NoMuzikNo:zilchide

Yet Chino’s turn to militant Islam was neither swift nor decisive. He felt conflicted about his criminal livelihood but unwilling to start over. His solution, his brothers said, was to give his money away. He dispensed with watches. He regaled his Moroccan nieces with gold necklaces and rings. One day, while traveling in Holland, he called his brothers and told them to set fire to his cars. “Life is worth nothing,” Chino told his brother Mustafa. “We won’t live long.” (They ignored the instruction. “Mustafa likes cars,” one brother explained.)

Chino had come to believe that Muslims who earn money illegally suffer in the afterlife — unless they put the money to good use. He began sending cash to the mother of the man he had stabbed in Tetouan. He continued to drink and do drugs. But his drunken binges sometimes ended with him crying over the stabbing and the mother of the victim, one of his Madrid friends, Abdelilah el Fadwal el Akil, recalled. “He would say that it was his fault she had lost a son, and that the least he could do was take care of her,” Akil wrote to me from a Spanish prison, where he was being held as a defendant in the Madrid bombing trial.

During a rare visit home to Morocco in 2000, Chino was arrested for the man’s murder and imprisoned in Tetouan. But key evidence was still missing in the case, including a witness who failed to appear. Chino’s parents hired a local criminal attorney, Mourad Elkharraz, who told them their son stood a good chance of acquittal. The lawyer assured them that the process would take no more than a year. Instead, it dragged on for three. During that time, the lawyer witnessed a startling transformation in his client. At first, the change was merely physical. Chino went from wearing gold necklaces and jeans to a gray, Afghan-style tunic and matching pants. He began carrying a Koran. Then he started fasting on Mondays and Thursdays. He stopped swearing and began peppering his sentences with “Allah.” Eventually he became a prison imam, leading prayers five times a day. “He said: ‘I’ve become someone else. I’m a new man,’ ” the lawyer told me. “But his anger rose more and more.”

Chino grew deeply frustrated by the delays in his case. He yearned to see his son, an absence that “broke his heart,” Chino’s mother said. He lost his temper in meetings with his lawyer, demanding to know why his case had not been resolved. Yet every time Chino got angry, his lawyer recalled, something odd happened: he turned to the subject of Palestine. He seemed to conflate the personal with the political. In one breath, he would say that “Jews mistreat Muslims”; in another, that he wanted to “do jihad” to the Moroccan judges who kept him in prison. By then, Chino had befriended another prisoner who belonged to a banned Islamist party, Justice and Charity. Chino took a brief interest in the group, but he concluded it was “too passive,” according to documents filed in the Madrid bombing case.

Chino was finally freed from the Moroccan prison in June 2003; the court declared him innocent of the murder charge, Elkharraz, his lawyer, said. But Chino returned to Spain a different man. He had become obsessed with the war in Iraq, his brothers recalled. He said he couldn’t sleep at night knowing that women and children were dying at the hands of Americans, all in the greedy pursuit of oil. He no longer had time for small talk. He would walk into a room and within minutes begin the same diatribe.

“He would say, ‘The soldiers of bin Laden are soldiers of God,’ ” Chino’s brother Jaber told me. “Because the world was looking for them —”

“And couldn’t find them,” said another brother, finishing the sentence.

Chino told his brothers to cut their hair, to stop smoking, to stop going out with girls. He scolded them for not praying and urged a sister in Holland to wear a veil. He seemed agitated that so many of his siblings — eight in all — had moved to Europe and began pressing them to return to Morocco. “This isn’t paradise,” he would tell them. They soon tired of his campaign. He had become unbearably serious. He told his childhood friend Anwar that if he wanted to continue the friendship, “you have to go to the mosque.”

Yet for all of his religious fervor, Chino continued to sell drugs. A few months before the Madrid bombings, he shot a debtor in the knee in Bilbao. Chino’s underworld activities might seem incompatible with the norms of a born-again Muslim. But they did not necessarily contravene those of takfir, an ideology that divides the world between believers and nonbelievers. Some takfiris believe that Islamic law can be broken in the name of jihad — that they can commit violence or theft, for example, in order to finance attacks against the infidels. These beliefs, while unfathomable for many Muslims, were commonplace in the circles in which Chino moved.

