Spanish journalist and writer

jueves, 12 de diciembre de 2013

The Evidence Against Chávez Mounts


By
DOUGLAS FARAH
. I have not had time to write much recently, but two recent events point to the increasingly overt ties between the Chávez government and international terrorist organizations.
The first, Chávez's help to bring the FARC in Colombia and the Spanish ETA together, I already discussed at some length here.
 New revelations are now being published about Chávez's direct (although repeatedly denied) ties to Hezbollah and other radical Islamist groups. A new book, El Palestino, by Spanish journalist Antonio Salas documents armed camps in Venezuela where the FARC, Hezbollah, ETA and others all train together.
 
In the book, which comes out later this week, the author says he posed as a Venezuelan Palestinian interested in jihad and ended up traveling around the world after fabricating a new identity. His employer, Antena 3 of Spain, has released some of the hidden camera video he shot to verify his experience.
According to the book's publicity, "It was in Venezuela that he received his baptism of fire. He found that just around the city of Caracas there are six terrorist training camps. There he learned to shoot every kind of weapon. His time there coincided with the training of members of the FARC, ETA and other groups."
 
There have long been reports of these camps from credible sources, but video and direct, publicly available documentation and first hand experience has not been. This is in keeping with Chávez's broader goals of creating an alliance of state and non-state actors to wage asymmetrical warfare against the United States. It is, quite likely, the worst of all worlds for the rest of Latin America, and beginnings of the solidifying joint venture that will eventually pose and existential threat to the United States.
 
Both Chávez, with the FARC, and Iran with its Hezbollah proxy, have the same goal in this endeavor. Each of the proxies has relevant experience and resources the other does not, and both have a long history of adaptation and co-learning from other terrorist groups, regardless of political/theological differences.
 
Chávez has also made no secret of his desire to spread armed revolution across Latin America to rid the continent of non-Bolivarian governments, or transform the governments to the Bolivarian way.
 
Hence his support, through the Movimiento Bolivariano Continental, (Continental Bolivarian Movement), to the FARC, the Tupac Amaro movement in Peru, the Mapuches and MIR in Chile, etc. etc.
This support is likely to increase as Chávez's internal situation deteriorates. With the highest homicide rate in the hemisphere, water and electrical rationing, inflation running at more than 30 percent and his popularity in a steady decline, he is likely to be desperate for anything that can give him a boost.
 
Iran, Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador have enormous stakes in Chávez's survival, no matter what the cost. So one can expect the region to be roiled by something he cooks up to fabricate a crisis.
The U.S. response so far has been muted to Chávez and his lethal alliances. There are no good options for a response, but it is increasingly clear that the day of reckoning is drawing near.
 
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Douglas Farah is an award-winning investigative journalist, author of "Blood From Stones:The Secret Financial Network of Terror", and Senior Fellow in Financial Investigations and Transparency at the International Assessment and Strategy Center. He blogs on the Counterterrorism Blog and also at http://www.douglasfarah.com/.

martes, 12 de noviembre de 2013

Book, Video Show Hizballah Training Near Caracas


Evidence of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez's Islamist terror connections continues to mount, writes veteran journalist Douglas Farah. He describes a new book, El Palestino, authored by Spanish journalist Antonio Salas, which says there are six terrorist training camps around Caracas, the Venezuelan capital. Groups training at the camps include the Colombian FARC, the Spanish Basque ETA organization, and Hizballah.
In the book (currently available in Spanish), Salas says he posed as a Venezuelan Palestinian interested in jihad and was able to travel around the world. His employer, the Spanish television network Antena 3, has released some of the hidden-camera video he took while working undercover with the terrorists.
For years, there have been reports about the existence of these camps, but Salas apparently is the first person to provide video and firsthand experience training in them. According to Antena 3, Salas joined a Venezuelan "faction" of Hizballah, where he met members of other terrorist organizations like Hamas and the FARC.
"This is in keeping with Chavez's broader goals of creating an alliance of state and non-state actors to wage assymetrical warfare against the United States," Farah wrote. "Both Chavez, with the FARC, and Iran, have the same goal in this endeavor. Each of the proxies has relevant experience and resources the other does not, and both have a history of adaption and co-learning from other terrorist groups, regardless of political/theological differences."
As living conditions in Venezuela continue to deteriorate, he added, Chavez may well seek to foment crises and support armed revolution in Latin America:
"With the highest homicide rate in the hemisphere, water and electrical rationing, inflation running at more than 30 percent and his popularity in a steady decline, he is likely to be desperate for anything that can give him a boost. Iran, Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador have enormous stakes in Chavez's survival, no matter what the cost. So one can expect the region to be roiled by something he cooks up to fabricate a crisis."
 http://www.investigativeproject.org/1973/book-video-show-hizballah-training-near-caracas#

