Whom Should We Contact in Case You Become a Martyr? Al Qaeda Job Application Asked

Washington:  “Please enter the required information accurately and truthfully. Write clearly and legibly. Name, age, marital status. Do you wish to execute a suicide operation?”

Al Qaeda’s application form starts like that of any large enterprise, but leads recruits quickly to a darker place: “Who should we contact in case you become a martyr?”

Recruiting a global jihadist network is a tricky job, especially if – like the late Osama Bin Laden – you are holed up in a Pakistani compound sheltering from US drones.

But that is no reason not to be methodical, as the detailed militant recruitment form bearing the watermark of “The Security Committee, Al Qaeda Organization” shows.

The blank form for was among the over-100 documents found in Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan’s Abbotabad, which was declassified by the US today. The documents were seized by US commandos who conducted the May 2011 raid on the house. Bin Laden was killed in the attack.

The document in Arabic contained several pages and also asked when an applicant had arrived “in the land of Jihad,” how much of the Koran they had memorized, which sheikhs or Muslim dignitaries they knew, which countries they had visited, how many passports they possessed and whether they were interested in carrying out a “suicide operation.”

Among the cache were official US passport application forms, formal US indictments of Al Qaeda-related figures, US government accounts of Al Qaeda’s organization and details of the US embassy in Pakistan’s “Toys for Tots” programme.