That summer, back in Madrid, Chino reconnected with his old crew from Jamaa Mezuak. Three of his friends worked for him dealing drugs and would also fall into militant Islam, playing key roles in the deadly bombing plot, Spanish prosecutors later said. The circle included two brothers who grew up near Chino, as well as Abdennabi Kounjaa, a square-jawed man known for his religious devotion. A soft-spoken candy vendor from Jamaa Mezuak also joined the circle.

It was possibly that same summer, in 2003, that Chino met the other chief of the bombing plot, a Tunisian immigrant who would emerge as the group’s spiritual leader. The man, Sarhane Fakhet, had moved to Madrid to pursue a doctorate in economics, but he never finished. For a while, he earned his living as a real estate agent. Among his fellow militants, he was seen as a visionary. He had attended a series of clandestine meetings in Madrid in 2002 that were infiltrated by a police informant, who reported back to the Spanish authorities that the group was discussing jihad, listening to sermons and watching violent videos.

By the time Chino and Fakhet became friends, the landscape of terrorism had changed considerably. Law-enforcement agencies had cracked down on organized groups like Al Qaeda and the financing on which they depended. Even as terrorist funding sources dried up, the message of violent jihad was spreading on the Web, enabling militant ideologues to link up with petty criminals. The marriage of these groups defined the Madrid plot. Fakhet, the thinker, lacked the cash and organizational muscle to pull off an attack. Chino, the hoodlum, may have seen the plot as his salvation after a life of crime.

Before long, Chino began searching for explosives and, through an old criminal acquaintance, found his way to a drug dealer who was selling stolen dynamite. The plot seems to have gained momentum in December 2003, when a 42-page document became available on a well-trafficked jihadi Web site. Fakhet got hold of the document, which was produced by a militant Islamic think tank of sorts. It analyzed the political situation in Spain and argued that “painful blows” were needed to force the Spanish government to withdraw its troops from Iraq. It also suggested making “the utmost use” of the approaching elections. In January, Chino rented a farmhouse 30 miles south of Madrid, where he and his friends hid a cache of dynamite he bought with hashish. It was there that the plotters assembled their bombs, which they would plant on the trains in sport bags.

On the morning of March 11, three days before the Spanish general elections, 10 bombs went off within minutes of one another, tearing through the platforms of three train stations packed with commuters and ripping apart a fourth train that was seconds late to its destination. The attacks left 191 people dead and more than 1,800 injured. As the bodies were still being identified, Spanish voters ousted the government of Prime Minister José María Aznar, which tried to blame the bombings on Basque separatists. In its place, they elected José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, a Socialist who swiftly removed Spain’s troops from Iraq.

Over the next few weeks, Chino turned up twice at a Madrid bar owned by his brother Mustafa. He seemed withdrawn and anxious, one of his brothers recalled. During the second visit, Mustafa asked Chino if he was involved in the bombings.

“Yes,” Chino said, according to Mustafa’s testimony. “It’s the people from your neighborhood who have done this.”

As an international manhunt intensified, Chino went into hiding in an apartment in Leganés, a placid, tree-lined suburb of Madrid. On April 3, the police quietly surrounded the building, and then a helicopter arrived. Chino refused to leave, holed up with Fakhet, his four friends from Jamaa Mezuak and an Algerian man. They were heard praying and singing jihadi songs. Then they began calling their relatives to say goodbye. Chino’s mother answered the phone in Morocco and heard her son say, “The police are surrounding the house and shooting at us.” She fainted and then called back twice. Chino hung up on her, she told me. She then called her son Yussef in Madrid and told him that Chino had asked for her forgiveness because he “was going to God,” Yussef recalled. At 9:05 p.m., the police broke the door open. Before they could enter, the apartment blew up. All seven men died instantly, along with a police officer. Chino’s remains were later pulled from a swimming pool outside.

