The Hospitality of My Arab Brothers… Cat and Mouse: ICRC vs. Jordanian Intel… The Good News: I Supposedly Attempted to Kill the Mauritanian President… Bodybuilding Center: What I Know Kills Me… Unjust Justice
Thursday, November 29, 2001, around 7:00 a.m. local time.
The small plane clumsily started to fight its way through the cloudy and cold sky of Amman. We finally hit the ground and came to a standstill. Everybody was eager to get the hell out of the plane, including me.
“Stand up,” said one the guards, taking off the metal handcuffs that had already built a ring around my wrists. I was relieved, and sat silently talking to myself. “Look, they’re friendly. They just wanted to make sure that you didn’t do anything stupid in the plane; now that we arrived, there is no need for cuffs or earmuffs.” How wrong I was! They just took the handcuffs off in order to handcuff me again behind my back and put on bigger earmuffs and a bag over my head, covering my neck. My heart started to pound heavily, which raised my blood pressure and helped me to stand steadier on my feet. I started to mumble my prayers. This was the first time that I got treated this way. My pants started to slip down my legs because I was so skinny and had been virtually without food for at least a week.
Two new, energetic guards dragged me out of the plane. I twisted my feet when I reached the ladder; I couldn’t see anything, nor did the stupid guards tell me anything. I fell face down, but the guards caught me before I hit the ladder.
“Watch out!” said Officer Rami, my future interrogator, to the guards. I memorized his voice, and when he later started to interrogate me, I recognized it from that day. I now knew that I had to step down the ladder until my feet hit the ground, and an ice-cold winter breeze hit my whole body. My clothes were not designed for this weather. I was wearing the worthless, made-in-a-cheap-country clothes I got from the Mauritanian authorities.
One of the guards silently helped my feet get into the truck that was parked inches away from the last step of the ladder. The guards squeezed me between them in the back seat, and off took the truck. I felt comforted; it was warm inside the truck, and the motor was quiet. The chauffeur mistakenly turned the radio on. The female DJ voice struck me with her Sham accent and her sleepy voice. The city was awakening from a long, cold night, slowly but surely. The driver kept accelerating and hitting the brakes suddenly. What a bad driver! They must have hired him just because he was stupid. I was moving back and forth like a car crash dummy.
I heard a lot of horns. It was the peak time for people who were going to work. I pictured myself at this very same time back home, getting ready for work, enjoying the new day, the morning ocean breeze through my open window, dropping my nephews off at their respective schools. Whenever you think life is going in your favor, it betrays you.
After about 40 or 45 minutes of painful driving, we took a turn, entered a gate, and stopped. The guards dragged me out of the truck. The cold breeze shook my whole body, though only for a very short time before we entered the building and I was left near a heater. I knew how the heater looked even with my eyes closed; I just sensed it was like the ones I had in Germany. Later on, I learned from the guards that the prison facility was built by a Swedish company.
“Do not move,” said one of the guards before they both emptied out of the place. I stood still, though my feet could hardly carry me and my back hurt so bad. I was left there for about 15 or 20 minutes before Officer Rami grabbed me by the back of my collar, almost choking me to death. Officer Rami pushed me roughly up the stairs. I must have been on the ground floor, and he pushed me to the first.
Legend has it that Arabs are among the most hospitable folks on the face of the earth; both friends and enemies are unanimous about that. But what I would be experiencing here was another kind of hospitality. Officer Rami pushed me inside a relatively small room with a desk, a couple of chairs, and another guy sitting behind the desk and facing me. He was a heavy and lazy-looking man in his late twenties who repeated every task many times over. Like the rest of the guards, he was dressed in a Jordanian Army uniform and had a high-and-tight haircut. You could see that he had been doing this work for some time: there were no signs of humanity in his face. He hated himself more than anybody could hate him.
The first thing I saw were two pictures on the wall, the present King Abdullah and his extinguished father Hussein. Such pictures are the proof of dictatorship in the uncivilized world. In Germany I never saw anybody hang the picture of the president; the only time I saw his picture was when I was watching news, or driving around during elections, when they hang a bunch of candidates’ pictures. Maybe I’m wrong, but I mistrust anybody who hangs the picture of his president, or any president who wins any elections with more than 80%. It’s just ridiculous. On the other wall I read the time on a big hanging clock. It was around 7:30 a.m.
“Take your clothes off!” said the guard. I complied with his order except for my underwear. I was not going to take them off without a fight, no matter how weak it would be. But the guard just handed me a clean, light blue uniform. Jordanians are materially much more advanced and organized than Mauritanians; everything in the prison was modest, but clean and neat. It was the first time I put on a prison uniform in my life. In Mauritania there is no specific uniform, not because Mauritania is a democratic country, but maybe because the authorities are too lazy and corrupt. A uniform is a sign of backwards and communist countries. The only so-called “democratic” country that has this technique of wrapping up detainees in uniforms is the U.S.; the Jordanians have adopted a 100% American system in organizing their prisons.
The young guy behind the table was rather fat. He was acting as a clerk, but he was a horrible one.
“What’s your name? What’s your address in Amman?”
“I am not from Amman.”
“Where the hell are you from?”
“I am from Mauritania,” I answered.
“No, I mean where do you live here in Jordan?”
“Did they capture you while transiting through the airport?”
“No, Hajji took me from my country to question me for two days and bring me back.” I wanted to make it sound as harmless as possible. Besides, that’s what I was told, even though I had the feeling now that I was being lied to and betrayed.
“How do you spell your name?” I spelled out my complete name, but the guy didn’t seem to have gone to primary school. He wrote as if with Chinese chopsticks. He kept filling out one form after another and throwing the old ones in the garbage can.
“What have you done?”
“I’ve done nothing!”
Both burst out in laughter. “Oh, very convenient! You have done nothing but you are here!” I thought, What crime should I say in order to satisfy them?
I presented myself as a person who came all the way from Mauritania to provide intels about my friends. “Hajji told me he needed my help,” I said. But then I thought, What a silly answer. If I were going to provide information freely, I could do so in Mauritania. The guards didn’t believe me anyway; what criminal benevolently admits to his crime? I felt humiliated because my story sounded weird and untruthful.
