“WE KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING. DEAD MAN!!!” read the message on Blerim Skoro’s phone. He knew he was in mortal danger.
For nearly three years, he had been infiltrating Al-Qaeda’s highest ranks and had bought thousands of weapons and explosives under the guise of heading up a terrorist training camp in the Balkans.
Blerim had met a future FBI Most Wanted Terrorist with a $10million bounty on his head and communicated with shadowy figures willing to sell him uranium to create a “dirty bomb”.
But when the menacing message arrived in 2010, the Kosovo-born spy, who duped Al-Qaeda heads while employed as a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) field agent, was on borrowed time.
Within three months, two assassins stood waiting for him in the doorway of his handler’s safehouse and unloaded four bullets at him – but an even bigger betrayal awaited him.
Blerim’s remarkable journey from army deserter to Albanian mafia drug mule and then prized CIA asset is told in the new Amazon Prime Video documentary The Accidental Spy.
Speaking exclusively to The Sun, the father-of-two, 56, compares himself to The Bourne Identity character Jason Bourne, due to travelling under different aliases, his lethal combat skills and working for the CIA.
“Al-Qaeda could kill you in the most violent ways – burn you alive, behead you, shoot you… but I never feared death,” he tells us.
“I was prepared. I’d gone through CIA training and was one of the best members in the Al-Qaeda camp.
“They didn’t want me as a suicide bomber or a foot soldier because of my military and war experience; they wanted me as a leader to set up terrorist training camps in the Balkans for Eastern Europeans.
“I bought weapons from radical Islamists ‘for Al-Qaeda’ – but they were taken by the CIA, who destroyed them.
“One trade I emptied four huge bedrooms filled with anti-aircraft missiles, stingers, rocket launchers, AK-47s, C4 and TNT. It was crazy.
“There were enough explosives to destroy three buildings easily. It took myself and six people the whole night to fill up the trucks with all of the weapons.
“I was also involved in conversations about importing uranium to make a dirty bomb – a nuclear weapon.”
Blerim’s unlikely journey followed fleeing his native Kosovo in the 90s after witnessing horrors during mandatory army service in the Yugoslav War.
“I saw bad crimes,” Blerim says. “Women getting raped, kids getting killed, people being tortured – they were committing war crimes. I said ‘I can’t do this.’”
It took two attempts to escape. After the first, he was tortured before vowing to return to service; instead, he fled and obtained a fake passport under the name Jakup Ramusholli.
He travelled through Macedonia, Italy, Germany and France before being questioned at the Swiss border and admitting all.
As a military deserter, returning meant certain death, and he was granted temporary refugee status before travelling to New York for a new life in 1994.
To support nine family members back in Kosovo, who he was trying to bring to the US, he worked 18-hour days in restaurant kitchens, as a pizza delivery driver and a Synagogue waiter.
One evening at a bar in Brooklyn, Blerim was approached by the Albanian mafia, who heard he needed fast cash and offered him “life-changing sums” to run drugs – initially $6,000 (£4.4k) rising to $20,000 (£15k) a time.
“I became part of this new life, a member of the mafia,” he says.
Blerim soon met the love of his life, Susan, at an Albanian party and married her months later in 1998. Initially, she was unaware of his criminal dealings.
Two years later, he “got greedy” and was caught transporting heroin into the US accompanied by his wife and sister-in-law.
Blerim cooperated with investigators, spilling mafia secrets in exchange for his kids not being put in foster care and received a seven-year sentence for federal drug charges.
Behind bars in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC), Blerim became close to muslim prisoners – including Al-Qaeda terrorist Mokhtar Haouari.
The Algerian, who owned a gift shop in Canada, was convicted as part of the Millennium Plot to detonate a bomb inside LAX Airport during the 1999 New Year’s Eve celebrations.
But things changed after the September 11th World Trade Centre attack – an atrocity that Blerim watched unfold from his prison window – when he saw Haouari celebrating.
“He’s jumping up and down; he’s happy, he’s saying, ‘This is from my Sheikh Osama [Bin Laden], this is from my leader,’” Blerim recalls.
“He’s chanting a lot. He’s happy. I thought, ‘I cannot watch human beings happy over kids dying’.”
News of the twisted celebrations at MDC spread to the FBI and CIA, who were desperate for intel about the 9/11 attacks, which killed 2,996 people.
Historian Tim Weiner alleged in the documentary that “the CIA knew jack s*** about Al Qaeda” at that point. They turned to Blerim for help due to his previous cooperation with authorities.
He was promised a shorter prison term and immunity from deportation.
Blerims says he agreed to help due to feeling he “owed a debt to America” for their military intervention in the Kosovo War, as well as wanting to “correct my mistakes” from his drug dealing.
To improve his cover, Blerim grew out his beard, spent up to eight hours a day reading and memorising the Quran and trained to become an Imam’s assistant.
It allowed him greater access to Haouari and “30 to 40 terrorism suspects” incarcerated at MDC too, where he could extract intel about Al-Qaeda’s operation.
