A man, whose life’s path led him to the fighting fields of Bastia, training camps of Al-Qaeda and shady corridors of MI6, spoke to RT about spying on a paranoid jihadist network and how to survive being exposed by the Americans.

Aimen Dean, also known as Ramzi, was a British intelligence source placed in Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan before his cover was blown by a US author. In an interview with RT’s Sophie Shevardnadze he spoke about his double life and his transition from a convicted jihadist fighting to oust Western troops from the Middle East to a valued MI6 asset.

Dean said being an informer in a paranoid organization like Al-Qaeda requires a person to almost split his or her personality in two.

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“There is a committed jihadist that was still alive there, within me, and then there is the person who wanted to counter everything they were doing and try to dismantle everything that they were doing. So, you have to really become a good actor in order to fool them. You have to fool your own family in order to fool them, that’s the first thing.”

Watch the interview to learn more about what drives people to join the jihad of today, how their cause differs from the original jihad of the Quran and how better Islamic religious education may actually undermine terrorism.

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