In the bureaucratic chaos, the prison’s commanding officer took the process in hand. He took my wallet and copied my personal data from my ID. He was a serious looking officer in his late thirties, light blond, Caucasian looking, with a dry face. It was obvious he was married to the cause. During my sojourn in the Dar Al Tawqif wa Tahqiq, the “House for Arrest and Interrogation,”* I kept seeing him working day and night and sleeping in the prison. Most of the guards do. They work far from home, and the guards told me their shifts could stretch for several days; during that time they rarely left the facility. I would catch him sneakily trying to look through the bin hole without me noticing him. I’m-Watching-You, as I called him, was an officer in what they call the al Jaish Al Arabi, the Arab Legion. I was thinking, What a masquerade! If this is the protector of us Arabs, we screwed up! As an Arabic saying has it, “Her protector is her assailant.”
“Why do they call you guys the Arab Legion?” I asked one of the guards later.
“Because we are supposed to protect the entire Arab world,” he responded.
“Oh, that’s really great,” I said, thinking that we’d be just fine if they protected us from themselves.
After they had finished processing me, one of the escorting guards handcuffed me behind my back, blindfolded me, and grabbed me as usual by the back of my collar. We got in the lift and I felt it going up. We must have landed on the third floor. The guard led me through a corridor and took a couple turns before a heavy metal door opened. The guard uncuffed me and took off the blindfold.
I looked as far as my eyes could reach. It was not far: about 8 or 9 feet to a window that was small and high so detainees could not look outside. I climbed up once, but I saw nothing but the round wall of the prison. The prison was in the shape of a circle. The idea was smart, because if you succeeded in jumping out of the window, you would land in a big arena with a 30 or 40 foot concrete wall. The room looked bleak and stark, though clean. There was a wooden bed and an old blanket, a small sheet, and that was about it. The door closed loudly behind me and I was left on my own, tired and scared. What an amazing world! I enjoyed visiting other countries, but not this way.
I performed my ritual wash and tried to pray standing, but there was no way so I opted to pray sitting down. I crawled over to the bed and soon trailed off. Sleep was a torture: as soon as I closed my eyes, the friends I was potentially going to be asked about kept coming to me and talking to me. They scared the hell out of me; I woke up numerous times mumbling their names. I was in a no-win situation: if I stayed awake, I was so dead tired, and if slept I got terrorized by nightmares to the point that I screamed out loud.
Around 4:30 p.m., the guard on watch woke me up for food. Meals were served from a chariot that goes through the corridor from cell to cell, with the cook passing by again later to collect the empty plates. Detainees were allowed to keep one cup for tea and juice. When the cook showed up for my plate, he saw that I hardly ate anything.
“Is that all?” As much as I liked the food, my throat conspired against me. The depression and fear were just too much.
“Yes, thanks.”
“Well, if you say so!” The cook quickly collected my plate and off he rolled. In jail it’s not like at home; in jail if you don’t eat, it’s OK. But at home your parents and your wife do their best to persuade you. “Honey, just eat a little bit more. Or should I prepare you something else? Please, just do it for my sake. Why don’t you tell me what you’d like to eat?” In both cases, though, you more than likely won’t eat more—in jail because they scare the hell out of you, and at home because you’re spoiled. It’s the same way when you feel sick. I remember a very funny case when I was really hurting; it was either headache or stomach ache.
“I’m in so much pain! Can you please give me some medication?”
“Fuck you, crybaby,” the guard said. I burst into laughter because I remembered how my family would be overreacting if they knew I was sick.
After giving my trash back I went back to sleep. As soon as I closed my eyes I saw my family in a dream, rescuing me from the Jordanians. In the dream I kept telling my family that it was just a dream, but they would tell me, “No, it’s for real, you’re home.” How devastating, when I woke up and found myself in the dimly lit cell! This dream terrorized me for days. “I told you it’s a dream, please hold me and don’t let me go,” I would say. But there was no holding me. My reality was that I was secretly detained in a Jordanian jail and my family could not even possibly know where I was. Thank God after a while that dream disappeared, though every once in a while I would still wake up crying intensely after hugging my beloved youngest sister.
The first night is the worst; if you make it through that you’re more than likely going to make it through the rest. It was Ramadan, and so we got two meals served, one at sunset and the second before the first light. The cook woke me up and served me my early meal. Suhoor is what we call this meal; it marks the beginning of our fasting, which lasts until sunset. At home, it’s more than just a meal. The atmosphere matters. My older sister wakes everybody and we sit together eating and sipping the warm tea and enjoying each other’s company. “I promise I will never complain about your food, Mom,” I was thinking to myself.
I still hadn’t adjusted to Jordanian time. I wasn’t allowed to know the time or date, but later when I made friends among the guards they used to tell me what time it was. This morning I had to guess. It was around 4:30 a.m., which meant around 1:30 a.m. back home. I wondered what my family was doing. Do they know where I am?* Will God show them my place? Will I ever see them again? Only Allah knows! The chances looked very low. I didn’t eat a lot, and in fact the meal was not that big; a pita bread, buttermilk, and small pieces of cucumber. But I ate more than I did the night before. I kept reading the Koran in the dim light; I wasn’t able to recite because my brain was not working properly. When I thought it must be dawn I prayed, and as soon as I finished the Muezzin started to sing the Azan, his heavenly, fainting, sleepy, hoarse voice awakening in me all kind of emotions. How could all those praying believers possibly accept that one of their own is buried in the Darkness of the Dar Al Tawqif wa Tahqiq.
There are actually two Azans, one to wake people to eat the last meal, and the other to stop eating and go to pray. It sounds the same; the only difference is that in the last one the Muezzin says, “Prayer is better than sleeping.” I redid my prayers once more and went to bed to choose between being terrorized while awake or asleep. I kept switching between both, as if I were drunk.
That second day passed without big events. My appetite didn’t change. One of the guards gave me a book to read. I didn’t like it because it was about philosophical differences between all kinds of religions. I really needed a book that would give me comfort. I wished we had a little more peace in the world. I was between sleeping and waking at around 11 p.m. that evening when the guards shouted “Tahgig!” “Interrogation!” and opened the door of my cell.
“Hurry up!” I froze and my feet numbed, but my heart pumped so hard that I jumped off my bed and complied with the order of the guard. The escort guards handcuffed me behind my back and pushed me toward the unknown. Since I was blindfolded I could think about my destination undisturbed, though the pace of the escorting guard was faster than my anticipation. I felt the warmth of the room I entered. When you’re afraid you need warmth.
The guard took off both the handcuffs and the blindfold. I saw a big blue machine like the ones in airports for scanning luggage, and some other object to measure height and weight. How relieved I was! They were just going about taking the traditional prisoner data like fingerprints, height, and weight. Although I knew there was no getting around the interrogation session, I both wanted to get through it as soon as possible and was so afraid of that session. I don’t know how to explain it, it might not make sense, I’m just trying to explain my feelings then the best way I can.