sábado, 21 de septiembre de 2013

Carlos the Jackal was my friend

Spanish reporter Antonio Salas infiltrated an international terrorist group and became a trusted confidant of one of the world's most infamous killers

Few undercover reporters have been prepared to sacrifice as much as the Spaniard who goes by the pseudonym of Antonio Salas. Circumcision was just one hurdle in passing himself off as a radical Islamist and infiltrating the shadowy, interconnected world of international terrorism. "It was more painful than I expected. It is pretty delicate for the first few days," Salas now admits, walking daintily around a room at his Madrid publisher's offices. An invite to a hammam bathhouse during his five years undercover had, he said, persuaded him the operation was necessary.Salas's identity undercover was Mohammed Abdullah, a Spanish- Venezuelan with Palestinian grand-parents. He was convincing enough to be invited on terrorist training courses and to become personal webmaster to the most infamous of international terrorists, Carlos the Jackal. That meant regular telephone conversations with a man thought to be responsible for more than 80 deaths.

The Jackal would call from La Santé prison in Paris, where he is still serving a life sentence for murder. "He was very worried about my security," says Salas. "It is a strange sensation when a self-confessed assassin like Carlos the Jackal does that, and offers their friendship."

Salas decided to go undercover with his hidden cameras after the bombings that killed 191 people on Madrid commuter trains on 11 March 2004. He had been as stunned as other Spaniards by the blasts, despite the country's experience of Basque terrorist group Eta. "I wanted to know what goes through the mind of a person who is capable of killing for an ideology."
Salas's previous undercover investigations – as a skinhead supporter of Real Madrid football club, and in the world of prostitute-trafficking – had taken him to the heart of some of the most violent groups in Spain. "My aim was to understand terrorism in the same way that I came to understand skinheads or prostitute-traffickers."

He learned Arabic and invented an elaborate cover story involving a dead wife: 25-year-old Dalal Mujahad from Jenin, tragically killed by an Israeli bullet while pregnant with their child. The real Dalal, whose name he found in a newspaper archive, had died in 2004, when a bullet entered her house in a shoot-out. In case anyone decided to investigate, he added a Romeo and Juliet touch: the marriage had been kept secret because his (false) mother's family, from the nearby village of Burkin, backed Al-Fatah, while Dalal's family were part of Hamas. Her death, he would claim, had pushed him towards radical terror.

"I took photos of myself in Burkin and in Jenin. Then I asked Fatima, a girl I met when investigating prostitute-trafficking, to let me take photos with her as if she was my wife. We mocked up an apartment in Barcelona to look as though it was in Palestine and took photos." Salas also wrote out the Qur'an by hand, and considers his conversion to Islam to be genuine. He treasures the small booklet in which he wrote Islam's most sacred text: "It helped convince people," he says. "Not many people carry their own, hand-copied version."

The final part of his cover was to become a pro-jihad journalist, contributing to radical publications. He travelled around the Arab world, from Egypt to Jordan and the Lebanon, writing articles that would help to seal his militant credentials. "I even wrote a couple of books," he says. It did not take long to gain a reputation. "I remember the first time I dropped off some newsletters at a mosque in Tenerife, the police arrived with flashing lights and sirens and they soon had me pinned against a wall."

