A suicide bomber who killed eight people at a CIA base in Afghanistan earlier this year was an Al-Qaeda triple agent who duped Western intelligence services for months before turning on his handlers, jihadist websites claimed on Tuesday. The Jordanian intelligence agencies had brought the bomber to eastern Afghanistan with the mission of finding Al-Qaeda number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, believing he was their double agent, jihadist websites and Western intelligence agents cited by US media said.
But he blew himself up at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost province near the Pakistani border, killing seven CIA agents and his Jordanian handler, a top intelligence officer and member of the royal family. Jordan's King Abdullah II, Queen Rania and virtually the whole royal family turned up to Captain Ali bin Zeid's funeral.
The slain officer's family said that Bin Zeid had been in Afghanistan for 20 days and had been due to return home on December 30, the day he died.
Both jihadist websites and Western intelligence agents identified the bomber as Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi alias Abu Dujana al-Khorasani. Balawi was detained in late 2007 and then recruited as a double agent by the Jordanian intelligence services but in reality continued to work for Al-Qaeda, they said, according to AFP.
"He spent months travelling between Afghanistan and Pakistan and fed the Americans the information that the Mujahedeen wanted them to receive," the Ana Muslim website wrote. "Every time that the reports which he gave proved accurate, their confidence in Abu Dujana rose."
Balawi was taken to the CIA base in Khost because he claimed to have urgent information about Zawahiri, the website said. He was not searched as he went in because a CIA agent boasted: "He is our man, so there is no need," the website added. Then he pretended to detail plans for an operation on a piece of paper and asked the intelligence agents to gather round to look before blowing himself up, the website said.
Jordanian Islamist sources said that Balawi, 36, was a doctor by profession and a married father of two. He was born in the city of Zarqa.