Another day passed. The routine was no different than the days before, though I gathered one vital piece of information: the number of my cell. After the Iftar fast-breaking meal, the guards would start calling a number, a door would open loudly, and you could hear the footsteps of the taken-away detainees. I figured they were being taken away for interrogation. I imagined I heard the guards shouting my cell number about a hundred times, and after each I went to the toilet and performed a ritual wash. I was just so paranoid. Finally, around 10 p.m. on Saturday, a guard shouted “Tahgig!” for real.* I quickly went to the bathroom. Not that I needed to, I really hadn’t drunk anything and I had already urinated about half a gallon, but the urge was there. What was I going to urinate, blood?
“Hurry up, we don’t have time,” said the guard who stood at the opened heavy metal door. Later on, I learned that 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. was the prime time for interrogations, with the heaviest traffic of detainees being moved to and from the interrogation rooms. The sergeant handcuffed and blindfolded me, and pushed me off. We took the lift and went one floor down, took a couple of turns, and entered a new area; a door opened and I went down a step. The odor of cigarette smoke hit me. It was the interrogation area, where they smoke relentlessly, like an old train. It’s disgusting when the smoke keeps adding up and dominates the odor of a house.
The area was remarkably quiet. The escorting guard dropped me against a wall and retreated.
“What people did you send to Chechnya?” an interrogator named Abu Raad shouted at a detainee in English.
“I ain’t sent nobody,” responded the detainee in broken Arabic, with an obvious Turkish accent. I right away knew the setup: This interrogation was meant for me.
“Liar,” shouted Abu Raad.
“I ain’t lying,” the guy responded in Arabic, although Abu Raad kept speaking his loose English.
“I don’t care if you have a German or American passport, you’re going to tell me the truth,” said Abu Raad. The setup fit perfectly, and was meant to terrorize me even more. And even though I knew right away it was a setup, it worked.
“Hi, Abdallah,” said Abu Raad.
“Hi,” I responded, feeling his breath right in front of my face. I was so terrorized that I hadn’t realized what he was saying.
“So your name is Abdallah,” he concluded.
“No!”
“But you responded when I called you Abdallah,” he argued. I found it idiotic to tell him that I was so terrorized that I didn’t realize what name he called me.
“If you look at it, we all are Abdallah,” I correctly answered. Abdallah means “God’s servant” in Arabic. But I actually knew how Abu Raad came up with that name. When I arrived in Montreal, Canada, on November 26, 1999, my friend Hasni introduced me to his roommate Mourad by my given name. Later on I met another Tunisian who I’d happened to see when I visited the year before. He called me Abdallah by mistake, and I responded because I found it impolite to correct him. Since then Mourad had called me Abdallah, and I found it cool. I wasn’t trying to deceive Mourad or anyone; after all, Mourad had keys to our common mailbox and always collected my official mail, which obviously bore my given name.
That was the story of the name. Obviously the Americans tasked the Jordanians with investigating why I took the name Abdallah in Canada, but the Jordanians understand the recipe far more than Americans, and so they completely ignored this part of the interrogation.
“Do you know where you are?” asked Abu Raad.
“In Jordan,” I responded. He was obviously shocked. I shouldn’t have been informed about my destination, but the Mauritanian interrogator must have been so angry that he didn’t exactly follow the orders of the Americans. The initial plan was to send me from Mauritania to Jordan blindfolded and not inform me about my destination, in order to plant as much fear and terror in my heart as possible to break me. But as soon as I answered the question, Abu Raad knew that this part of the plan was broken, and so he took off my blindfold right away and led me inside the interrogation room.
It was a small room, about 10 x 8 feet, with an old table and three weathered chairs. Abu Raad was in his late thirties or early forties, Palestinian, with a belly that had already started to give in to gravity. His assistant, Officer Rami, was a younger, taller, and probably smarter version of Abu Raad. He was obviously the type who is ready to do the dirty side of any job. He also looked Palestinian. I scanned both back and forth and wondered about these guys. The whole problem of terrorism was caused by the aggression of Israel against Palestinian civilians, and the fact that the U.S. is backing the Israeli government in its mischiefs. When the Israelis took over Palestine under the fire of the British Artillery, the invasion resulted in a mass migration of the locals. Many of them ended up in neighboring countries, and Jordan received the lion’s share; more than 50 percent of Jordanians are of Palestinian origin. To me, these interrogators just didn’t fit in the vests they were wearing: it didn’t make sense that Palestinians would work for Americans to defeat the people who are supposedly helping them. I knew that these two interrogators standing before me didn’t represent any moral values, and didn’t care about human beings’ lives. I found myself between two supposedly fighting parties, both of which considered me an enemy; the historical enemies were allied to roast me. It was really absurd and funny at the same time.
Abu Raad and his cohorts played a vital role in the Americans’ War against Terrorism. He was charged with interrogating the kidnapped individuals the U.S. delivered to Jordan and assigning them to the different members of his team. He also personally came to GTMO to interrogate individuals on behalf of the U.S.
Abu Raad opened a medium-sized binder; it turned out to be a file on me that the U.S. had turned over to the Jordanians. He started to ask me questions that were not related to each other. It was the first time I ever experienced this technique, the goal of which is to quickly bring the liar into contradiction. But Abu Raad obviously was not briefed enough about my case and the history of my interrogation: it wouldn’t have mattered whether I was lying or telling the truth, because I had been questioned so many times about the exact same things by different agencies from different countries. Should I have lied, I would have been able to lie again and again and again, because I had had enough time to straighten my lies. But I hadn’t lied to him—nor did he doubt my truthfulness.
First he showed me the picture of the Turkish detainee he had been interrogating earlier, and said “If you tell me about this guy, I am going to close your case and send you home.” Of course he was lying.
I looked at the photo and honestly answered, “No, I don’t know him.” I am sure the guy was asked the same question about me, and he must have answered the same because there was no way that he knew me.
Officer Rami was sitting on Abu Raad’s left and recording my answers. “Do you drink tea?” Abu Raad asked me.
“Yes, I like tea.” Abu Raad ordered the tea guy to bring me a cup, and I got a big, hot cup of tea. When the caffeine started to mix with my blood I got hyper and felt so comforted. Those interrogators know what they are doing.