Salas picked the Venezuela of President Hugo Chávez as his base. "I had been told Venezuela was a mecca of international terrorism," he says. "The Farc group from Colombia was there, as were people from Eta." Numerous other small revolutionary groups had also set up under Chávez's benevolent gaze. There, in what the New Yorker journalist Jon Lee Anderson calls "the parallel reality that is the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela today", Salas established himself as yet another niche radical – flying the flag for Palestine and running a local branch of Hezbollah. More importantly, he got close to the family of Ilich Ramírez Sánchez – Carlos the Jackal.

"I only really knew about Carlos because of the films about him," admits Salas, who is in his mid-30s and too young to recall the The Jackal's bloody kidnaps and assassinations in the 70s and 80s. "But here was an icon of international terrorism. He was Venezuelan, and a convert to Islam who had fought for Palestine. It was perfect for my profile." He sought out The Jackal's two younger brothers, Vladimir and Lenin – names given to them by their Leninist lawyer father. "Vladimir is the more active defender of his brother," he says. "Lenin is a lot more discreet. Later I met his mother, his nephews and got in with the family."

He first spoke with The Jackal by chance, when Carlos rang from prison while Salas was with the family. "We started out talking in Arabic and then in Spanish. I called him Ilich or 'Comandante Salim', which is his Arabic name. He speaks six or seven languages and is very intelligent. We would talk for up to an hour. He would not let me ask questions – they made him angry. So I just let him talk. He even confessed some of his killings, and I have that taped."

Salas began to work on a website that, among other things, campaigned to have The Jackal repatriated to Venezuela. "To prove the website was close to Ilich, I was given access to a trunk that had been closed for 30 or 40 years – with his school reports and family photos. I spent a lot of time in Vladimir's house, classifying the material." Salas would post texts to La Santé; The Jackal sent them back with neat, handwritten corrections. He also sent prison photographs to put on the site.

By tracking the Arabic news channel al-Jazeera, Venezuelan TV and the internet for mentions of The Jackal, Salas discovered that Chávez himself was one of his biggest fans. "For him, Carlos is not a terrorist but a revolutionary – a model internationalist, like Che Guevara. Just as Che went to fight for other peoples, so Ilich went to fight for the Palestinians. Whenever Chávez mentioned The Jackal, I would record it and send it to him, which he loved."

Not that Salas agrees with Chávez's view of The Jackal. "He is considered responsible for 82 killings; I don't call that being a revolutionary. I call him a terrorist." – though he would probably not, he admits, use the term to his face. "It helps that he is in jail."

Salas updated The Jackal's website from cybercafes, using a different one every time. "I imagine Mossad, the CIA and MI6 being driven mad by the fact that The Jackal's page was updated from Portugal one day, Syria another, and from other countries."

Salas was even invited to visit La Santé, but he passed up the offer. As an independent journalist who pays his own way and has no back-up, he must use his real identity when going through frontiers or security controls. "I have never worked for any intelligence service, political party, or even for any one media outlet," says Salas, who produces his own undercover films and publishes books on his investigations. "I only work for my readers. They are the ones who end up paying for my investigations. I work alone, using my own money and passport. Journalistically, it would have been great to meet Ilich, but I couldn't do it."

In Venezuela's fringe community of political extremists, he bumped into people from Eta, the Túpac Amaru (a group of armed Venezuelan radicals who support Chávez), and other groups. Repeated requests for hands-on training eventually saw him invited to a camp in Venezuela, where he learned to handle pistols, rifles and machine guns, including a Kalashnikov AK-103, an Uzi sub-machine gun, the American M4 carbine and a Belgian-designed FN FAL. He also practised with a sniper's telescopic sight and received explosives training. "I learned all that a jihadist might need to take his message of terror to a city in Europe or the United States," Salas says. "There was nothing glamorous about it. It was just a question of learning to kill better."


His instructors included a Venezuelan army colonel, though Salas insists the camp was not run by the Chávez regime. "It just so happened that my instructors, as well as being supporters of revolutionary causes, were Venezuelan army officers."
His strangest discovery was the willingness of different extremist groups to blindly embrace the varied causes of others, even when they had nothing to do with one another. So it was that, as a supposed Palestinian Islamist, he found himself appearing in a video for the Túpac Amaru. Salas stood manfully beside leader Alberto Carías clutching a Heckler & Koch MP5-A3 sub-machine gun, as the latter urged armed revolutionary groups across South America to join forces.

