The First Arrest in Senegal… An Escorted Homecoming… The First Interrogation in Mauritania… Getting Stuck in a Cul-de-Sac… The U.S. Dramatizes the Matter
A Mauritanian folktale tells us about a rooster-phobe who would almost lose his mind whenever he encountered a rooster.
“Why are you so afraid of the rooster?” the psychiatrist asks him.
“The rooster thinks I’m corn.”
“You’re not corn. You are a very big man. Nobody can mistake you for a tiny ear of corn,” the psychiatrist said.
“I know that, Doctor. But the rooster doesn’t. Your job is to go to him and convince him that I am not corn.”
The man was never healed, since talking with a rooster is impossible. End of story.
For years I’ve been trying to convince the U.S. government that I am not corn.
It started in January 2000, when I was returning to Mauritania after living twelve years overseas. At 8 p.m. on January 21, 2000, my friends Ahmed Laabidi and the librarian of the al Sunnah mosque dropped me off at Dorval Airport in Montreal. I took the night Sabena flight to Brussels and was continuing to Dakar the next afternoon. I arrived in Brussels in the morning, sleepy and worn out. After collecting my luggage, I collapsed on one of the benches in the International area, using my bag as a pillow. One thing was sure: anybody could have stolen my bag, I was so tired. I slept for one or two hours, and when I woke up, I looked for a toilet where I could wash and a place to pray.
The airport was small, neat, and clean, with restaurants, duty-free shops, phone booths, Internet PCs, a mosque, a church, a synagogue, and a psych consulting bureau for atheists. I checked out all the God’s houses, and was impressed. I thought, This country could be a place I’d want to live. Why don’t I just go and ask for asylum? I’d have no problem; I speak the language and have adequate qualifications to get a job in the heart of Europe. I had actually been in Brussels, and I liked the multicultural life and the multiple faces of the city.
I left Canada mainly because the U.S. had pitted their security services on me, but they didn’t arrest me, they just started to watch me. Being watched is better than being put in jail, I realize now; ultimately, they would have figured out that I am not a criminal. “I never learn,” as my mom always put it. I never believed that the U.S. was evilly trying to get me in a place where the law has nothing to say.
The border was inches away. Had I crossed that border, I would never have written this book.
Instead, in the small mosque, I performed the ritual wash and prayed. It was very quiet; the peacefulness was dominating. I felt so tired that I lay down in the mosque and read the Koran for some time and fell asleep.
I woke up to the movements of another guy who came to pray. He seemed to know the place and to have transited through this airport many times. He was tall and thin, in his late thirties or early forties, and very friendly. We greeted each other after he finished his prayer.
“What are you doing here?” he asked me.
“I’m transiting. I came from Canada, and am heading for Dakar.”
“Where are you from?”
“Mauritania. What about you?’
“I’m from Senegal. I’m a merchant between my country and the Emirates. I’m waiting on the same flight as you.”
“Good!” I said.
“Let’s go rest. I’m a member of Club Such-and-Such,” he suggested, I don’t recall the name. We went to the club, and it was just amazing: TV, coffee, tea, cookies, a comfortable couch, newspapers. I was overwhelmed, and I spent most of the time sleeping on a couch. At some point, my new Senegalese friend wanted to have lunch, and woke me up to do the same. I was concerned I wouldn’t be able to come back because I had no club card and they had just let me in because my Senegalese friend flashed his membership card. However, my stomach’s call was louder, and I decided to go outside and have some food. I went to the Sabena Airlines counter and asked for a free meal card, and found a restaurant. Most of the food was mixed with pork, so I decided on a vegetarian meal.
I went back to the club and waited until my friend and I were called to our flight, Sabena #502 to Dakar. I had chosen Dakar because it was by far cheaper than flying directly to Nouakchott, Mauritania. Dakar is only about 300 miles from Nouakchott, and I arranged with my family to pick me up there. So far so good; people do it all the time.
During the flight, I was full of energy because I had had some quality sleep in Brussels airport. Next to me was a young French girl who lived in Dakar but was studying medicine in Brussels. I was thinking that my brothers might not make it to the airport on time, so I would have to spend some time in a hotel. The French girl benevolently enlightened me about the prices in Dakar, and how the Senegalese people try to overcharge strangers, especially the taxi drivers.
The flight took about five hours. We arrived around 11 p.m., and the whole formalities thing took about thirty minutes. When I took my bag from the baggage claim, I bumped into my Senegalese friend, and we bid each other farewell. As soon as I turned away carrying my bag, I saw my brother Hamoud smiling; he obviously had seen me before I saw him. Hamoud was accompanied by my other brother Mohamed Salem and two friends of theirs I didn’t know.
Mohamed Salem grabbed my bag and we headed toward the parking lot. I liked the warm night weather that embraced me as soon as I left the gate. We were talking, asking each other excitedly how things were going. As we crossed the road, I honestly cannot describe what happened to me. All I know is that in less than a second my hands were shackled behind my back and I was encircled by a bunch of ghosts who cut me off from the rest of my company. At first I thought it was an armed robbery, but as it turned out it was a robbery of another kind.
“We arrest you in the Name of the Law,” said the special agent while locking the chains around my hands.
“I’m arrested!” I called to the brothers I couldn’t see anymore. I figured if they missed me all of a sudden it would be painful for them. I didn’t know whether they heard me or not, but as it turned out, they had heard me indeed because my brother Mohamed Salem kept mocking me later and claiming that I am not courageous since I called for help. Maybe I’m not, but that’s what happened. What I didn’t know was that my two brothers and their two friends were arrested at the same time. Yes, their two friends, one who came with my brothers all the way from Nouakchott, and the other, his brother who lives in Dakar and just happened to ride with them to the airport, just in time to be arrested as a part of a “gang”: What luck!