“Do you know Ahmed Ressam?” asked Abu Raad. I had been asked about Ahmed Ressam a thousand and one times, and I tried everything I could to convince interrogators that I don’t know that guy: if you don’t know somebody, you just don’t know him, and there is no changing it. Even if they torture you, they will not get any usable information. But for some reason the Americans didn’t believe that I didn’t know him, and they wanted the Jordanians to make me admit it.
“No, I don’t know him,” I answered.
“I swear to Allah you know him,” he shouted.
“Don’t swear,” I said, although I knew that taking the Lord’s name in vain is like sipping coffee for him. Abu Raad kept swearing. “Do you think I am lying to you?”
“No, I think you forgot.” That was too nicely put, but the fact that the Americans didn’t provide the Jordanians with any substantial evidence tied the hands of the Jordanians mightily. Yes, Jordanians practice torture on a daily basis, but they need a reasonable suspicion to do so. They don’t just jump on anybody and start to torture him. “I am going to give you pen and paper, and I want you to write me your resumé and the names of all of your friends,” he said, closing the session and asking the guard to take me back to my cell.
The worst was over; at least I thought so. The escorting guards were almost friendly when they handcuffed and blindfolded me. There is one common thing among prison guards, whether they are American, Mauritanian, or Jordanian: they all reflect the attitude of the interrogators. If the interrogators are happy the guards are happy, and if not, then not.
The escorting guards felt some freedom to talk to me. “Where are you from?”
“Mauritania.”
“What are you doing in Jordan?”
“My country turned me over.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No, I’m serious.”
“Your country is fucked up.” In the Jordanian Prison, as in Mauritania and GTMO, it was extremely forbidden for the guards to interact with detainees. But hardly anybody followed the rules.
“You are starving, man, why don’t you eat?” one of the escorting guards asked me. He was right. The shape of my bones was clear, and anybody could tell how serious my situation was.
“I am only going to eat if I get back home. I’m not interested in prison food. I’m interested in my mom’s food,” I answered.
“God willing, you’re going to get out, but for the time being you got to eat.” I don’t want to make him look good, his type of job already defines his personality, but he felt that his country was not just. I needed any comforting word, and so far he had done a good job with me. Other guards joined us in the corridor and asked him where I’m from.
They opened the door to my stark, dark cell. I felt as though a big burden was taken off my back. “It’s only a matter of days, and then they’ll send me back home. The DSE was right,” I thought. The Jordanians were as confused about the case the U.S. had given them as I was. The U.S. government obviously hadn’t given any substantial material to help the Jordanians to do their dirty job. The painful fear started to diminish, and I started to feel like eating.
Sneaky I’m-Watching-You appeared at the bin hole of my cell and gave me thirty numbered pieces of paper. The coordination between the interrogators and guards was perfect. I immediately wrote both assignments. I was tasked by Abu Raad with writing the names of all my friends, but that was ridiculous: I had so many acquaintances that it would be impossible to include them in less than a big book. So I completed a list of my closest friends and a traditional resumé, using about ten pages. For the first time I had some relatively good sleep that night.
Some time in the next couple of days I’m-Watching-You picked up the written materials and the empty papers as well. He counted the papers thoroughly.
“Is that all you have to write?”
“Yes, Sir!” I’m-Watching-You had been working day and night, and all he was doing was checking on detainees through the bin holes. Most of the time I didn’t notice him. Once he caught me having a good time with a guard and he took me and interrogated me about what we were talking about. As to the guard, he disappeared and I never saw him again.
“Put your stuff together,” a guard said, waking me in the morning. I grabbed my blanket, my Koran, and the one library book I had. I was so happy because I thought I was being sent home.
The guard made me hold my stuff and blindfolded me. They didn’t send me home; instead I found myself locked in the cellar, in a communal cell close to the prison kitchen. The cell there was not clean. It seemed to have been abandoned for a long time. I still wanted to believe in good intentions, and I thought this was the transfer cell for detainees before their release. I was so tired and the cell was so cold that I went to sleep.
Around 4:30 p.m. Iftar was served, and I slowly came to life. I noticed an old paper on the door with the rules of the prison. The guards had clumsily forgotten to tear it off. I wasn’t supposed to read the rules, but since nobody is perfect, I had the chance to discover something. The rules stated, among other things, (1) You are only allowed to smoke if you are cooperating; (2) Talking to the guards is forbidden; (3) the ICRC visits the prison every 14 days; (4) Do not talk to the ICRC about your political case.* I was happy, because I would at least be able to send letters to my family, but I missed a vital point: I had been taken temporarily to the cellar to hide me from the ICRC in a Cat-and-Mouse game that lasted eight months, my entire stay in Jordan.
Every fourteen days, the guards would consistently move me from my cell to the cellar, where I would spend a couple of days before they brought me back to my cell. When I discovered the trick, I explicitly asked my interrogator Rami and his boss Abu Raad to see the ICRC.
“There is no ICRC here. This is a Military prison,” he lied.
“I have seen the clauses of the Rules, and you’re hiding me in the cellar every 14 days to prevent me from meeting the Red Cross.”
Officer Rami looked at me firmly. “I am protecting you! And you are not going to see the ICRC.” I knew then that there was no changing their minds, and Rami himself couldn’t even decide the issue. It was way above him. The conspiracy between Mauritania, the U.S., and Jordan to commit the crime was perfect. If my involvement in terrorism were cemented, I would be executed and the party would be over, and who was to know what had happened?
“I’d like to see the Mauritanian Ambassador,” I asked the interrogator.
“Impossible.”
“OK, what about Mauritanian Intel?” I asked.
“What do you want with them?”
“I would like to ask them about the reason for my incarceration in Jordan. At least you know that I have done nothing against your country.”
“Look, your country is a good friend of ours, and they turned you over to us. We can do anything we like with you, kill you, arrest you indefinitely, or release you if you admit to your crime.” Officer Rami both lied and told the truth. Arab countries are not friends. On the contrary, they hate each other. They never cooperate; all they do is conspire against each other. To Mauritania, Jordan is worthless, and vice-versa. However, in my case the U.S. compelled them both to work together.
I tried so many times to contact my family but to no avail, and then I washed my hands of the evils and I prayed to God to take care of my family and make them know where I was. In time, I noticed that I was not the only hidden package: between one and three other detainees were subject to the cellar operation at any one time, and the numbers kept changing as time went by. My whole time in Jordan, I was always in isolation, of course. But I could tell whether there were detainees in the neighboring cells, based on the movements of the food chariot, the guards, and the movement of detainees.
