Terrorist or Danish spy?
Ahmed Samsam languishes in prison while the intelligence agencies refuse to comment on his claims that they recruited him ten years ago.
Ahmed Samsam, a Danish citizen, has been in prison on a terrorism conviction since 2018 (DK). He maintains that he did not join the Islamic State, as he was charged, and that he was working for Danish intelligence agencies. The agencies, PET (the Danish Security and Intelligence Service) and FE (the Danish Defence Intelligence Service), will not confirm that Samsam worked for them, and Samsam is suing them to obtain a new trial. What’s going on? Public broadcaster DR and the Berlingske media group have been covering the case for several years.
From gangbanger to undercover agent
Now 34, Samsam in his youth had been part of a criminal gang and had been in and out of Danish prisons. In 2012, he went to Syria, he says, to escape the gang milieu and fight against Assad’s regime. When he returned to Denmark, he maintains, he was recruited by the Danish intelligence agencies to inform them of the activities of Danish citizens in the Syrian civil war. He received military training in Denmark, and in 2014, they gave him money, an SUV, and a trailer to drive weapons and other materiel to Syria.
In 2017, two years after his alleged spying missions ended, while on vacation in Spain (again, to escape the gang scene, he says), he was arrested for suspicious behavior involving drugs and weapons. The Spanish police found that he was on a European register of possible terrorist threats. He was convicted of joining the Islamic State, and sentenced to eight years in prison. He appealed to the Danish authorities to exonerate him, but they wouldn’t confirm his work for them or explain why they had never charged him with terrorist activity.
False hopes
In 2020, he was transferred to a Danish prison, and his sentence was reduced to six years. When he arrived in Denmark, he was met by some of his agency contacts and was encouraged to believe that he would soon be released. He says that they apologized for his conviction and spoke of compensation. But they took no further action. Samsam’s lawyer sued the agencies to force them to acknowledge Samsam’s employment.
In September 2021, Samsam got a visit in prison from two men from FE who gave him an envelope with DKK 10,000 ($1,400) and told him they were working on his release. In December 2021, a PET officer, whom Samsam identified as one of his contacts, was arrested, apparently for leaking information about Samsam to the media because he was angry about PET’s treatment of Samsam.
Prominent company
The agencies continue to refuse to speak about the case, citing a policy of never revealing informants or discussing their work. This is the first time that they have been sued in this manner, and they want the trial dismissed, maintaining that they cannot divulge classified information publicly because it would compromise national security. While Samsam could not produce any documentation of his work for the agencies or give the full names of his contacts, DR and Berlingske have confirmed much of his story from other sources. DR began a seven-part documentary (DK) on Samsam in December.
Before the recent parliamentary elections, a majority of Parliament was in favor of opening an investigation (DK) into Samsam’s case. The new SVM government has declined to pursue an investigation, but now Parliament’s Investigative Committee has gotten support from all the Opposition parties to conduct one.
Several other top officials, including former Defence Minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen (DK) and former head of FE Lars Findsen (DK), who have both been accused of leaking classified information themselves, have urged Parliament to investigate the case because the many outstanding questions about it harm the agencies’ ability to recruit informers. Samsam’s suit against the agencies is scheduled to be heard in August.