I honestly was not prepared for this injustice. Had I known the U.S. investigators were really so full of it, I wouldn’t have left Canada, or even Belgium when I was transiting through. Why didn’t the U.S. have me arrested in Germany? Germany is one of the closest allies of the U.S. Why didn’t the U.S. have me arrested in Canada? Canada and the U.S. are almost the same country. The U.S. interrogators and investigators claimed that I fled Canada out of fear that I was going to be arrested, but that doesn’t really make any sense. First of all, I left using my passport with my real name, after going through all formalities including all kinds of registrations. Secondly, is it better to be arrested in Canada or Mauritania? Of course in Canada! Or why didn’t the U.S. have me arrested in Belgium, where I spent almost twelve hours?
I understand the anger and frustration of the U.S. about terrorist attacks. But jumping on innocent individuals and making them suffer, looking for fake confessions, doesn’t help anybody. It rather complicates the problem. I would always tell the U.S. agents, “Guys! Cool down! Think before you act! Just put a small percentage on the possibility that you might be wrong before you irreparably injure somebody!” But when something bad happens, people start to freak out and lose their composure. I’ve been interrogated throughout the last six years by over a hundred interrogators from different countries, and they have one thing in common: confusion. Maybe the government wants them to be that way, who knows?
Anyhow, the local police at the airport intervened when they saw the mêlée—the Special Forces were dressed in civilian suits, so there really was no differentiating them from a bunch of bandits trying to rob somebody—but the guy behind me flashed a magic badge, which immediately made the policemen retreat. All five of us were thrown in a cattle truck, and soon we got another friend, the guy I had met in Brussels, just because we bid each other farewell at the luggage carousel.
The guards got in with us. The leader of the group sat up front in the passenger seat, but he could see and hear us because the glass that usually separates the driver from the cattle wasn’t there anymore. The truck took off like in a Hollywood chase scene. “You’re killing us,” one of the guards must have said, because the driver slowed down a little bit. The local guy who came to the airport with my brothers was losing his mind; every once in a while he spat some indistinct words conveying his worries and unhappiness. As it turned out the guy thought that I was a drug dealer and he was relieved when the suspicion turned out to be terrorism! Since I was the starring actor, I felt bad for causing so much trouble for so many people. My only solace was that I didn’t mean to—and also, at that moment, the fear in my heart overwhelmed the rest of my emotions.
When I sat down on the rough floor, I felt better surrounded by the warmth of the company, including the Special Forces agents. I started to recite the Koran.
“Shut up!” said the boss in the front. I didn’t shut up; I lowered my voice, but not enough for the boss. “Shut up!” he said, this time raising his baton to hit me. “You’re trying to bewitch us out!” I knew he was serious, and so I prayed in my heart. I hadn’t tried to bewitch anybody out, nor do I know how to do it, but Africans are some of the most gullible folks I ever knew.
The trip took between fifteen and twenty minutes, so it was shortly after midnight when we arrived at the Commissariat de Police. The masterminds of the operation stood behind the truck and got involved in a discussion with my Brussels friend. I didn’t understand anything; they were speaking in Wolof, the local language. After a short discussion, the guy took his heavy bags, and off he went. When I later asked my brothers, who speak Wolof, what he told the police, they told me that he said he had seen me in Brussels and never before, and that he didn’t know that I was a terrorist.
Now we were five persons jailed in the truck. It was very dark outside, but I could tell that people were coming and going. We waited between forty minutes and an hour in the truck. I grew more nervous and afraid, especially when the guy in the passenger seat said, “I hate working with the Whites,” or rather he used the word ‘Moors,’ which made me believe that they were waiting on a Mauritanian team. I started to have nausea, my heart was a feather, and I shrank so small to hold myself together. I thought about all the kinds of torture I had heard of, and how much I could take tonight. I grew blind, a thick cloud built in front of my eyes, I couldn’t see anything. I grew deaf; after that statement all I could hear was indistinct whispers. I lost the feeling of my brothers being with me in the same truck. I figured only God can help my situation. God never fails.
“Get out,” shouted the guy impatiently. I fought my way through and one of the guards helped me jump down the step. We were led into a small room that was already occupied by mosquitoes, just in time for them to start their feast. They didn’t even wait until we slept; they went right away about their business, tearing us apart. The funny thing about mosquitoes is that they’re shy in small groups and rude in big ones. In small groups, they wait until you fall asleep, unlike in big groups, where they start to tease you right away, as if to say: “What can you do about it?” And in fact, nothing. The toilet was filthy as it could be, which made it an ideal environment for breeding mosquitoes.
I was the only chained person. “Did I beat you?” asked the guy while taking off the handcuffs.
“No, you didn’t.” When I looked I noticed I already had scars around my wrists. The interrogators started to pull us one by one for interrogation, starting with the strangers. It was a very long, scary, dark and bleak night.
My turn came shortly before the first daylight.
In the interrogation room there were two women, a white American who was most likely a U.S. intelligence officer based in Senegal and the local Senegalese police chief, and two men, a Senegalese interrogator and his recorder. The female Police Chief was in charge of the police station, but she was not part of the interrogation; she looked so tired that she fell asleep several times out of boredom. The American woman was taking notes, and sometimes she passed notes to the interrogator. The interrogator was a quiet, skinny, smart, rather religious and deep thinking man.
“We have very heavy allegations against you,” he said, pulling a thick stack of papers out of a bright yellow envelope. Before he had them halfway out, you could tell he had been reading the stuff many times. And I already knew what he was talking about, because the Canadians had already interviewed me.
“I have done nothing. The U.S. wants to dirty Islam by pinning such horrible things on Muslims.”
“Do you know Ahmed Ressam?”
“No, I don’t. I even think his whole story was a fake, to unlock the terrorism budget and hurt the Muslims.” I was really honest about what I said. Back then I didn’t know a whole lot of things that I do now. I believed excessively in Conspiracy Theories—though maybe not as much as the U.S. government does.