For a while my neighbors were two courageous boys. Although talking was forbidden, those two boys were always shouting, “God’s help is coming soon. Remember, God is on our side, and Satan is on theirs!” No matter what the guards did to them, they kept solacing the other detainees and reminding them of God’s inevitable relief. You could tell from the accent that they were Jordanians, which made sense, since the locals are more likely to be protected by their families than foreigners. Nonetheless, I have no doubt those boys suffered for what they did.
In that cold, dark section of the Intelligence prison, I was the only constant in my neighborhood; the cells next to me kept changing owners. At one point, my next-door neighbor happened to be a young Lebanese nitwit who kept crying and refusing to eat. His story, according to the guards, went like this: He came to Jordan from Lebanon to have some fun. When he bumped into a routine police patrol in downtown Amman, they found an AKM-47 in his trunk and arrested him. Now, having a gun on you in Lebanon is not a big deal, but in Jordan it is forbidden to carry weapons. Taken to jail, the young Lebanese suspect was losing his mind. He kept crying and refusing his food for at least two weeks until his release. Oh, what a relief for me, when they released him! I felt so bad for him. I am sure he learned his lesson, and will think twice about having a weapon in his trunk the next time he comes to Jordan.
Next came a young Jordanian. He had been sentenced to one year, and at the end of the year he went crazy. He kept shouting, “I need to see my interrogator!” When I asked the guards why he was doing this, they answered, “Because his sentence is over, but they won’t let him go.” Sometimes he would start to sing loudly, and sometimes he shouted at the guards, asking for a cigarette. I don’t blame him: unless you have nerves of steel, chances are you’ll lose your mind in Jordanian custody.
And after him, my neighbor was an older Palestinian who kept coughing the whole time. “He is very old,” a guard told me.
“Why did they arrest him?” I wondered.
“Wrong place, wrong time,” the guard answered. The older man was always asking for more food and smokes. After a couple of weeks, he was released. I was happy for everybody released from that crazy facility.
It is just amazing that the FBI trusts the Jordanians more than the other American intelligence agencies. When I turned myself in in the fall of 2001, the FBI confiscated my hard disk, and when they sent me to Jordan, they sent the contents of my hard disk to Jordan, too. The DoD has been trying for years to get that disk. It doesn’t make sense that the FBI would cooperate more with foreign organizations than the domestic ones, but I do believe that the Intel industry is like any other industry: you buy the best product for the best price, regardless of the country of origin. Do the Jordanians offer the best product in this case? I’m not sure, but they understand the recipe of terrorism more than Americans. Reportedly without the Jordanians in the field, the Americans would never have achieved what they have. However, the Americans over-estimate the capability of the Jordanians by sending them people from all over the world, as if the Jordanians were some super Intel Agency.
“I am going to show you some pictures, you tell me about them,” said my interrogator Rami. Lately, he and Abu Talal had been taking turns interrogating me, with Abu Raad the leader. In Jordan, they have a technique in which two interrogators or more interrogate you separately about the same thing, in order to make sure that you don’t change your statements. They rarely sat together and interrogated me.
“Alright!” I said. Officer Rami started showing me pictures, and as soon as I saw the first one I knew it was from my computer, or more accurately the computer of the company I had been working for. My heart started to pound, and I felt my saliva getting extremely bitter. My face started to turn as red as an apple. My tongue got heavy and twisted. Not because I had done any crimes with my computer; there was really nothing on the hard drive but my business emails and other related data. I remember having over 1500 email messages, and a whole bunch of pictures. But there is more to it when somebody’s freedom is violated.
The PC belonged to a company that trusted me, and the fact that a foreign country such as the U.S. was searching the disk and confiscating material was a big burden for the company. The PC held the financial secrets of a company, which the company wouldn’t be willing to share with the rest of the world. Moreover, I worked for a family company and the family hardly drew a line between their company and their private lives, which meant that the computer also contained private familial data the family wouldn’t share with the world. On top of that, in the office the PC was a shared station, and anybody in the company could and did use it, so there are a lot of data I didn’t know of, though I was 100% sure there was no crime behind it, knowing my colleagues and their dedication to their work and life. I personally had emails with my friends in Germany, some of them aren’t even Muslims. But I was more worried about my emails with the Muslim friends, especially any of the ones who had ever financially or spiritually helped the oppressed people in Bosnia or Afghanistan, because their messages would be interpreted evilly. Just put yourself in my shoes and imagine somebody storming your house and trying to mess with your whole private life! Would you welcome such an assault?
I started to answer him to the best of my knowledge, especially about my own pictures. He put the pictures I could identify on one side, and the rest on another side. I explained to him that the PC had been used by several colleagues, one of whom scanned all kinds of different pictures for the clients of the Internet café, including all kinds of private family pictures. I was so mad at myself, my government, the U.S., and the Jordanians because I saw how many people’s private lives were being violated. I was also confronted in a later session with a couple emails I interchanged with Christian Ganczarski and Karim Mehdi. The funny thing was that Mehdi sent an email before I got arrested, and the Mauritanian government interrogated me about it and I explained to them with definite evidence that there was no evil in it. As soon as I got back to my office I wrote Mehdi the following email: “Dear Brother! Please stop sending emails, because the Intel are intercepting our emails and giving me a hard time.” I openly didn’t want any trouble, and so wanted to close any door that would lead in that direction.
“Why did you write Mehdi this email?” asked Officer Rami.
I explained the message to him.
“No, it’s because you are afraid that the government would learn about your mischiefs with your friend,” he commented sillily.
“Well, this message was addressed to both Mehdi and the government. I know my emails are intercepted by the government, and I always assumed that the government got a copy of my email traffic,” I said.
“You were using a code when you wrote Mehdi to stop emailing you,” he said.
“Well, I am sure you have dealt with coded messages in your career, or you have specialists who help you. Go to them first, before you make up your mind.”
“No, I want you to explain the code to me.”
“There is no code, what you understand is what I meant.” But I had another issue with the Jordanian interrogators: my original emails were in German, and the Americans translated them into English and sent them to the Jordanians, who in their turn translated the English versions into Arabic. Under these circumstances, the original text suffered and the space for evil interpretations widened with every translation.
And there was no end to evil interpretations. In the summer 2001 I was tasked by my company to technologically assist the visit of the Mauritanian President to the city of Tidjikja. The family that employed me is from Tidjikja, so it made sense that their interest lay in the well-being of the city. We installed a small media consulting center that operated over the Internet to transmit the visit of the President in real time. The company took many pictures where my colleagues and I appeared close to the president. In the closest one, the President stood behind my neck wondering at me “magically playing with the computer.”