Salas came close to blowing his cover only once, when he met US journalist Jon Lee Anderson, who was in Venezuela promoting his Che Guevara biography. It was a nerve-racking encounter. "When he said he had been to Burkin and started naming people there, I feared my cover was gone."

Anderson remembers the meeting: "Burkin is an amazing place in the hills above Jenin. It is said to have the finest olive oil in the world. I remember thinking there was something odd [about Abdullah]; he was cautious around me and flustered, but Caracas is full of wackos. It didn't occur to me to think he was a plant."

Far from being made world-weary or cynical by his exposure to such violent worlds, Salas remains almost naively optimistic about the results of his investigations – which have spawned Spanish best-sellers, popular documentaries, even a feature film. After his previous two books, he says, he received letters from people who had given up being skinheads or frequenting prostitutes. "I hope for the same thing with this," he says. "In Spain and Latin America there are a lot of adolescents – many of whom I saw arrive at the mosque for the first time as children – who will feel the draw of violence in a few years' time."

So what conclusions does Salas draw from rubbing shoulders with international terror? His answer is coloured by the fact that half a dozen people he met during his investigation have since died – often violently. "I don't justify violence, but I can understand it. I never found any glamour or sophistication in that world, nor anyone especially intelligent – except for The Jackal. Terrorists really have only two ends – they either die or go to jail. You have to be a bit stupid to do that."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/10/carlos-jackal-was-my-friend
• Carlos will be screened at the London Film Festival this Saturday and is in cinemas from October 22


sábado, 7 de septiembre de 2013

viernes, 30 de agosto de 2013

miércoles, 17 de julio de 2013

The Palestinian: videos

Weapons and chargers in the car:


Where hides ETA in Venezuela?

Inside the mosque in Caracas

Arms training camps in Venezuela

Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement Chapter Venezuela. Antonio Salas infiltrated.

lunes, 15 de julio de 2013

Spanish reporter infiltrates sex trafficking rings

 
EFE NEWS SERVICE. A Spanish journalist delved into the world of prostitution and sexual trafficking of women and girls until he reached a deal to buy six Mexican minors for some $31,000 each, as long as they were virgins.

"El ano que trafique con mujeres" (The Year I Trafficked in Women), which just hit bookstores in Spain, is the work by Antonio Salas, the journalist's pseudonym, who infiltrated the world of prostitution for a year.

The book begins with a visit by Salas to the head of ANELA, Spain's national association of brothels, who is chairman of the Espana 2000 extreme right-wing party and owns "bordellos where 95 percent" of the prostitutes are immigrants.

In one of the book's chapters, Salas depicts how he became friends with a young Nigerian woman and her pimp, a former boxer from the same country, to whom he paid $17,000 for the girl, the mother of a 4-year-old son.

According to Salas, "elite businessmen, politicians, actors and athletes are willing to spend between 600 and 42,000 euros ($740-$52,000) for a bit of pleasure with a cover girl," a known model, singer or television host.

At the book launching, which Salas did not attend so he could maintain his anonymity, Spanish immigration police chief Carlos Botran said prostitution is inextricably linked to illegal immigration.

He said that in 2003, authorities busted 192 prostitution rings, yielding 761 arrests.

Salas jumped into the fray last year, generating controversy when he published a book after infiltrating the Spanish neo-Nazi movement.
 
 
 

Hammerskin condemns neo-Nazi group, through the testimony of Antonio Salas and "Diary of a skin"


The Supreme Court has dismissed the appeals filed by the 15 members of neo-Nazi group Hammerskin against a judgment of the Provincial Court of Madrid in 2009.


The Spanish Hammerskin had been sentenced to between one and a half and two and a half years in prison. The High Court had also outlawed the group for "promoting hatred and violence".

The judgment of the Supreme-which has had access to Europa Press, denies that there was violation of constitutional rights of members.
 
