Path of Blood

Path of Blood tells the gripping and horrifying true story of the underground army which Osama Bin Laden created in order to attack his number one target: his home country, Saudi Arabia. His aim was to conquer the land of the Two Holy Mosques, the land from where Islam had first originated and, from there, to re-establish a Muslim Empire that could take on the West and win.

With the West unpopular with many Saudis at the time of the Iraq and Afghan wars, the Al Qaeda leadership lured impressionable recruits to the organisation with a mix of religious and political rhetoric as well as the promise of glory and heavenly riches. Many joined, and a murderous and highly visible campaign of kidnapping, shootings and bombings was launched across the country.

Thomas Small and Jonathan Hacker use new insider evidence to expose the real story behind the Al Qaeda. Far from the image of single-minded holy warriors they presented to the world, the bands of soldiers are shown to be riven by infighting and lack of discipline. Yet the threat they posed was unquestionable. Ill-disciplined or not, these were men who killed with impunity, and who tried to acquire a nuclear bomb. Drawing on unprecedented access to Saudi government archives, interviews with top intelligence officials both in the Middle East and in the West, as well as with captured Al Qaeda militants, and with access to exclusive captured video footage from Al Qaeda cells, Path of Blood tells the full story of the terrorist campaign and the desperate and determined attempt by Saudi Arabia's internal security services to put a stop to it.

About the Author

Originally from California, Thomas Small caught the travel bug early on and spent several years travelling the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean. He is fluent in Arabic, with a first-class degree in Arabic & Islamic Studies from SOAS, and lived in Damascus for a year. He lives in London where he now works as a film producer and copywriter. He is Associate Producer of the documentary. This is his first book.

Jonathan Hacker is the director and producer of the film Path of Blood. He read Modern History at Oxford University and then studied at USC film school in Los Angeles. He has directed a wide range of documentaries including the feature length ' Britain's First Suicide Bombers' for BBC2 on Islamic radicalism. He has received over fifteen international awards including the prestigious BAFTA and RTS. He is also author of Take Ten: Contemporary British Film Directors (OUP).