“I can tell, you were plotting to kill the President,” said Officer Rami.
I couldn’t help laughing. “So why didn’t I kill him?”
“I don’t know. You tell me,” Rami said.
“Look! If I tried to kill my president in my country, it’s none of your business, nor that of the Americans. Just turn me over to my country and let them deal with me.” I was both angry and hopeful, angry because the U.S. wanted to pin any crime on me, no matter what, and hopeful because they were going to turn me over to my country to suffer the death penalty. The Americans couldn’t possibly have dreamt of a better option. But the Jordanians were fishing on behalf of the Americans, and whenever you notice your interrogator fishing, you can be sure that he is bankrupt.
Though he was as evil as he could be, Officer Rami was sort of a reasonable interrogator, and so he never asked me again about the plot on my President, nor about the pictures in my hard disk. And yet I regretted that I didn’t act on the suspicion and make myself look guilty in order to get myself extradited back to Mauritania. It was a crazy and desperate idea, and I don’t think that the Mauritanians would have played along because they knew for fact I hadn’t plotted against the president. But when my situation worsened in the Jordanian prison, I thought about confessing that I had an operation going on in Mauritania, and had hidden explosives. The idea was that I would try to be sent back to Mauritania.
“Don’t do that! Just be patient and remember that Allah is watching,” one of my guards told me when I asked him for advice. By then I had made a lot of friends among the guards; they brought me the news and taught me about Jordanian culture, the torture methods in the prison, and who’s who among the interrogators.
It was categorically forbidden for the guards to interact with the detainees, but they always broke these rules. They recounted the latest jokes to me and offered me cigarettes, which I turned down because I don’t smoke. They told me about the other detainees and their cases and also about their own private lives, marriage, children, and the social life in Jordan. I learned almost everything about life in Amman from speaking with them. They also brought me the best books from the library—even the Bible, which I requested because I wanted to study the book that must more or less have shaped the lives of the Americans. In Jordan they have a pretty respectable collection, though some of it is meant as propaganda for the King. The best part about the books was that detainees used them to pass messages back and forth, solacing each other by writing good things inside the book. I didn’t know any detainees, but the first thing I always did was to sift through a book looking for messages. I memorized all of them.
The guards were picked mostly from the Bedouin tribes that are known for their historical loyalty to the King, and paid miserable wages, about $430 a month, give or take. Although this wage is among the best in Jordan, a guard can’t start a family without another support of his own. But when a guard serves for fifteen years, he has the option of retiring with half of his current wage or continuing with that money plus his usual wage. The guards are part of Jordan’s Elite Special Forces, and enjoy all kinds of training overseas. There are no females in the Special Forces.
The guards were responsible for moving detainees from one cell to another, to interrogations, to the shower, or to see their parents during the visits that took place on Fridays. I was so frustrated when I had to watch everybody seeing his family, while week after week I was deprived of that right. Lower ranking guards were responsible for the watch, and one was assigned for the grocery that took place every Saturday. The responsible grocery guard would go cell to cell with a list, writing down what each detainee wished to buy. You could buy juice, milk, candy, underwear, a towel, and that was about it; if you had enough money you would get what you ordered, and if not then not. I had about $87 on me when I was sent to Jordan, which seemed to have been enough for my modest groceries. One time, when the grocery guard was going around with his list, I spotted my name and my accusation: “Participation in Terrorist attacks.”
Every other day the guards offered you a five-minute recreation time. I hardly ever took advantage of it; the fact that I had to be shackled and blindfolded was just not worth it. Every once in a while detainees got their hair cut, and every Sunday the guards gave us cleaning materials to mop our cells, and they mopped the floor outside. The jail was not dirty.
The prison was run by three individuals: the director of the prison, or the warden, who was a Bedouin, and his two assistants who used to make the rounds. They played a role similar to the one the Joint Task Force played in GTMO Bay. They are supposedly independent from the Intel community, but in practice both work together and collect Intels, each with its own methods. The director was a very big guy who dressed proudly in his Bedouin-civilian suits. He passed by every morning and asked every single detainee, “How are you doing? Need anything?” He always woke me up asking me the same question.
During my entire eight months in the Jordanian prison I asked him once for a water bottle, which he brought me. I wanted to put the ice-cold water I got from the faucet on the heater in order to warm it up so I could take care of my own hygiene. I do think that it was good thing for him to check on detainees. However, the chances were really zero that detainees were going to fix any problems with the help of a director who also was actively taking part in torture. The Director made sure that everybody got three meals a day, breakfast around 7 a.m., lunch around 1 p.m., mostly chicken and rice, and dinner, a light meal with tea.
The two assisting officers were continually patrolling through the corridor and checking on everybody, including whether the guards were following the rules. One of the officers was responsible for what they call External Operations, such as capture and house searches.
Then there were the interrogators. Jordanian interrogators have been working side-by-side with the Americans since the beginning of the operation baptized the “Global War Against Terrorism,” interrogating people both inside and outside Jordan. They have agents in Afghanistan, where they profit from their average Middle Eastern looks. In the beginning the Jordanians were seen as a potential associate for doing the dirty work; the fact that Jordanians widely use torture as a means to facilitate interrogation seemed to impress the American authorities. But there was a problem: the Jordanians don’t take anybody and torture him; they must have reason to practice heavy physical torture. As Americans grew hardened in their sins, they started to take the dirty job in their own hands. Nonetheless, being arrested in a Jordanian jail is an irreparable torture already.
I had three interrogators in Jordan: Abu Talal, who interrogated me only a few times; Officer Rami, who did most of the heavy lifting in my case until he told me that as far as he was concerned my case was closed; and Abu Raad, their boss. Besides leading the interrogators’ team in Jordan, Abu Raad was also interrogating detainees in GTMO, and most likely in other secret places in Afghanistan and elsewhere, on behalf of the U.S. government. He seems to be widely known in Jordan, as I learned from a Jordanian detainee in GTMO. Abu Raad seemed to be pretty well experienced: he saw my file once and decided it wasn’t worth wasting his “precious” time on me, and so he never bothered to see me again. Together, the three had much more knowledge about Jihadi movements than their American counterparts.
“You know, Ould Salahi, your only problem is your time in Canada. If you really haven’t done nothing in Canada, you don’t belong in jail,” concluded Officer Rami after several sessions.
