly.
One of them is a masked man who was holding up a knife that he's pointing towards the camera.And he said, under a picture of me, wanted to be kill this crusader woman that refuses to join to Islam, Rukmini Kalimaki.
Please join to religion before beheading or truck from our soldiers of Islamic State.OK, pretty explicit. So they created a channel where they're pretending to be me, and then they're pretending to post in this channel as me.
And it says, I have to confess something here.I started covering ISIS because they are real men.I always fantasize about getting raped by them.That's all my fantasies.
This is the sole reason I made multiple trips to Mosul, just to get captured by ISIS so that they can fulfill my desires. So I'm used to this stuff now, but back when the FBI first came, it didn't really sink in.
It was so unbelievable that honestly, I just, I think I just stored it away somewhere else.And then weeks went by.There was another apparent terror attack in Europe, this time in Germany.And months went by.
A series of deadly bombs, at least one packed with nails, killing dozens, injuring hundreds.
And in that period of time, I covered attack after attack.
Two terrorists stormed the church during morning mass, taking a priest, two nuns and two churchgoers hostage.And a planned and deliberate attack in suburban Sydney.
It starts to just marinate in your consciousness.
German media reports the attacker shouted Allahu Akbar as he hacked at the passengers.
And then about a year later, I was home alone late at night. So I'm home alone, and I'm by myself because at this point in time, my husband was working the overnight at his company.At 12.30, I think, at night, I'm getting ready to go to bed.
I'm actually under the covers, and I'm upstairs with my two dogs.And suddenly, my Rhodesian Ridgeback, which is a big dog, starts growling. The hair on his back is straight up.
Immediately afterwards, I start hearing somebody ringing the doorbell downstairs.And they're ringing continuously.So it's not like, it's not like knock, knock and then go away.It's like, you know, knock, knock, knock.
I'm thinking to myself, what is this?Who is this?What is this?So I get a hold of my husband who assures me that it's not him.
At this point, I've turned off the lights in the second floor bedroom because I don't want the people who are outside to see where I am.So the dog is barking, the knocking is going on, and the doorbell is ringing and ringing and ringing.
At this point, I'm so scared that my hands are not even working.
9-1-1, where is your emergency?Yes, ma'am.I'm sorry to bother you.I don't know if this is an emergency.
So the FBI agent who had come to see me had told me that they had alerted the particular police precinct where I lived.He said, if you ever have any issues, all you have to do is call 9-1-1.They have you on a list.
We'd rather that you call rather than waiting for something to happen.
But the operator who picked up must have thought I was crazy. I was afraid to go up.I was afraid to show myself like I just saw the silhouette of a person.
And I can't remember exactly what the woman said, but it was something like, ma'am, are you trying to tell me that ISIS is ringing your doorbell?
OK, I'll send an officer over to talk to you.
Thank you so much, ma'am.
So she calls me back and she says, ma'am, I am calling to tell you that we've investigated and it happens to be the water department.There's been a water main break on your street.
And as a result of this, they're going house to house to tell the neighborhood that your toilet is not going to flush.
What do you think the moral of that story is though?
What's the moral of that story?
Like why is it that that's the story you chose to tell me when I asked you if you've ever been afraid?
I guess the story illustrates how I got ensnared into the very thing that ISIS is trying to do.Because in the end, the purpose of these acts of savagery and violence are to terrorize us.They're trying to scare us, right?
They're trying to make themselves into boogeymen and live in our imagination.And that night, they got me that night.Yeah.
So back to the hotel, we were there for like, what, two hours?
Yeah.And then suddenly, out of the blue, there was a knock at the door of our hotel room.And I was shocked because I had expected him to go to the lobby and that the lobby would call us.But instead, he had managed to walk past the lobby.
How are you?Thank you for coming.He was getting a tad nervous.
We're like, oh, my God.Traffic is moving at this peak hour.
And I opened the door, and he had a hoodie on.And the hoodie was pulled so far forward that I could barely see his face.His face was in shadow.And he kept it kind of pulled down like that for some time. Come on in.
So we thought that we would... What did you want him to sit here?
I remember both of us being really friendly.
Yes, exactly.It was like overtly like, hey, you want to sit down?Can I get you some tea?
And then we sat down and started talking.
Right.So first of all, thank you so much for coming. You're obviously taking a risk, you know, speaking to us.So I just wanted to ask if it's okay that we call you Abu Huzaissa. So, as you know, I'm Rukmini.This is Andy.
And as I explained to you when we talked earlier, I'm trying to understand the ideology of ISIS.It's obviously an ideology that has a lot of pull.Tens of thousands of people have joined this group.
And I'm looking to you in the hopes that you can help us understand it better. Does that sound okay?
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