Sifting through the demolished apartment in Leganés, investigators discovered dynamite, suicide belts and evidence of more planned attacks. Kounjaa’s former boss appeared at a local police station and turned over a handwritten will that the young Moroccan had left for his family in Jamaa Mezuak. In it, he reprimands them for not supporting his decision to make jihad, an obligation of “all believers.” He writes of the humiliation he has felt “in the eyes of infidels and of tyrants” and declares himself a martyr. He encourages his young daughters to follow the path of the mujahedeen.

Finally, addressing himself to his “brothers on Allah’s path, anywhere,” he offers some advice. “Many people take life as a path to death,” he writes. “I have chosen death as a path to life. You should hold onto Islam, through words and deeds, action and jihad.”

The Road to Iraq

News of the suicides swept through Jamaa Mezuak. People watched in shock as photographs of the five men from their neighborhood were shown over and over again on television. Some of the Moroccans had been previously named as suspects in the train bombings, but many of their neighbors refused to believe the reports.

“We never thought that somebody from our neighborhood could do something like this,” one 28-year-old man from Jamaa Mezuak, Mohsin Chabab, told me.

In the scrubbed, dimly lighted home of the Ahmidan family, Chino’s mother, Rahma, stared in disbelief at the bloody images of the apartment where he died. “I saw pieces of my son’s flesh,” she recalled. Still, she could not bring herself to believe he killed himself or that he played any part in the Madrid attacks.

The Moroccan security forces showed no such doubt. Investigators soon appeared in Jamaa Mezuak, questioning relatives and friends of the Madrid suspects. The government had set out to crush terrorism following the Casablanca attacks a year earlier, earning a new reputation for ruthlessness. Almost anyone could be arrested, it seemed, simply for knowing the wrong person. The neighborhood was gripped by fear.

While many people kept their distance from the families of the suspects, a few young men in the neighborhood were determined to make sense of what happened. They included the Ben Aboud brothers — Muncif, the wandering student, and Bilal, the fan of hip-hop — as well as their friend Hamza Akhlifa.

Hamza, a lanky teenager and talented soccer goalie, had known Kounjaa, the author of the suicide note, all his life. They lived on the same block and prayed at the same mosque. Their families were joined by Kounjaa’s marriage to Hamza’s cousin. The Madrid bombings, followed by the group suicide, left the young man at a loss.

“He wanted to understand why Kounjaa killed himself,” one of Hamza’s closest friends told me.

In the search for answers, Hamza and his friends began reading about Islam.

At the time, these young men were seen as no more religious than many of their peers, who made their daily prayers and attended Friday services and fasted during Ramadan. But the Madrid bombings set them on a new course, one that would eventually lead them to Iraq. Chino’s group had planted a seed. “They wanted to be like them,” Hamza’s friend said. “What they wanted was to die, to become martyrs.”

I spent much of June and July in Tetouan and spoke with more than 20 people who knew the local men who had departed for Iraq. I met with many of their parents and siblings, as well as close friends and neighbors. Most of the men who left grew up just blocks apart, in the tranquil, southwestern corner of Jamaa Mezuak. They were not thought of as troubled boys. To their friends, they appeared privileged. They dressed well. Two had gone to college. One owned a valuable piece of land.

Perhaps none had fared better than Muncif and Bilal Ben Aboud. Their parents own a Mercedes, a Peugeot and three shops in the city’s bustling markets. Their three-story home towers over a steep slope, claiming a sweeping view of the neighborhood below. Inside, the house is filled with delicate rugs and ornate, wood-carved furniture.

Among the family’s eight children, Muncif was the indisputable star. A slight boy with short-cropped hair and protruding ears, he was quiet and bookish. School excited him more than soccer. He excelled at math, engineering, physics and languages and was always first in his class. When he wasn’t studying, he mostly kept to himself, reading novels or newspapers or watching documentaries on Al Jazeera.

From the time he was small, he seemed unusually adult. One day, Muncif’s little brother was playing with a boy from the neighborhood whose father had died. Suddenly, the Ben Abouds’ father came home and Muncif’s brother rose to greet him, as was custom. Muncif — who was about 10 at the time — later pulled the brother aside. “Whenever you are with that friend, do not greet our father,” he said. “He has no father.”