With regard to all considerations of the judgment, please consult the summary of agency included in the legal Web iustel.com.

The Madrid Provincial Court issued a ruling in 2009 pioneering in our country in which, for the first time, was sentenced a neo-Nazi group for conspiracy.
 
"This court understands sufficiently established the existence of the organization Hammerskin-Spain, consisting of a plurality of persons, among whom are the defendants, who are structured hierarchically organized and permanently since 2000," the resolution said. In addition, its members punished for illegal possession of weapons.

During the trial, the defendants refused to belong to the band and said that the abundant neo-Nazi material seized in their homes had to do with his fondness for military affairs since World War II.

In their homes, the Civil Guard found videos of Hitler and Mussolini, as well as a lot of shirts with neo-Nazi emblems and the shield of the Hammerskin-Spain.
 
The testimony of journalist Antonio Salas, author of Diary of a Skin (Today's), has been instrumental in the conviction, as acknowledged by the same court.

Recall that the name Antonio Salas is a pseudonym used by the reporter to avoid reprisals. The book has been a success with 350,000 copies sold, according to me from the publisher confirmed a few minutes ago.
 
Salas infiltrated the group to reveal the secrets of one of the most important bands of neo-Nazis in Spain. During his appearance, he identified several of the defendants as members of Hammerskin-Spain.
 
Hammerskin international organization is composed of 17 chapters or regional associations: 6 United States and one in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Portugal, Italy, France, Hungary, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Spain, where the name used Hammerskin Celtiberian.
 
Meanwhile, Salas prepares a novel, Operation Princess in which dump of what he discovered in his research but not yet used in their trials.
 

domingo, 14 de julio de 2013

Book, Video Show Hizballah Training Near Caracas



New book examines Spainís football fascists


A new book has painted a chilling picture of Spain's neo-fascists and their link to some of Europe's biggest football clubs like Real Madrid.

On the run after a year spent undercover in Spain's skinhead community, Antonio Salas's best-selling book "Diary of a Skin" is the first insider account of Spain's skinhead movement, a prickly issue in Western Europe's youngest democracy which still remembers the 1939-1975 right-wing dictatorship of General Francisco Franco.

The book, based on an undercover television documentary, has prompted investigations by Spain's public prosecutor into links between Real Madrid's notorious Ultras Sur radical fans and the local branch of the international neo-Nazi group Hammerskins

"The Ultras Sur are only the tip of the iceberg. All the clubs have neo-nazi fans," said Salas. A Real Madrid spokesman said the club had no comment.

Salas, an investigative journalist who has filmed undercover documentaries on outlawed Basque guerrillas ETA and criminal gangs smuggling illegal immigrants to Spain, entered the neo-nazi clan via its principal meeting point - the Internet.

"The Internet has changed the international neo-nazi movement. It's been crucial in unifying small groups," he said.

Becoming a regular of neo-nazi Internet chat rooms, Salas adopted the nickname Tiger88 after the Third Reich's Tiger heavy tank which terrorised Allied troops on the Western Front. The number 88 is a neo-nazi code for 'Hail Hitler' -- the repetition of the eighth letter of the alphabet, "H
So began an investigation which led Salas to meet influential neo-fascist ideologues in Spain, a branch of the Ku Klux Klan in the rural northwest region of Galicia, and to participate in street-battles alongside the Ultras Sur.
 

The birth of Spain's skinhead movement can be traced to the mid-1980s when the ultra right-wing "skins" appeared on the terraces of Barcelona's Espanyol football club and Real Madrid, emulating the British hooligan groups of the early 1970s.

Salas argues that a recent boom in immigration, due to historical ties with South America and proximity with North Africa, has stoked racist sentiment in Spain -- for long one of the European countries with the lowest levels of migrants.

"Spain has the same problem as France, Germany or England: growing pockets of crime associated with illegal immigration. This has enormously encouraged the presence of skinheads and neo-nazis in countries like England and Germany, and now it is doing the same in Spain," said Salas.

In 2001, the government counted 1.1 million legal immigrants in Spain, more than three times the number of 1991. There are hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants.