The interrogator also asked me about a bunch of other people, most of whom I didn’t know. The people I did know were not involved in any crimes whatsoever, as far as I knew. Lastly, the Senegalese asked me about my position toward the U.S., and why I had transited through his country. I really didn’t understand why my position toward the U.S government should matter to anybody. I am not a U.S. citizen, nor did I ever apply to enter the U.S., nor am I working with the U.N. Besides, I could always lie. Or let’s say I love the U.S., or I hate it, it doesn’t really matter as long as I haven’t done any crimes against the U.S. I explained all this to the Senegalese interrogator with a clarity that left no doubt at all about my circumstances.
“You seem very tired! I suggest you go and have some sleep. I know it’s hard,” he said. Of course I was dead tired, and hungry and thirsty. The guards led me back to the small room where my brothers and the other two guys were lying on the floor, fighting against the most efficient Senegalese Air Force Mosquitoes. I was no luckier than the rest. Did we sleep? Not really.
The interrogator and his assistant showed up early in the morning. They released the two guys, and took me and my brothers to the headquarters of the Ministère de L’Intérieur. The interrogator, who turned out to be a very high-level person in the Senegalese government, took me to his office and made a call to the Minister of Internal Affairs.
“The guy in front of me is not the head of a terrorist organization,” he said. I couldn’t hear what the minister said. “When it comes to me, I have no interest in keeping this guy in jail—nor do I have a reason,” the interrogator continued. The telephone call was short and straightforward. In the meantime, my brothers made themselves comfortable, bought some stuff, and started to make tea. Tea is the only thing that keeps the Mauritanian person alive, with God’s help. It had been a long time since any of us had eaten or drunk anything, but the first thing that came to mind was tea.
I was happy because the one-ton stack of paper the U.S. government had provided the Senegalese about me didn’t seem to impress them; it didn’t take my interrogator a whole lot of time to understand the situation. My two brothers started a conversation with him in Wolof. I asked my brothers what the conversation was about, and they said that the Senegalese government was not interested in holding me, but the U.S. was the one that was going to call the shots. Nobody was happy with that, because we had an idea of what the U.S. call would be like.
“We’re waiting on some people from the U.S. embassy to show up,” said the interrogator. Around eleven o’clock a black American woman showed up. She took pictures, fingerprints, and the report the recorder had typed earlier that morning. My brothers felt more comfortable around the black woman than the white woman from last night. People feel comfortable with the looks they are used to, and since about 50 percent of Mauritanians are black, my brothers could relate to them more. But that was a very naïve approach: in either case, black or white, she would just be a messenger.
After finishing her work, the American woman made a couple of calls, pulled the interrogator aside and spoke to him briefly, and then she was gone. The inspector informed us that my brothers were free to go and that I was going to be held in contempt for some time.
“Do you think we can wait on him until he gets released?” my brother asked.
“I would suggest you guys go home. If he gets released, he will find his way.” My brothers left and I felt abandoned and lonely, though I believe my brothers did the right thing.
For the next couple of days, the Senegalese kept interrogating me about the same things; the U.S. investigators sent them the questions. That was all. The Senegalese didn’t hurt me in any way, nor did they threaten me. Since the food in jail was horrible, my brothers arranged with a family they knew in Dakar to bring me one meal a day, which they consistently did.
My concern, as I say, was and still is to convince the U.S. government that I am not a corn. My only fellow detainee in the Senegalese jail had a different concern: to smuggle himself to Europe or America. We definitely had different Juliets. The young man from Ivory Coast was determined to leave Africa.
“I don’t like Africa,” he told me. “Many friends of mine have died. Everybody is very poor. I want to go to Europe or America. I tried twice. The first time I managed to sneak into Brazil when I outsmarted the port officials, but one African guy betrayed us to the Brazilian authorities, who put us in jail until they deported back to Africa. Brazil is a very beautiful country, with very beautiful women,” he added.
“How can you say so? You were in jail the whole time!” I interrupted him.
“Yes, but every once in a while the guards escorted us to look around, then took us back to jail,” he smiled.
“You know, brother, the second time I almost made it to Ireland,” he went on. “But the ruthless captain kept me in the ship and made customs take me.”
Sounds Columbus-y, I thought. “How did you get on board in the first place?” I wondered.
“It’s very easy, brother. I bribed some of the workers at the port. Those people smuggled me onto a ship heading to Europe or America. It didn’t really matter. I hid in the containers section for about a week until my provisions were gone. At that point, I came up and mingled with the crew. At first, they got very mad. The captain of the ship headed to Ireland was so mad that he wanted to drown me.”
“What an animal!” I interrupted, but my friend kept going.
“But after some time the crew accepted me, gave me food, and made me work.”
“How did they catch you this time?”
“My smugglers betrayed me. They said the ship was heading nonstop to Europe. But we made a stop in Dakar and customs took me off of the ship, and here I am!”
“What’s your next plan?”
“I’m gonna work, save some money, and try again.” My fellow detainee was determined to leave Africa at any cost. Moreover, he was confident that one day he was going to put his feet in the promised land.
“Man, what you see on TV is not how real life looks like in Europe,” I said.
“No!” he answered. “My friends have been successfully smuggled into Europe, and they have good lives. Good looking women and a lot of money. Africa is bad.”
“You might as easily end up in jail in Europe.”
“I don’t care. Jail in Europe is good. Africa is bad.”
I figured the guy was completely blinded by the rich world that deliberately shows us poor Africans a “paradise” we cannot enter, though he had a point. In Mauritania, the majority of the young people want to emigrate to Europe or the U.S. If the politics in African countries don’t change radically for the better, we are going to experience a catastrophe that will affect the whole world.
His cell was catastrophic. Mine was a little better. I had a very thin worn-out mattress, but he had nothing but a piece of carton he slept on. I used to give him my food because when I get anxious I can’t eat. Besides, I got good food from outside, and he got the bad food of the jail. The guards let us be together during the day and locked him up nights. My cell was always open. The day before I was extradited to Mauritania, the ambassador of Ivory Coast came to confirm the identity of my fellow detainee. Of course he had no papers whatsoever.