He was a specialist on Afghanistan; he himself had attended the training camps there as an undercover agent during the war against communism. When I was training in Al Farouq in ’91, he was working undercover as a student in Khalden.* He questioned me thoroughly about my whole trip to Afghanistan and showed satisfaction with my answers. That was very much his whole job. In the winter of 2001 he was sent, maybe undercover, to Afghanistan and Turkey to help the U.S. capture Mujahideen, and I saw him when he came back in the summer of 2002 with a whole bunch of pictures. Part of his mission was to gather Intels about me from other detainees in Afghanistan, but he didn’t seem to have come up with anything. Officer Rami showed me the pictures. I didn’t recognize anybody, and felt bad for myself. Why did they show me more than 100 pictures, and I knew none of them? It didn’t make sense. Usually, interrogators ask about people that are connected to you. So I decided to recognize at least one picture.
“This is Gamal Abdel Nasser,” I said.
“You are making fun of me, aren’t you?” said Officer Rami angrily.
“No, no, I just thought it looks like him.” Nasser is a former Egyptian president who died before I was born.
“These people are from the same gang as you are,” Rami said.
“Maybe. But I don’t know them,” I said. He didn’t say much after that; Officer Rami just spoke about his adventure in Afghanistan. “You’re courageous,” I remarked, to give him fuel for more talk.
“You know, the Americans are using smart weapons that follow their target based on temperature changes. Many brothers have been captured,” Officer Rami recounted under the thick cloud of his cigarette smoke.
Officer Rami was aggressive but not violent, except on a few occasions. One happened right near the end of my time in Jordan.*
Boom! He slapped me across the face, and pushed my face against the wall. I was sobbing, maybe more because of frustration than pain.
“You are not a man! I am going to make you lick the dirty floor and tell me your story, beginning from the point when you got out of your mother’s vagina,” he continued. “You haven’t seen nothing yet.” He was correct, although he was the biggest liar I ever met. He lied so much that he contradicted himself because he would forget what he had said the last time about a specific topic. In order to give himself credibility, he kept swearing and taking the Lord’s name in vain. I always wondered whether he thought I believed his garbage, though I always acted as if I did; he would have been angry if I called him a liar. He arrested big al Qaeda guys who talked about me being the bad guy, and he released them a thousand and one times from the prison when they told the truth. The funny thing was that he always forgot that he arrested and released them already.
“I arrested your cousin Abu Hafs and he told me the whole truth. As a matter of fact, he said ‘Don’t you put your hands on me, and I’m gonna tell you the truth,’ and I didn’t, and he did. He told me bad things about you. After that I bid him farewell and secretly sent him to Mauritania, where he was going to be interrogated for a couple of weeks and released. But you’re different. You keep holding back Intels. I am going to send you to the secret political prison in the middle of the desert. Nobody is gonna give a shit about you.” I had to keep listening to this same garbage over and over; the only thing he changed was the dates of arrest and release. In his dreams, he also arrested Abu Zubaydah and other individuals who had supposedly been providing information about me. Good for him; as long as he didn’t beat me or attack me verbally I was cool, and would just listen carefully to his Thousand-and-One-Arabian-Nights tales.
“I’ve just arrived from the U.S., where I interrogated Ahmed Ressam,” he obviously lied.
“Well, that’s good, because he must have told you that he doesn’t know me.”
“No, he said he does.”
“Well, that’s none of your business, right? According to you, I’ve done crimes against the U.S., so just send me to the U.S. or tell me what have I done against your country,” I remarked sharply. I was growing tired of the futile conversation with him, and of trying to convince him that I had nothing to do with Millennium Plot.
“I am not working for the Americans. Some of your friends are trying to hurt my country, and I’m asking you indirect questions as an interrogation technique,” Officer Rami lied.
“Which friends of mine are trying to hurt your country?” I wondered.
“I cannot tell you!”
“Since I haven’t tried to hurt your country, there’s no blaming me. I am not my friends. Go and arrest them and release me.” But if you are trying to make sense of things, the interrogation room is not for you. Whenever Officer Rami told me he had arrested somebody, I knew that the guy was still free.
Although he used physical violence against me only twice, he kept terrorizing me with other methods that were maybe worse than physical pain. He put a poor detainee next to my interrogation room, and his colleague started to beat him with a hard object until he burst out crying like a baby. How cheap! That was painful. I started to shake, my face got red, my saliva got as bitter as green persimmon, my tongue as heavy as metal. Those are the symptoms I always suffer when I get extremely scared, and the constant fear didn’t seem to harden me. My depression reached its peak.
“Do you hear what’s happening next door?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to suffer the same?” I almost said yes. It was so hard for me to helplessly listen to somebody suffering. It’s not easy to make a grown-up cry like a baby.
“Why? I am talking to you!” I said, showing a fake composure. After all, the brother next door was also talking to his interrogator. Officer Rami sardonically smiled and continued to smoke his cigarette as if nothing were happening. That night I was very cooperative and quiet; the logical and argumentative human being in me disappeared all of a sudden. Rami knew what he was doing, and he had apparently been doing it for a long time.
He would make me pass through the torture row so I would hear the cries and moans and the shouting of the torturers. I was blessed because the guards kept me blindfolded so I couldn’t see the detainees. I was not supposed to see them, nor was I interested in seeing a brother, or actually anybody, suffering. The Prophet Mohamed (Peace be upon him) said, “God tortures whoever tortures human beings,” and as far as I understand it, the person’s religion doesn’t matter.
“I am going to send you to the Shark Pool,” Officer Rami threatened me, when I refused to talk to him after he hit me.
“You don’t know me. I swear by Almighty God I’ll never talk to you. Go ahead and torture me. It will take my death to make me talk, and for your information I’m sorry for every bit of cooperation I have offered in the past,” I said.
“First of all, your cooperation was achieved by force. You didn’t have a choice. Nor will you in the future: I am going to make you talk,” he said.
Officer Rami started to push me against the wall and hit me on the sides of my face, but I didn’t feel any pain. I don’t think he hit me with his whole strength; the guy looks like a bull, and one real blow from him would have cost me thirty-two teeth. As he was hitting me, he started to ask me questions. I don’t remember the questions, but I do remember my answers. There was only one answer.
“Ana Bari’a, I am innocent.” I drove him crazy, but there was no making me talk.
“I have no time right now, but you’re gonna suffer heavily tomorrow, son of a……” he said, and immediately left the room.