To deter illegal immigration, the centre-right government of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar has tightened borders, made visa requirements more stringent, and made it easier to deport immigrants convicted of petty crimes.

Senior figures, such as Deputy Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, have explicitly blamed immigrants for a rise in crime. Recent polls have showed three-quarters of Spaniards share this belief and around half want a government, which will fight immigration.

"There has been an increase in sympathy, with the xenophobic extreme-right more than with the neo-nazis themselves, and with the political and cultural movements which radically attack immigration," said Salas, who predicts several far-right parties would play the immigration card at regional elections in May.

While football provides the most public face of skinhead activism, Salas describes an underworld of far-right concerts and rallies across Spain and lays bare a network of bookshops and bars dedicated to neo-nazi propaganda.

"It is normal to associate skinheads with football hooligans for the simple reason that in a first division football stadium there are more television cameras than at a skinhead concert or a meeting of (political party) National Democracy," he said.

In recent months, the appearance of swastika flags and banners bearing the black eagle of Franco's fascist emblem among the ranks of the Ultras Sur has stirred controversy over Real Madrid's alleged relations with its radical fans.

This has been stoked by pictures of leading Real Madrid stars such as Raul and Luis Figo holding the Ultras' flag of a double-headed axe.

After befriending leading members of the Ultras Sur, Salas alleges he can prove Europe's most successful football club has provided neo-fascist fans with scores of tickets to its ground and turned a blind eye to their violent, racist behaviour -- and even laid on a storeroom for their banners at the stadium.

He alleges the collusion of club officials and at least one police officer, who he says told the Ultras of his investigation, forcing him to flee for his life.

"The public prosecutor's office in Madrid has begun an investigation into neo-nazi movements which may be linked to Real Madrid football club," said a spokesman for the office.

The allegations come at a time when soccer's governing body UEFA has launched a campaign, including threatened sanctions on clubs and supporters, to fight racism at European grounds.

"We should avoid the use of violence, but this is a very small group of people," said Jose Luis Vicente, a senior member of Real Madrid's fan club. "The Ultras Sur is essential to provide motivation for the team on the pitch."

A section on the Ultras Sur official web page entitled "Lies" attacked "news about our group which are only based on lies and trickery" with "the sole aim of disparaging us".

Many of the young skinheads Salas met during his odyssey around Spain do not fit the stereotypical image of a deprived urban background. Some are well-educated youths from a middle-class family, which supported Franco's rule.

"I do not want to be alarmist, because I think the influence of Francoism is constantly diminishing," said Salas. "The majority of skinheads don't enter the movement because of their parents, but obviously children of a fascist have more chance of becoming neo-fascists than those of a democrat."
A lack of strong family bonds or a feeling of alienation is often the determining factors driving youths to seek camaraderie in the skinhead community. More than 90 percent of skinheads who form a stable sexual relationship retire from the movement.

"I compare them to a group of orphans who are looking for a father, always talking about who will be the next fuehrer," Salas said. "There is real affection between the comrades, I don't know if love is too strong a word, but certainly brotherhood."

Salas admits to forming friendships with two skinheads, and revelling in the sense of power from their gang-mentality, although he denies ever supporting their ideology.

"I received an e-mail from one of these guys after the book was published telling me it had made him reconsider," Salas said. "That was just one of the e-mails from nazis who have left the movement after reading the book, and that is what I find comforting. That is more important than it being a success."
 

 

Antonio Salas in Prezi


Antonio Salas goes undercover with the Jihadists

The reporter who was circumcised to keep his cover

Written by Marlon Dolcy, Leonilde Marques (Translator)
Antonio Salas has worked across the world, investigating Neo-Nazi football hooliganism, exposing pre-teen prostitution in Madrid and even running Carlos the Jackal's website for him. He has gone so deep with his undercover work for El Palestino - his latest book on Islamic terrorism, for which he infiltrated jihadist cells - that he underwent emergency circumcision to avoid detection at a public bath, and converted to Islam after completing the research. Marlon spoke to him about his work.
 