“We are releasing you!” the recorder who had been interrogating me for the last several days said happily.
“Thank you!” I interrupted him, looking in the direction of Mecca, and prostrating myself to thank God for being free.
“However, we have to turn you over to your country.”
“No, I know the way, I’ll do it on my own,” I said innocently, thinking I didn’t really want to go back to Mauritania, but maybe to Canada or somewhere else. My heart had been teased enough.
“I am sorry, we have to turn you over ourselves!” My whole happiness turned into agony, fear, nervousness, helplessness, confusion and other things I cannot describe. “Gather your stuff!” the guy said. “We’re leaving.”
I started to gather my few belongings, heartbroken. The inspector grabbed my bigger bag and I carried my small briefcase. During my arrest, the Americans had copied every single piece of paper I had and sent it all to Washington for analysis.
It was around 5 p.m. when we left the gate of the Commissariat de Police. Out front stood a Mitsubishi SUV. The inspector put my bags in the trunk, and we got into the back seat. On my left sat a guard I had never seen before, older and big boned. He was quiet and rather laid back; he looked straight ahead most of the time, only rarely scanning me quickly with the side of his eye. I hated it when guards would keep staring at me as if they had never seen a mammal before. On my right was the inspector who had been the recorder. In the passenger’s seat sat the lead interrogator.
The driver was a white American in his mid-forties, around five foot eight. He was the one giving the marching orders to both the Senegalese and the Mauritanians. From his tan you could tell he had spent some time in a warm place, but not in Senegal because the interrogator kept guiding him to the airport. Or maybe he was looking for best way, I couldn’t tell. He spoke French with a heavy accent, though he was stingy in his conversation; he limited himself exactly within the necessary. He never looked at or addressed me. The other two interrogators tried to talk to me, but I didn’t answer, I kept reading my Koran silently. Out of respect, the Senegalese didn’t confiscate my Koran, unlike the Mauritanians, Jordanians, and Americans.
It took about 25 minutes to the airport. The traffic was quiet around and inside the terminal. The white driver quickly found a parking place. We got out of the truck, the guards carrying my luggage, and we all passed through the diplomatic way to the waiting room. It was the first time that I shortcut the civilian formalities while leaving one country to another. It was a treat, but I didn’t enjoy it. Everybody seemed to be prepared in the airport. In front of the group the interrogator and the white guy kept flashing their magic badges, taking everybody with them. You could clearly tell that the country had no sovereignty: this was still colonization in its ugliest face. In the so-called free world, the politicians preach things such as sponsoring democracy, freedom, peace, and human rights: What hypocrisy! Still, many people believe this propaganda garbage.
The waiting room was empty. Everybody took a seat, and one of the Senegalese took my passport and went back and stamped it. I thought I was going to take the regular Air Afrique flight that was scheduled to Nouakchott that afternoon. But it didn’t take very long to realize I had my own plane to myself. As soon as the guy returned with my stamped passport, all five of us stepped toward the runway, where a very small white plane was already running its engines. The American man gestured for us to stay behind and he had a quick talk with the pilot. Maybe the interrogator was with him, too, I can’t remember. I was too scared to memorize everything.
Soon enough we were told to get in. The plane was as small as it could be. We were four, and barely managed to squeeze ourselves inside the butterfly with heads down and backs bent. The pilot had the most comfortable place. She was a French lady, you could tell from her accent. She was very talkative, and rather on the older side, skinny and blond. She didn’t talk to me, but she exchanged some words with the inspector during the trip. As it turned out, I later learned she told her friends in Nouakchott about the secret package she delivered from Dakar. The bigger guard and I squeezed ourselves, knees-on-faces, in the back seat, facing the inspector, who had a little better seat in front of us. The plane was obviously overloaded.
The interrogator and the American man waited until they made sure that the plane took off. I wasn’t paying attention to the conversations between the pilot and the inspector, but I heard her at one point telling him that the trip was only 300 miles, and would take between 45 minutes and an hour, depending on the wind direction. That sounded so medieval. The inspector tried to talk to me, but there was nothing to talk about; to me everything was already said and done. I figured he had nothing to say to help me, so why should I talk to him?
I hate traveling in small planes because they’re shaky and I always think the wind is going to blow the plane away. But this time was different, I was not afraid. In fact I wanted the plane to crash, and only me to survive. I would know my way: it was my country, I was born here, and anybody would give me food and shelter. I was drowned in my dreams, but the plane didn’t crash; instead it was getting closer and closer to its destination. The wind was in its favor. I was thinking about all my innocent brothers who were and still are being rendered to strange places and countries, and I felt solaced and not alone anymore. I felt the spirits of unjustly mistreated people with me. I had heard so many stories about brothers being passed back and forth like a soccer ball just because they have been once in Afghanistan, or Bosnia, or Chechnya. That’s screwed up! Thousands of miles away, I felt the warm breath of these other unjustly treated individuals comforting me. I stuck all the time to my Koran, ignoring my environment.
My company seemed to have a good time checking the weather and enjoying the beach we had been flying along the whole time. I don’t think that the plane had any type of navigation technologies because the pilot kept a ridiculously low altitude and oriented us with the beach. Through the window I started to see the sand-covered small villages around Nouakchott, as bleak as their prospects. There definitely had been a sandstorm earlier that day; People were just gradually daring to go outside. The suburbs of Nouakchott appeared more miserable than ever, crowded, poor, dirty, and free of any of life’s crucial infrastructures. It was the Kebba ghetto I knew, only worse. The plane flew so low I could tell who was who among the people who were moving, seemingly disoriented, everywhere.
It had been a long time since I had seen my country last—since August 1993, in fact. I was coming back, but this time as a terrorism suspect who was going to be hidden in some secret hole. I wanted to cry out loud to my people, “Here I am! I am not a criminal! I’m innocent! I am just the guy you knew, I’m no different!” But my voice was oppressed, just like in a nightmare. I couldn’t really recognize anything, the city plan had changed so radically.
