SULAIMANIYA, Iraq — For Iraqi terrorists in Iran, membership has its privileges.

The leaders of many of the Sunni jihadist groups that are harbored there are issued a special political refugee card. With the laminated photo identification card, described this week in an interview by a former Kurdish spy for Iranian intelligence, the terrorists can sail through checkpoints and border checks.

If ever a jihadist were to encounter a problem with the local police, flashing the card would make his problems disappear, in part because the all-powerful intelligence ministry, known as Ettelaat, and Revolutionary Guard are the only people allowed to issue them. As such, these ministries have files with photographs and biographical information on most of the Iraqi terrorists in Iran.

The status of the Al Qaeda affiliated jihadists in Iran was recounted Tuesday in an interview with Osman Ali Mustapha, a former Kurdish police officer who was recruited as a spy for the Iranians. In his first interview with the press, and his second conversation with any American, the former spy for Iran said of the terrorists who operate across the Iranian border from Iraqi Kurdistan: “Each one of them filled out a form at Ettelaat. They bring them to Ettelaat. It is a green card for political refugees. When you want to go through a checkpoint, the green card will let you go.” Later, he said these cards “are not issued to non-Islamists. Normal refugees do not get this.”

Mr. Mustapha added, “If you have this card you are treated better than a Kurd. When the Kurds want to go somewhere, the authorities have a suspicion about relations with Kurdish parties. When you have this card, it means you are working for them.”

Mr. Mustapha was known in the shady world of crooked cops, smugglers, terrorists, and spies as Osman the Small. It’s easy to understand why. The 21-year-old, whose face looks like he’s already lived a lifetime, is barely 5 feet tall, and his wide ears accentuate the rest of his diminutive facial features.

Mr. Mustapha is in a position to know Iran’s relationship to Al Qaeda. He was recruited in 2004 to the Ettelaat by a senior leader of what was then Ansar al-Islam, the Sunni jihadist group that linked up with Al Qaeda’s Iraqi chief, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The terrorist who served as a liaison to the Iranian intelligence officers went by the nom de guerre of Ali Mujahid, or Ali the holy warrior. Soon after Mr. Mustapha was fired from his job as a police officer at Halabja in the early spring 2004, Ali Mujahid gave him a number in Tehran and had him meet him in the town of Marywan.

“He was a member of Ansar but he had relations with Ettelaat,” Mr. Mustapha said of Ali Mujahid. “Ali was an Ansar militia member from Halabja. Before he became Ansar, he was a member of Kurdistan Democratic Party Peshmerga militia, then he joined the Iraqi Islamic movement, then Ansar al Islam.”

Mr. Mustapha continued, “He took me to a river in Marywan, Zrebar river. He said, ‘I know when you were in security and you tortured Islamists.’ I told him I was fired from security. He said, ‘I don’t want you to work with Ansar, but if you want to work with the Etallat, I will introduce you to a very high ranking member.”

In some ways, Mr. Mustapha was an ideal candidate for the Iranians. He began spying on Kurdish Islamists for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan at the age of 14, when he developed a relationship with the director of security in Sulimaniya, General Sarkawt Hassan Jalal. Mr. Mustapha’s work as a mole earned him an entry-level job with the police at Halabja, but the relationship soon soured with the local police chief there, Anwar Haji Osman.

As Mr. Mustapha tells it, he was fired from his job in 2004 because he defied the wishes of Mr. Osman. “He once waived a gun at me and threatened to kill me because I went to General Sarkawt with my problems,” he said. His feud with the Halabja police chief not only got him fired, but earned him the enmity of a powerful man in his hometown. The combination of his unemployment and his desire for protection drove him into the arms of the Iranians.

With the Etallat he was paid between $300 and $400 a month, plus up to $1,500 for what he deemed “special activities.” The monthly payments, in American dollars, were significantly more than his old police salary, which was in Iraqi dinars worth the equivalent of $250 a month. The special activities at first included routine missions like video surveillance of American bases in Kirkuk and the paramilitary facility of the main Kurdish Iranian parties — the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran, and Komalla. When asked what Iranians he met, he listed five with whom he had contact. These include a man he called Mr. Amiri, the chief of sabotage for Iran’s revolutionary guard; Colonel Mohamed Yaqubi, an officer for Etallat in Sanandaj, in Iranian Kurdistan; a man he called Mr. Sardari, an investigation officer for the Etallat; Mr. Ebadi, the deputy of Etallat administration in Kurdistan and Hassani Hidayeti, the chief of the Etallat in Kermanshah. The Iranians also gave him a code name, Sharazour four.

Mr. Mustapha spent his easy money on cars, drugs, drinks, and women. He said he purchased two Opals, would occasionally frequent houses of prostitution and had a predilection for sedatives.

In May 2005, the Iranians upped the ante and asked Mr. Mustapha to help aid a terrorist assassination. He met up in Iran with his old friend Ali Mujahid, who helped him procure three circular blocks of hard plastic TNT, four kilograms each, that would be later used for a suicide belt. He was given instructions to deliver the explosives from Iran across the border to a contact in Iraq who went by the name of Sherkawt King Fu. The target for the operation, he was told, would be a chief of operations for the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Iran. He was promised a great reward if he completed the mission.

But Mr. Mustapha said he objected. He said he had another target in mind, his old boss at the Halabja police department, Mr. Osman. Eventually, Ali Mujahid and the Iranians agreed, likely because the mission was a test of their new operative’s willingness to help plan a murder. But Mr. Mustapha said it was because he was persuasive. “I told them I would help kill this man for nothing,” he said.

This enthusiasm likely is what did him in. The day of the assassination, June 20, 2005, he called Mr. Osman on his cell phone. “I told him I would become a terrorist just for him.” And so he did. Sherkawt Kung Fu delivered the TNT to a suicide bomber who killed Mr. Osman within the hour.

Six days later Mr. Mustapha was arrested. The phone call and his loose lips, along with his well-known dispute, made him a prime suspect in the case. Today, Mr. Mustapha is unrepentant and stays at the Kani Goma prison, awaiting a proper trial. “I am just ashamed because I cooperated with foreigners,” he said. “I am not ashamed of killing the chief. If the family of the chief came to me, I would tell them how I did it.”