In Diary of a Skin you infiltrated the Neo-Nazi ultras of Real Madrid FC. Apart from the associated fascism and violence of the Franco supported club, did you ever feel a sense of camaraderie (often glamorized in soccer hooliganism)?
I remember the feeling of power that was to walk the streets of Madrid with my fellow skinheads; people who passed us looked away, turned away before us, and even changed road sides. We were the owners of the streets. In the stadium is different. Football clubs like Real Madrid, support their radical groups because they are the loudest and the ones that most encourage the team from the stands (I lost my voice in a Real Madrid’s match). They also spend the most money in merchandising, and many of them are members of the club, therefore they can vote in elections over the team management. So the directors don’t mind if  they leave the stadium to beat up blacks, gays, immigrants and rival team’ supporters...

I can hardly imagine what it must have been like to be in some of the situations you found yourself in. In your undercover reports, did you suffer from constant paranoia that you would be found out?

It’s inevitable. All undercover people (police, spies and journalists) suffer the paranoia of being discovered. When you are carrying a hidden camera, that fear multiplies, because if you are in a Nazi concert, a roadside brothel, or a terrorist training camp… if someone was to suspect me, and discover the camera, there would be no excuse. However that paranoia multiplies again later whenever I publish a book and the insults arrive, the threats and persecution from those who are affected by my research.
 
Were there ever times where you genuinely thought or could sense that your life was in grave danger?
I remember the first time because I still carry around my neck the 9mm bullet that nearly blew up my knee during a meeting with a dealer, when I was infiltrating a sex trafficking gang. But during my last investigation there were many: my first meeting with Hezbollah in Beirut, crossing the border of Israel with secret recording equipment, during my training with weapons in Venezuela... too many. Though one of the moments in which I felt the most vulnerable was during the Hammerskin (a violent white power group) trial. I was a protected witness for the District Attorney’s Office, when we discovered that the Nazis hired a hitman to stop me from testifying. In that case my safety was in the hands of the Civil Guard. Fortunately everything went well.

How extreme is sex trafficking in Europe?
Diabolical! Although the infiltration of international terrorism was more complicated, more expensive and dangerous, the infiltration of gangs trafficking women and girls was the hardest that I ever done emotionally and psychologically. I got to negotiate the purchase of women from only $17 in Europe, and even bought virgin girls, 10 and 12, while dining at a restaurant in Madrid. My hidden camera recordings helped dismantle some of these gangs. But when you stop one, 10 appear in its place, because there’s a big demand for the sex trade in Europe...
Did you ever sympathise (in some way or form) with some of the people who you were ultimately deceiving?
Although it sounds strange, I try never to lie, or at least I keep lying to a minimum. A good undercover person must find in their own personality things in common with the group that is going to infiltrate, and build their new identity based on these real things, lying to a minimum. More than sympathising, I actually developed good relationships with Nazis, smugglers and revolutionists. In fact I still keep in touch with some of them because they have realised that my intentions were honest, and their beliefs wrong. Others, of course, (especially those who in prison) don’t want anything to do with me. 
 