I finally realized the plane was not going to crash, and I was not going to have the chance to talk to my people. It’s amazing how hard it can be for someone to accept his miserable situation. The key to surviving any given situation is to realize that you are in it. Whether I wanted it or not, I was going to be delivered to the very people I didn’t want to see.
“Can you do me a favor?” I asked the Inspector.
“Sure!”
“I’d like you to inform my family that I’m in the country.”
“OK. Do you have the phone number?”
“Yes, I do.” The inspector, against my expectation, indeed called my family and told them about my reality. Moreover, the Senegalese made an official press declaration stating that they turned me over to my country. Both the Mauritanians and Americans were pissed off about that.
“What did you tell the inspector?” the Mauritanian DSE, the Directeur de la Sûreté de l’État, asked me later.*
“Nothing.”
“You’re lying. You told him to call your family.” It didn’t really take David Copperfield to figure out that the telephone call was intercepted.
The handover was quick. We landed near the back door of the airport, where two men were waiting, the Mauritanian inspector and another freakin’ big black guy, most likely brought to take care of business—just in case!
“Where is the Airport Police Chief?” the inspector wondered, looking at his black colleague. I knew the Airport Police Chief: he had once been in Germany, and I gave him shelter and helped him buy a Mercedes-Benz. I hoped he would show up, so he could see me and put in a good word for me. But he never showed. Nor would he have put in a good word for me: Mauritanian Intelligence is by far the highest law enforcement authority. But I felt like I was drowning, and I would have grabbed any straw I encountered.
“You will be escorted to the hotel to spend the rest of the night,” said the inspector to his guests.
“How are you?” he said ungenuinely, looking at me.
“I’m fine.”
“Is that all he has?” he asked.
“Yes that’s it.” I was watching all my belongings on earth being passed around as if I’d already died.
“Let’s go!” the inspector said to me. The black guy, who never took his eyes off me, carried the luggage and pushed me before him toward a dirty small room at the secret gate of the airport. In the room, the black dude unfolded his dirty black 100 year-old turban.
“Mask your face thoroughly with this turban,” said the Inspector. Typically Mauritanian: the Bedouin spirit still dominates. The inspector should have foreseen that he would need a Turban to wrap my head, but in Mauritania organization is almost non-existent; everything is left to whim and chance. It was tricky, but I hadn’t forgotten yet how to fold a turban around my head. It is something people from the desert must learn. The turban smelled of piled-up sweat. It was just disgusting to have it around your mouth and nose. But I obediently complied with the orders and held my breath.
“Don’t look around,” the inspector said when the three of us stepped out of the room toward the parked Secret Police car, a Renault Twelve. I sat in the passenger’s seat, the inspector drove, and the black guy sat in the back seat, without saying a word. It was about sunset, but you couldn’t tell exactly because the cloud of sand was covering the horizon. The streets were empty. I illegally looked around whenever the chance arose, but I could hardly recognize anything.
The trip was short, about ten minutes to the Security Police building. We stepped out of the car and entered the building, where another guard was waiting on us. The environment was an ideal place for mosquitoes, human beings are the strangers in that place: filthy toilet, dirty floor and walls, holes connecting all the rooms, ants, spiders, flies.
“Search him thoroughly,” the inspector told the guard, whose name was Yacoub.
“Give me everything you have,” Yacoub respectfully asked me, wanting to avoid searching me. I gave him everything I had except for my pocket Koran. The inspector must have realized I would have one, so he sent Yacoub again, who came back and said, “Do you have a Koran?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Give it to me! I told you to give me everything.” By now the guard was growing afraid of being sent back again, so he searched me gently, but he didn’t find anything but my pocket Koran. I was so sad, tired, and terrorized that I couldn’t sit up straight. Instead I put my jacket on my face and fell on the inch-thick, worn-out 100 year-old mattress, the only object that existed in that room. I wanted to sleep, lose my mind, and not wake up until every bad thing was over. How much pain can I take? I asked myself. Can my family intervene and save me? Do they use electricity? I had read stories about people who were tortured to death. How could they bear it? I’d read about Muslim heroes who faced the death penalty, head up. How did they do it? I didn’t know. All I knew was that I felt so small before all the big names I knew, and that I was scared to death.
Although the mosquitoes were tearing me apart, I fell asleep. Every once in a while I woke up and asked myself, Why don’t they interrogate me right now, and do with me whatever they want, and everything will be over? I hate waiting on torture; an Arabic proverb says, “Waiting on torture is worse than torture.” I can only confirm this proverb. I managed to perform my prayers, how I don’t know.
Sometime around midnight I woke up to people moving around, opening and closing doors in an extraordinary manner. When the guard opened the door to my room, I glimpsed the face of a Mauritanian friend who happened to be with me a long time ago when I visited Afghanistan in 1992 during the struggle against communism. He looked sad and weathered, and must have gone through painful torture, I thought. I almost lost my mind, knowing for sure I was going to suffer at least as much as he had, given his close relationship with the Mauritanian president and the power of his family—qualities I don’t have. I thought, The guy surely must have spoken about me, and that is the reason why they brought him here.
“Get up!” said the guards. “Put on your turban.” I put on the dirty turban, gathered my last strength, and followed the guards to the interrogation room like a sheep being driven to its last destination, the slaughterhouse.
When I was driven past the guy I had seen earlier, I realized he was just a screwed-up guard who failed to keep his uniform the way it should be. He was sleepy and drowsy: they must have called him in the midst of his sleep, and he hadn’t yet washed his face. It was not the friend I thought it was; anxiety, terror, and fear were dominating my mind. Lord have mercy! I was somewhat relieved. Did I commit a crime? No. Did my friend commit a crime? No. Did we conspire to committing a crime? No. The only thing we had done together was make a trip to Afghanistan in February 1992 to help the people fighting against communism. And as far as I was concerned that was not a crime, at least in Mauritania.
