RACE AGAINST TERROR: Chasing an Al Qaeda Killer at the Dawn of the Forever War, by Jake Tapper
Who was Ibrahim Harun? When the Arab Spring uprisings reached Libya in 2011, many of Muammar el-Qaddafi’s prisons were emptied, and both fleeing civilian Libyans and detainees made a dash to escape to Europe. Harun was among them, relatively anonymous. Then, on board a repurposed cruise ship carrying Libyans to the mainland, he approached an Italian police officer and introduced himself as a bigwig from Al Qaeda who had killed U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.
As the CNN anchor Jake Tapper writes in “Race Against Terror,” a pacey, police procedural-style account of the jihadist’s apprehension and trial, Harun showed off his scars from bullet wounds and demanded to be handed over to Interpol, the International Court of Justice or, at the very least, to the Embassy of Niger. “I’m an important person!” he declared.
Tapper’s story begins at this bewildering moment, when the Italian authorities alert the Americans that they have a Qaeda suspect in their custody. For narrative purposes and for the aims of the U.S. team that eventually seeks to indict him, Harun must be a sane, diabolical terrorist bent on committing mass atrocities, but who sabotages that possibility by turning himself in. Tapper draws suspense out of the authorities’ rush to gather evidence to indict Harun in a U.S. civilian criminal court, the condition under which Italy will agree to extradite him.
Tapper is attracted to high-stakes political drama. He garnered buzz earlier this year for “Original Sin,” a book he wrote with the Axios journalist Alex Thompson detailing former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s deterioration while in office. Before that he published half a dozen thrillers — both true stories and fiction — including novels that pit the family of a heroic Republican legislator against debauched Washington secret societies and the mob’s infiltration of Hollywood. The villains in those books gain their texture from Tapper’s clear affection for their gritty milieus.
In the case of a real-life villain, one might expect a fuller picture but little of Harun’s character and early life emerge in “Race Against Terror.” He grew up undocumented in Saudi Arabia in the 1970s, the child of parents from Niger who traveled to the kingdom on a pilgrimage and never left.
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The post Jake Tapper Has a Second Book This Year. It’s About Terrorism. appeared first on New York Times.