You ran a website for Carlos the Jackal? What was your impression of the renowned Venezualan terrorist?
He’s an amazing man. Very cultured (spoke five languages) and with a vast personal experience. He has been a legendary figure of the twentieth century, and kept personal relationships with heads of state. By being his webmaster and promoter of the Committee for his repatriation, I had the opportunity to record dozens and dozens of phone conversations with him for months, and I was always surprised by his views about politics, religion, etc. For me, as a journalist, it has been fascinating to talk for months with the world’s most famous terrorist until the appearance of Bin Laden. Unknowingly he became my passport to other terrorist groups around the world.
Like Carlos you converted to Islam while producing your book El Palestino, and have remained true to this faith since. What is it about Islam that appeals to you?
I did not know anything about Islam before starting this investigation. I believed all the clichés and prejudices that are published daily in the West. But as I got deeper into Islam and integrated myself in their mosques, I discovered that all these prejudices are false, and part of hidden agendas. Identifying Islam with terrorism, just because blaspheming fools kill with the Koran in their hands, is as unfair as to identify Christianity with terrorism, because members of the IRA, the KKK, and white militias, kill, rape or rob in the name of the Bible.
You detail how you got circumcised and wrote the whole of the Koran in Arabic to prepare for your role as 'Mohammed Abdullah' (your identity in El Palestino) which is really extreme. Could you document how else did you go about constructing fictional identities for your investigative reports?
Each undercover project is different, but the process is basically the same. Before putting on the hidden camera and conducting field work, you must study in depth the theory and familiarize yourself with the group that you're going to infiltrate. Read and study hard. Only then can you create a credible identity that goes beyond all suspicion. It doesn’t matter if you have to shave your head, get circumcised or learn another language or another religion. You cannot make mistakes. If they suspect you are an insider and blow up your cover, you won’t get another chance.
Do you feel that investigative journalism is declining in the media, and shifting more to focus on entertainment and sports?
I don’t think so. I understand that for a TV station or newspaper, it is very hard to fund a six-year investigation. The entertainment stories, sports or political chronicles are easier and cheaper. But I think that the sales figures for my books, and audience rates for my documentaries demonstrate that investigative journalism can offer a competitive product to any media. And the proof is that there are amazing investigative journalists around the world making documentaries, reports and bestselling books. Our work is very similar to that of the police and spies, only their reports are intended for secret files for the Ministry of Defence or Internal Affairs, whilst ours are for the public. And the public wants to know what really happens in the world. Wikileaks was not the result of bad luck.
Find out more about Antonio at his website www.antoniosalas.org
http://www.dontpaniconline.com/magazine/radar/antonio-salas-goes-undercover-with-the-jihadists 

Antonio Salas: Sentenced to death by thugs of 'world's greatest soccer club'

Our meeting was arranged by a third party and I will never know his real name. Antonio Salas, as he called himself, certainly did not look like a skinhead member of Real Madrid's "official" group of violent neo-Nazi supporters, the feared Ultrasur. But then Antonio, an investigative reporter, had recently changed his disguise so the group's members could not track him down and fulfil their pledge to kill him.
 
We met in a central Madrid cafe, Antonio fiddling nervously with a cigarette and sitting with his back to the wall. Antonio spent last year infiltrating the most radical section of the Ultrasur. He came out to accuse the self-proclaimed "world's greatest club", nine times champion of Europe, of harbouring and, in effect, promoting neo-Nazi, racist violence. Antonio claims to have revealed just how close - despite club denials - are the ties binding the thugs and officials in a club whose latest purchases include stars like Ronaldo, Zidane and Figo and which boasts lucrative sponsorship deals with Adidas and Siemens.
 
Enter through gate 42 at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium, turn right down the first corridor and you will find a grey metal door. That door is the gateway to what Antonio calls Ultrasur's "private office". It is where the group keeps its pamphlets, drums, megaphones and flags bearing General Franco's shield or other neo-Nazi symbols.
 
Antonio had made his first contact with the Ultrasur at El Refugio, a bar beside the stadium where the hard core gather after matches to organise "cacerias", or hunts, of blacks, prostitutes, tramps, gays and supporters of other clubs. There he was greeted by chants of "six million jews to the gas chambers."
 
Ultrasur leaders, handed free passes by the club, have long police records. The organisation's number two, a middle-class lawyer called Alvaro Cadenas, was last week jailed for four years for stabbing a policeman. The leader, Jose Luis Ochaita, was banned from entering football grounds for three years in 1998 after allegedly waving a knife at a player from a rival club.
 
The night before Antonio and I met, I had stood outside El Refugio, amid the broken glass from what the skins call "a shower of stars", otherwise known as pelting the police with beer bottles. Half a dozen people had been hurt. But all that had happened before the game. Real Madrid had won, beating Milan 3-1, and the thugs were in good humour.
 
Thanks partly to Antonio and the book he has written about them, the Ultrasur have added journalists to their list of enemies. I did not stick around to see if they were planning cacerias. Offered an opportunity to rebut Antonio's allegations yesterday, the club declined. The public prosecutor has now opened his own investigation.
 
Antonio warned me not to think Real Madrid was the only club protecting the violent. "Every club in Spain does the same," he said.