So why was I so scared? Because crime is something relative; it’s something the government defines and re-defines whenever it pleases. The majority of people don’t know, really, where the line is that separates breaking the law from not breaking it. If you get arrested, the situation worsens, because most people trust the government to have a good reason for the arrest. On top of that, if I personally had to suffer, I didn’t want anybody to suffer with me. I thought they arrested my friend in connection with the Millennium Plot, if only because he had been in Afghanistan once.
I entered the interrogation room, which was the office of the DSE. The room was large and well-furnished: leather couch, two love-seats, coffee table, closet, one big desk, one leather chair, a couple of other chairs for unimportant guests, and, as always, the picture of the president conveying the weakness of the law and the strength of the government. I wished they had turned me over to the U.S.: at least there are things I could refer to there, such as the law. Of course, in the U.S. the government and politics are gaining more and more ground lately at the cost of the law. The government is very smart; it evokes terror in the hearts of people to convince them to give up their freedom and privacy. Still, it might take some time until the U.S. government overthrows the law completely, like in the third world and the communist regimes. But really that is none of my concern, and thank God my government doesn’t possess the technology to track Bedouins in the vast desert.
There were three guys in the interrogation room: the DSE, his assistant, and his recorder. The DSE asked them to bring my stuff in. They thoroughly searched everything I had; no stone remained unturned. They didn’t speak to me, they only spoke with each other, mostly in whispers, just to annoy the hell out of me. At the end of the search, they sorted out my papers and put aside the ones they thought interesting. Later on, they asked me about every single word in those papers.
“I am going to interrogate you. I just want to tell you as a forewarning that you better tell me the whole truth,” the DSE said firmly, making a big effort to take a break from smoking his pipe, which he never took off his lips.
“I sure will,” I answered.
“Take him back,” the DSE dryly ordered the guards.
“Listen, I want you to tell me about your whole life, and how you joined the Islamic movement,” said the DSE when the guards dragged my skeleton away from the mosquitoes and back into the interrogation room.
If you get arrested for the first time, chances are that you’re not going to be forthcoming, and that’s OK; even though you know you haven’t done any crimes, it seems sensible. You’re very confused, and you’d like to make yourself appear as innocent as possible. You assume you are arrested more or less on a reasonable suspicion, and you don’t want to cement that suspicion. Moreover, questioning involves a lot of stuff nobody wants to talk about, like your friends and your private life. Especially when the suspicions are about things like terrorism, the government is very rude. In the interrogation you always avoid talking about your friends and your private, intimate life. And finally, you are so frustrated because of your arrest, and you really don’t owe your interrogators anything. On the contrary, they owe you to show you the true cause of your detention, and it should be entirely up to you to comment then or to leave them be. If this cause is enough to hold you, you can seek professional representation; if not, well you shouldn’t be arrested in the first place. That’s how the civilized world works, and everything else is dictatorship. Dictatorship is governed by chaos.
To be honest with you, I acted like any average person: I tried to make myself look as innocent as a baby. I tried to protect the identities of every single person I knew, unless he or she was too well known to the police. The interrogations continued in this manner, but when they opened the Canadian file, things soured decidedly.
The U.S. government saw in my arrest and my rendition to Mauritania a once-in-a-blue-moon opportunity to unveil the plan of Ahmed Ressam, who back then was refusing to cooperate with the U.S. authorities. Furthermore, the U.S. wanted to learn in detail about my friends in both Canada and Germany, and even outside those countries. After all my cousin and brother Mahfouz Ould al-Walid was already wanted with a reward of US $5 million.* The U.S. also wanted to learn more about the whole Jihadi issue in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Chechnya. Expertise for free. For the aforementioned, and for other reasons I don’t know, the U.S. drove my case as far as it could be driven. They labeled me “Mastermind of the Millennium Plot.” They asked all countries to provide any tiny bit of information they possessed about me, especially Canada and Germany. And since I am already a “bad” guy, force must be applied to roast me.
To the dismay of the U.S. government, things were not really as they seemed, nor did the government achieve what it wanted. No matter how smart somebody plans, God’s plan always works. I felt like 2Pac’s “Me Against the World.” And here’s why.
All the Canadians could come up with was, “We have seen him with x and y, and they’re bad people.” “We’ve seen him in this and that mosque.” “We have intercepted his telephone conversations, but there’s nothing really!” The Americans asked the Canadians to provide them the transcripts of my conversations, but after they edited them. Of course it doesn’t make sense to selectively take different passages from a whole conversation and try to make sense of them. I think the Canadians should have done one of two things: either refused to provide the Americans any private conversation that took place in their country, or provided them the whole conversation in its original form, not even translated.
Instead, out of the words the Canadians chose to share with their U.S. colleagues, U.S. interrogators magically stuck with two words for more than four years: Tea and Sugar.
“What do you mean by tea and sugar?”
“I mean tea and sugar.” I cannot tell you how many times the U.S. asked me, and made other people ask me, this question. Another Mauritanian folktale recounts about a man who was born blind and who had one chance to get a glimpse of the world. All he saw was a rat. After that, whenever anybody tried to explain anything to the guy, he always asked, “Compare it with the rat: Is it bigger? smaller?”
Canadian intelligence wished I were a criminal, so they could make up for their failure when Ahmed Ressam slipped from their country to the U.S. carrying explosives. The U.S. blamed Canada for being a preparation ground for terrorist attacks against the U.S., and that’s why Canadian Intel freaked out. They really completely lost their composure, trying everything to calm the rage of their big brother, the U.S. They began watching the people they believed to be bad, including me. I remember after the failed Millennium Plot, the Canadians tried to implant two cameras, one in my room, one in my roommate’s. I used to be a very heavy sleeper. I heard voices but I couldn’t tell what it was—or let’s say I was too lazy to wake up and check on them. My roommate Mourad was different; he woke up and followed the noise. He laid low and watched until the tiny hole was through. The guy in the other room blew through the hole, and when he checked with his eye, he made eye contact with Mourad.