“The best university for terrorism is prison,” Blerim says. “People were admitting they met Bin Laden, admitting there were Al Qaeda foot soldiers… I was becoming a spy.”
Despite the CIA’s commutation vow, Blerim served his full sentence and was deported back to Kosovo in December 2007 after a year-and-a-half in immigration custody.
Joshua Dratel, Blerim’s criminal attorney, claimed that the false promise was “part of the CIA’s plan to use him” again overseas.
“It made his cover story impregnable. The fewer things that aren’t a facade, the better,” he adds.
Blerim was furious over his deportation but agreed to work for the CIA again if they helped to reunite him with his family in the US.
Through Al-Qaeda contacts he made in prison, he connected with terrorists and would travel between Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey during nearly three years as a field agent.
His mission, which he was paid $1,400 (£1k) a month for, was to gather intel on terrorism, weapons, future attacks, recruits and later, to purchase arms, ammunition and explosives to take them out of terrorists’ hands.
Due to his military and mafia background, Blerim was considered a valuable asset by the terror group – and for the CIA, he was a “star asset, one of their best spies” due to his successful infiltration.
“I created a very strong image among them – I [said] I wanted revenge on the US,” Blerim says. “And [the Al-Qaeda member] told me, we could achieve our goal and kill the infidels.”
On the day he officially joined the terror group, Blerim was stripped naked, put in a car boot and driven to a training camp in Pakistan where he met Abu Muhammad al-Masri.
Then the seventh highest ranking member of Al-Qaeda, al-Masri – real name Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah – was grooming him to set up a terrorist training camp in the Balkans.
Al-Masri was the group’s most experienced operational planner. Before his 2021 assassination, he was second-in-command and on the FBI’s list of Most Wanted Terrorists with a $10million offer for information on his location.
Blerim also underwent four days of training at a camp in Raqqah, Syria. He recalls disgusting conditions he “would never wish on my worst enemy”.
“You’re with 10 to 15 men, who stink because they shower monthly. You can’t sleep, are exhausted, and it’s highly dangerous,” he says.
Blerim says he amassed “tonnes of weapons” – all paid for by the CIA, who he claims spent around $200,000 (£150k) – so they could be destroyed.
His knowledge of the Quran and Sharia Law combined, apparent commitment to Al-Qaeda’s cause, and difficulty varying where purchased weapons went gave him the perfect cover.
Attorney Dratel said: “He’s not like a movie star; he’s not James Bond. The best spies are the people you don’t notice, who fit in.
“He’s constantly presenting you with something different that can cause you not to recognise him… he’s really mercurial and chameleon-like.”
That was until that threatening message arrived in 2010, in which he was told: “You better stop or we will stop you”. Three months later, Blerim was nearly fatally shot.
As he walked into the CIA safehouse to meet his handler, two men were waiting for him. One pulled out a gun and shot him in the left leg, narrowly dodging his femoral artery.
They unleashed three more bullets, which missed his head, and the gun repeatedly jammed. Blerim pretended to be dead as the assassins walked away.
He survived and spent 48 hours in a secret hospital before Blerim says he was given money and a message from the CIA: “You’re on your own, you need to survive yourself.”
“It was like a second shot in the head,” he adds. “The people I worked to protect couldn’t be trusted. They used me, betrayed me and abandoned me like a dog.”
Blerim battled on to return to his family. He travelled to Cuba and France before reaching Canada with a fake passport in January 2011 and claiming asylum.
Three years later, he sneaked back into the US illegally. But by 2016, Blerim was found, and a six-year immigration battle ensued.
Despite his service protecting the nation, the CIA ignored all attempts by Blerim’s lawyers to contact them.
“The CIA did wrong. Why didn’t they honour the dangerous job I did?” Blerim said.
But thanks to Blerim’s meticulous record-keeping- notes, message exchanges, photo and video evidence and his detailed knowledge- he was able to prove his case.
He was granted the right to stay under the UN Convention Against Torture, after it was successfully argued he would face death if returned to Kosovo.
Now, Blerim enjoys yet another new life; he works as a yellow cab driver in New York City. Few entering his car will know his story until now – thanks to The Accidental Spy.
“I feel like Matt Damon’s character Jason Bourne in the Bourne Identity,” he says. “I travelled under different names and passports, which is not easy or normal; you need to be strong.
“In the wars, I saw crazy beheadings, murders, rape and worked in highly dangerous situations in prison and with Al-Qaeda members.”
Having betrayed deadly terrorists, many would fear reprisals for speaking out and sharing their story – an account he states is “crazy but 100 per cent true” – but not Blerim.
He says: “I can defend myself; I have been in the most dangerous wars in the world but if I die, I die. I have always been prepared for death and don’t fear it.
“Whether it’s from a bomb, a bullet or beheading, a death is a death.
“I’m still here, I’m strong and am glad my children know my story. Sometimes even I can’t believe what I’ve been through.”
When approached for comment by Blerim’s laywers, the FBI confirmed Blerim worked the Bureau as an informant. The CIA never responded.
The Accidental Spy, directed by Anthony Wonke and Cambridge Picture Company, is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video now.
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