At 15, Muncif left for Marrakesh. He was one of three students from Tetouan chosen to join the prestigious École Royale de l’Air, an air-force academy where he began studying to be a pilot. It seemed a good fit, given his curiosity and discipline.

But during his third year at the school, Muncif abruptly decided the military was not for him. He had become more religious and wanted to be learned in Islam. He looked up to his father and grandfather, both of whom could sing passages from the Koran. Still, he needed a career. He pursued an engineering degree in Tangier, but he left after a year, telling one of his siblings that his teachers did not like his new beard. Back in Tetouan, he began studying mathematics at a local university.

By then, plenty of Muncif’s peers had dropped out of school and drifted into menial jobs or worse. “You have to study,” Muncif told his youngest brother. “This is the only way of becoming respectable.”

Yet for all of Muncif’s scholarly gifts, he seemed unconvinced that college would pay off. He worried he would be unable to find a worthy job. He eagerly accepted his father’s invitation to run one of the family’s shops while continuing with his studies. “He said, ‘I can use this money to secure my future,’ ” his mother, Souad Ashtut, told me.

While Muncif rarely showed interest in girls, his older brother Bilal was a heartbreaker. He had strong shoulders, soft brown eyes and a sheepish smile. He used to walk around the neighborhood, calling out, “Hello, mother-in-law,” to all the women who hoped he would marry their daughters. Kids flocked to him. He coached a local boys’ soccer team. But as a player, he was less charming. “He got angry easily,” recalled the soccer field’s caretaker, Aamy Absalam, who said he pulled Bilal out of games twice after he threw punches at other players, only for him to resume fighting outside.

Unlike his younger brother, Bilal never excelled at school and dropped out in the ninth grade. He dreamed of becoming a comedian, his best friend told me, and wrote comedy sketches that he sometimes performed at weddings. But his father disapproved, telling him that “it’s shameful to be an artist,” recalled the friend, who asked to be identified by his childhood nickname, Dayday.

Bilal began working for his father, smuggling baby clothes into Tetouan from the Spanish enclave of Ceuta and selling them at a stall in the market. He crossed his parents again when he fell in love. The girl was not from a decent family, they told him. They insisted he marry the sister of his brother’s wife. He eventually became engaged to her, but “he always loved the other girl,” Dayday said.

Bilal found refuge in music. His car was filled with CDs. His tastes ran from Middle Eastern music to American hip-hop, including 50 Cent and Eminem. He especially liked a song by Eminem that derided President Bush and had it translated into Arabic. He also wrote his own ballads, including one that became something of a local hit. It tells the story of “a son of Jamaa Mezuak” who tries to immigrate to Spain, because “despite the diplomas in our pockets, we have no jobs.”

Go to Spain

      If for bread alone

     Continue till Germany

     And live like the Mafia

      Marry an old woman

     The age of my grandmother

     She will get me papers and a visa

At the end of the song, the man has been caught at the border, beaten and sent back to Tetouan, where he winds up selling cigarettes on the streets. The final verse reads: “Brothers, this is my story. I narrated it all for you. God help me.”

Bilal and Muncif grew up around a troupe of neighborhood boys whose worth was tested on the soccer field. This circle of friends fluctuated in size. They played soccer on Friday mornings and took picnics in the hills and roamed the beach in the neighboring town of Martil. A few of them frequented Coiffure Cyprus, a busy barbershop near the center of Jamaa Mezuak. In a neighborhood where few boys have money for nice clothes, many of them devote careful attention to their hair. Every cut has a name. There is the “taza,” derived from the Spanish word for “cup,” which looks like a stunted version of a bowl cut. There is the “coptaza” (a cousin of the taza), the “Beckham” and the “military.” Hamza, the soccer goalie, paid the equivalent of $2 for the “choltra,” short for John Travolta. The style apparently emulates the Travolta of “Saturday Night Fever.”