My roommate woke me up and told me the story.
“Mourad, I heard the same voices in my room.” I said to him. “Let’s check!” Our short investigation was successful: we found a tiny twin hole in my room.
“What should we do?” Mourad asked.
“We call the police,” I said.
“Well, call them!” he said. I purposely didn’t use our telephone; instead, I went out and used a public phone, dialing 911. Two cops showed up, and I explained to them that our neighbor, without our consent, drilled two holes in our house, and we wanted him to be held for his illegal action toward us. Basically, we asked for a fair relief.
“Put some caulk inside the holes and the problem is solved,” said one of the cops.
“Really? I didn’t know that. Are you a carpenter?” I said. “Look! I didn’t call you to give me advice on how to fix my house. There’s an obvious crime behind this, trespassing and violation of our privacy. If you don’t take care of us, we’ll take care of ourselves. And by the way: I need you guys’ business cards,” I said. Each one silently produced a business card with the other cop’s name and contact on the back of it. Obviously, those cops were following some idiot directions in order to deceive us, but for the Canadian Intel it was too late. For days to come we were just sitting and making fun of the plan.
The irony was that I lived in Germany for twelve years and they never provided any incriminating information about me, which was accurate. I stayed less than two months in Canada, and yet the Americans claimed that the Canadians provided tons of information about me. The Canadians don’t even know me! But since all Intel work is based on what ifs, Mauritania and the U.S. started to interpret the information as they pleased, in order to confirm the theory that I was the mastermind of Millennium Plot.
The interrogation didn’t seem to develop in my favor. I kept repeating my Afghanistan Jihad story of 1991 and early 1992, which didn’t seem to impress the Mauritanian interrogator. Mauritania doesn’t give a damn about a trip to Afghanistan; they understand it very well. If you try to make trouble inside the country, however, you’re going to be arrested, regardless of whether or not you’ve been in Afghanistan. On the other hand, to the American government a bare visit to Afghanistan, Bosnia, or Chechnya is worth watching you for the rest of your life and trying to lock you up. All the Arabic countries have the same approach as Mauritania, except the communist ones. I even think the communist Arab countries are at least fairer than the U.S. government in this regard, because they forbid their citizens to go to Jihad in the first place. Meanwhile, the U.S. government prosecutes people based on an unwritten law.
My Mauritanian interrogator was interested in my activities in Canada, which are non-existent in the criminal sense, but nobody was willing to believe me. All my answers to the question, “Have you done this or that while in Canada?” were, “No, No, No, No.” And there we got completely stuck. I think I looked guilty because I didn’t tell my whole story about Afghanistan, and I figured I had to fill that gap in order to make my case stronger. The interrogator had brought film equipment with him that day. As soon as I saw it, I started to shake: I knew that I would be made to confess and that they were going to broadcast me on the National TV, just like in October 1994, when the Mauritanian government arrested Islamists, made them confess, and broadcast their confessions.* I was so scared my feet couldn’t carry my body. You could tell there was a lot of pressure on my government.
“I’ve been very patient with you, boy,” the interrogator said. “You got to admit, or I am going to pass you the special team.” I knew he meant the torture team. “Reports keep coming every day from everywhere,” he said. In the days before this talk I couldn’t sleep. Doors kept getting opened and closed. Every move around me hit my heart so bad. My room was next to the archive, and through a small hole I could see some of the files and their labels; I started to hallucinate and read papers about me that didn’t exist. I couldn’t take anything anymore. And torture? No way.
“Look, Director! I have not been completely truthful with you, and I would like to share my whole story.” I told him. “However, I don’t want you to share the Afghanistan story with the U.S. government, because they don’t understand this whole Jihad recipe, and I am not willing to put gas on the fire.”
“Of course I won’t,” the DSE said. Interrogators are used to lying to people; the interrogator’s whole job is about lying, outsmarting, and deception. “I can even send my recorder and my assistant away, if you’d like,” he continued.
“No, I don’t mind them around.” The DSE called his driver and sent him to buy some food. He brought chicken salad, which I liked. It was my first meal since I left Senegal; it was now February 12, 2000.
“Is that all you’re gonna eat?” wondered the DSE.
“Yes, I’m full.”
“You don’t really eat.”
“That’s the way I am.” I started to recount my whole Jihad story in the most boring detail. “And as to Canada or an attack against the U.S., I have nothing to do with it,” I finished. In the days that followed I got, by far, better treatment and better food, and all the questions he asked me and all my answers were consistent in themselves and with the information he already knew from other sources. When the DSE knew that I was telling him the truth, he quit believing the U.S. reports to be the Gospel truth, and very much put them aside, if not in the garbage.
On February 14, 2000, an FBI team from the United States showed up to interrogate me. There were three of them, two FBI agents named Jack and Michael, and someone they said was from the Justice Department. Evidently the Mauritanian authorities had shared all of my interviews with the FBI team, so that U.S. agents and the Mauritanians were at the same level of information.*
When the team arrived they were hosted at the Halima Hotel, where it turned out they were spotted by the local press. Deddahi Ould Abdallahi, the DSE, gave me a forewarning the day they came to interrogate me.
“Mohamedou, we have nothing on you. When it comes to us, you are a free man,” he told me. “However, those people want to interrogate you. I’d like you to be strong, and to be honest with them.”
“How can you allow foreigners to interrogate me?”
“It’s not my decision, but it’s just a formality,” he said. I was very afraid, because I had never met American interrogators, though I anticipated that they would not use torture to coerce information. But the whole environmental setup made me very skeptical toward the honesty and humanity of the U.S. interrogators. It was kind of like, “We ain’t gonna beat you ourselves, but you know where you are!” So I knew the FBI wanted to interrogate me under the pressure and threat of a non-democratic country.