The escort took me back to my cell. It was around midnight; I sat on my prayer mat and started reading the Koran and praying until very late. I could hardly concentrate on what I was reading. I kept thinking, What will it be like in the Shark Pool? I had heard of an electrified pool, I knew they used one in Egypt, but “Shark Pool” sounded terrible.
But the rendezvous came and went without me being taken to the torture place, one day, two days, three days! Nothing happened to me, except for no food, not because they didn’t give it to me but because I had no appetite, as always when I get depressed. I learned later from the Jordanian detainee in GTMO who spent fifty days in the same prison that there is no such thing as the Shark Pool, but that they do have other painful methods of torture, like hanging detainees from their hands and feet and beating them for hours, and depriving them from sleep for days until they lose their minds.
“In Jordan they don’t torture unless they have evidence,” Ibrahim said. “If they knew what I do about you, they wouldn’t even have bothered arresting you. The Americans told them to,” he continued.
“The torture starts around midnight and finishes around dawn. Everybody takes part, the prison director, the interrogators, and the guards,” Ibrahim told me in GTMO. His information was consistent with what I saw. I personally heard beatings, but I don’t know whether the detainees were hung up or not when the beating happened. And I witnessed sleep deprivation more than once.
Late one night when I was talking to some of my guard friends, I kept hearing sounds as if some people were performing harsh training with loud voices to get the whole energy out of their body, like in Kung-Fu. I heard heavy bodies hitting the floor. It was just too noisy, and too close to my third-floor cell.
“Are you guys training so late?” I asked one of the guards. Before he could say a word, another guy appeared dressed in Ninja-like suit that covered him from head to toe. The guard looked at him and turned to me, smiling.
“Do you know this guy?” he asked. I forced an official smile.
“No.” The new guy took his mask off, and he looked like the devil himself. Out of fear, my smile turned to laughter. “Oh, yes! We know each other,” I said.
“Mohamed asks if you guys are training now?” my guard wryly asked the Ninja, mispronouncing my name.
“Yes! Do you want to train with us? We have many detainees enjoying PT,” he said sardonically. I knew right away that he meant torture. My laughter faded into a smile, and my smile into fixed lips over my teeth. I didn’t want to reveal my disappointment, fear, and confusion.
“No, I’m just fine,” I said. The devil resumed his business, and I asked the guard, “Why do they put on the masks for this type of job?”
“They want to protect their identities. In Jordan, you can get killed for doing such things.” He was right: most of the detainees were arrested because they know something, not because of crimes, and so they will be released sooner or later. I wished I hadn’t known about that mischief; it was just impossible for me to sleep when was I listening to grown-ups crying like babies. I tried to put every object in my ears and around my head but nothing helped. As long as the torture lasted, I couldn’t sleep. The good thing was that the torture wasn’t every day, and the voices didn’t always reach my cell.
In February 2002, the director of Jordan’s Antiterrorism Department was the subject of an assassination plot.* He almost gave his soul back. Somebody planted a time bomb in the chassis of the car of the biggest target of the Islamic movement in Jordan. The bomb was supposed to explode on the way between his home and his office—and it did. But what happened seemed like a miracle. On his way to work, the director felt like buying cigarettes. His driver stopped in front of a store and left to grab a pack of cigarettes. The director felt like going with his chauffeur. As soon as both left the car, the bomb exploded. Nobody was harmed, but the vehicle was history.
The investigation led to a suspect, but the secret police couldn’t find him. But the King of the Fight against Terrorism cannot be messed with; suspects must be arrested and the guilty party must be found. Immediately. The Jordanian secret Agency had to have revenge for the big head. The peaceful brother of the suspect was to be taken as a pawn and tortured until his brother turned himself in. Special Forces were sent out, arrested the innocent boy in a crowded place, and beat him beyond belief. They wanted to show people the destiny of a family when one of its members tries to attack the government. The boy was taken to the prison and tortured every day by his interrogator.
“I don’t care how long it takes, I am going to keep torturing you until your brother turns himself in,” his interrogator said. The family of the boy was given opportunity to visit the boy, not for humane reasons, but because the interrogator wanted the family to see the miserable situation of the boy so they would turn in the suspected son. The family was devastated, and soon the information leaked that the suspect was hiding in his family’s house. Late that night, an operation stormed the house and arrested him. The next day his brother was released.
“What will you say if somebody asks you about the bruises and injuries I caused you?” the interrogator asked him.
“I’ll say nothing!” answered the boy.
“Look, we usually keep people until they heal, but I’m releasing you. You go ahead and file anything you like against me. I did what I got to do to capture a terrorist, and you’re free to go.” As to his brother, he was taken care of by the director himself: he kept beating him for six straight hours. And that is not to mention what the other interrogators did to satisfy their chief. I learned all this from the guards when I noticed that the prison had become remarkably crowded. Not that I could see anybody, but the food supply shrunk decidedly; they kept moving detainees to and from their cells; whenever detainees were led past my cell the guards closed my bin hole; and I saw the different shifts of guards more frequently than usual. The situation started to improve in the summer 2002.
By then, the Jordanians were basically done with me. When Officer Rami finished my hearing, he handed me my statements. “Read the statements and sign them,” he said.
“I don’t need to read them, I trust you!” I lied. Why should I read something when I didn’t have the option to sign or to refuse? No judge would take into consideration somebody’s statements that were coerced in a prison facility such as the Jordanian Military prison.
After about a week Officer Rami took me to interrogation in a nice room. “Your case is closed. You haven’t lied. And I thank you for your cooperation. When it comes to me, I am done with you, but it’s the decision of my boss when you’ll go home. I hope soon.”
I was happy with the news; I had expected it, but not that soon.
“Would you like to work for us?” he asked me.
“I’d like to, but I really am not qualified for this type of work,” I said, partly lying and partly telling the truth. He tried in a friendly way to convince me, but I, with the most friendliness I could manage, told him that I was way too much of an idiot for Intel work.
But when the Jordanians shared the result of their investigation with the U.S. and sent them the file, the U.S. took the file and slapped the Jordanians in their faces. I felt the anger of Uncle Sam thousands of miles away, when Officer Rami came back into his old skin during the last two months of my incarceration in Jordan. The interrogations resumed. I tried all I could to express myself. Sometimes I talked, sometimes I refused. I hunger-struck for days, but Officer Rami made me eat under threat of torture. I wanted to compel the Jordanians to send me back home, but I failed. Maybe I wasn’t hardcore enough.