The atmosphere was prepared. I was told what to wear and what to say. I never had the chance to take a shower or to wash my clothes, so I wore some of my dirty clothes. I must have smelled terribly. I was so skinny from my confinement that my clothes didn’t fit; I looked like a teenager in baggy pants. But as much as I was pissed, I tried to look as comfortable, friendly, and normal as I could.
The FBI team arrived around 8 p.m., and the interrogation room was cleaned for them. I entered the room smiling. After diplomatic greetings and introductions I sat down on a hard chair, trying to discover my new world.
The leader of the team, Special Agent Jack, started to talk. “We have come from the States to ask you some questions. You have the right to remain calm. You may also answer some questions and leave others. Were we in the U.S., we would have provided you with a lawyer free of charge.”
I almost interrupted his nonsense and said, “Cut the crap, and ask me the questions!” I was like, “What a civilized world!” In the room, there were only the FBI interrogators with an Arabic interpreter. The Mauritanian interrogators stepped outside.
“Oh, thank you very much. I don’t need any lawyer,” I said.
“However, we would like you to answer our questions.”
“Of course I will,” I said. They started to ask me about my trip to Afghanistan during the war against communism, showed me a bunch of pictures, asked me questions about Canada, and hardly any questions about Germany. As to the pictures and Canada, I was completely truthful, but I deliberately withheld some parts of my two Afghanistan trips in January 1991 and February 1992. You know why? Because it is none of the U.S. government’s business what I had done to help my Afghani brothers against the communists. For Pete’s sake, the U.S. was supposedly on our side! When that war was done I resumed my regular life; I hadn’t broken any Mauritanian or German laws. I legally went to Afghanistan and came back. As for the U.S., I am not a U.S. citizen, nor have I been in the U.S.—so what law have I possibly broken? I understand that if I enter the U.S. and they arrest me for a reasonable suspicion, then I completely have to explain to them my position. And Canada? Well, they made a big deal out of me being in Canada, because some Arab guy had tried to attack them from Canada. I explained with definite evidence that I was not a part of it. Now F*ck off and leave me alone.
The FBI interrogators told me that I wasn’t truthful.
“No, I was,” I lied. The good thing was that I didn’t give a damn about what they thought. Special Agent Michael kept writing my answers and looking at me at the same time. I wondered, how could he do both? But later I learned that FBI interrogators study your body language while you’re speaking, which is nothing but bullshit.* There are many factors involved in an interrogation, and they differ from one culture to another. Since the United States knows my entire case now, I suggest that Agent Michael should go back and check where he marked me as lying, just to check his competence. The U.S. interrogators also went outside their assignment and did what any interrogator would have done: they fished, asking me about Sudan, Nairobi, and Dar Es Salaam. How am I supposed to know about those countries, unless I have multiple doppelgängers?
Special Agent Jack offered to have me work with them. I think the offer was futile unless they were dead sure that I was a criminal. I’m not a cop, but I understand how criminals can repent—but I personally had done nothing to repent for. The next day, about the same time, the FBI team showed up once more, trying to get at least the same amount of information I had shared with the Mauritanians, but there was no persuading me. After all the Mauritanian authorities duly shared everything with them. The FBI team didn’t push me in any uncivilized way; they acted rather friendly. The chief of the team said, “We’re done. We’re going back home,” exactly like Umm ‘Amr and her donkey.* The FBI team left Nouakchott, and I was released on February 19, 2000.
“Those guys have no evidence whatsoever,” the DSE said sadly. He felt completely misused. The Mauritanians didn’t want me delivered to them in the first place, because it was a no-win situation: if they found me guilty and they delivered me to the U.S., they were going to feel the wrath of the public; if not, they would feel the wrath of the U.S. government. In either case, the President was going to lose his office.
So in the end, something like this must have happened under the table:
“We found nothing on him, and you guys didn’t provide us any evidence,” the Senegalese must have said. “Under these circumstances, we can’t hold him. But if you want him, take him.”
“No, we can’t take him, because we’ve got to get evidence on him first,” answered the U.S. government.
“Well, we don’t want to have anything to do with him,” said the Senegalese.
“Turn him over to the Mauritanians,” the U.S. government suggested.
“No, we don’t want him, just take him!” cried the Mauritanian government.
“You got to,” said the U.S. government, giving the Mauritanians no choice. But the Mauritanian government always prefers keeping peace between the people and the government. They don’t want any trouble.
“You are free to go,” said the DSE.
“Should I give him everything?”
“Yes, everything,” the DSE answered. He even asked me to double-check on my belongings, but I was so excited I didn’t check on anything. I felt as if the ghoul of fear had flown from my chest.
“Thank you very much,” I said. The DSE ordered his assistant and recorder to drive me home. It was about 2 p.m. when we took off toward my home.
“You’d better not talk with journalists,” said the inspector.
“No, I won’t.” And indeed, I never disclosed the scandal of foreign interrogators violating the sovereignty of my country to journalists. I felt so bad about lying to them.
“Come on, we have seen the FBI guys at the Hotel Halima,” a reporter told me after my release. God, those journalists are wizards.
“Maybe they were listening to my interrogation,” I said unconvincingly.
I tried to recognize the way to my home, but believe me, I didn’t recognize anything until the police car parked in front of our house and dropped me there. It had been almost seven years since I saw my family last.* Everything had changed. Children had become men and women, young people had become older. My strong mom had become weak. Nonetheless everybody was happy. My sister Nejah and my former wife had hardly slept nights, praying to God to relieve my pains and sufferings. May God reward everybody who stood on my side.
Everybody was around, my aunt, the in-laws, friends. My family kept generously feeding the visitors, some of whom came just to congratulate me, some to interview me, some just to get to know the man who had made news for the last month. After the first few days, my family and I were making plans for my future. To make a long story short, my family wanted me to stay in the country, if only to see me every day and enjoy my company. I said to myself, Screw it, went out, found a job, and was enjoying looking into the pretty face of my mom every morning. But no joy is forever