First “Mail” and First “Evidence”… The Night of Terror… The DoD Takes Over… 24 Hour Shift Interrogations… Abduction inside the Abduction… The Arabo-American Party
The rules have changed. What was no crime is now considered a crime.”
“But I’ve done no crimes, and no matter how harsh you guys’ laws are, I have done nothing.”
“But what if I show you the evidence?”
“You won’t. But if you do, I’ll cooperate with you.”
Agent Robert showed me the worst people in GTMO. There were fifteen, and I was number 1; number 2 was Mohammed al Qahtani.*
“You gotta be kidding me,” I said.
“No, I’m not. Don’t you understand the seriousness of your case?”
“So, you kidnapped me from my house, in my country, and sent me to Jordan for torture, and then took me from Jordan to Bagram, and I’m still worse than the people you captured with guns in their hands?”
“Yes, you are. You’re very smart! To me, you meet all the criteria of a top terrorist. When I check the terrorist check list, you pass with a very high score.”
I was so scared, but I always tried to suppress my fear. “And what is your FBI check list?”
“You’re Arab, you’re young, you went to Jihad, you speak foreign languages, you’ve been in many countries, you’re a graduate in a technical discipline.”
“And what crime is that?” I said.
“Look at the hijackers: they were the same way.”
“I am not here to defend anybody but myself. Don’t even mention anybody else to me. I asked you about my crime, and not about x’s or y’s crimes. I don’t give a damn!”
“But you are part of the big conspiracy against the U.S.”
“You always say that. Tell me my part in this ‘big conspiracy!’”
“I am going to tell you, just sabr, be patient.”
My sessions continued with arguments of this nature. Then one day when I entered the interrogation room in Brown Building, I saw video equipment already hooked up. To be honest, I was terrified that they were going to show me a video with me committing terrorist attacks. Not that I have done anything like that in my life. But my fellow detainee Mustafa from Bosnia told me that his interrogators forged an American passport bearing his picture. “Look: We now have definitive evidence that you forged this passport and you were using it for terrorist purposes,” they told him. Mustafa laughed wholeheartedly at the silliness of his interrogators. “You missed that I’m a computer specialist, and I know that the U.S. government would have no problem forging a passport for me,” he said. The interrogators quickly took the passport back and never talked about it again.
Scenarios like that made me very paranoid about the government making up something about me. Coming from a third-world country, I know how the police wrongly pin crimes on political rivals of the government in order to neutralize them. Smuggling weapons into somebody’s house is common, in order to make the court believe the victim is preparing for violence.
“Are you ready?” said Robert.
“Y-e-e-s!” I said, trying to keep myself together, though my blushing face said everything about me. Robert hit the play button and we started to watch the movie. I was ready to jump when I saw myself blowing up some U.S. facility in Timbuktu. But the tape was something completely different. It was a tape of Osama bin Laden speaking to an associate I didn’t recognize about the attack of September 11. They were speaking in Arabic. I enjoyed the comfort of understanding the talk, while the interrogators had to put up with the subtitles.
After a short conversation between UBL and the other guy, a TV commentator spoke about how controversial the tape was. The quality was bad; the tape was supposedly seized by U.S. forces in a safehouse in Jalalabad.
But that was not the point. “What do I have to do with this bullshit?” I asked angrily.
“You see Osama bin Laden is behind September 11,” Robert said.
“You realize I am not Osama bin Laden, don’t you? This is between you and Osama bin Laden; I don’t care, I’m outside of this business.”
“Do you think what he did was right?”
“I don’t give a damn. Get Osama bin Laden and punish him.”
“How do you feel about what happened?”
“I feel that I’m not a part of it. Anything else doesn’t matter in this case!” When I came back to Lima Block I was telling my friends about the masquerade of the “definitive evidence” against me. But nobody was surprised, since most of the detainees had been through such jokes.
During my conversations with Robert and his associate, I brought up an issue that I believe to be basic.
“Why are you guys banning my incoming mails?”
“I checked, but you have none!”
“You’re trying to say that my family is refusing to respond to me?”
The brothers in the block felt bad for me. I was dreaming almost every night that I had received mail from my family. I always passed on my dreams to my next door neighbors, and the dream interpreters always gave me hope, but no mails came. “I dreamt that you got a letter from your family,” was a common phrase I used to hear. It was so hard for me to see other detainees having pictures of their families, and having nothing—zip—myself. Not that I wished they never got letters: on the contrary, I was happy for them, I read their correspondence as if it were from my own mom. It was customary to pass newly received mails throughout the block and let everybody read them, even the most intimate ones from lovers to the beloved.
Robert was dying to get me cooperating with him, and he knew that I had brought my issue to the detainees. So he was working with the mail people to get me something. A recipe was prepared and cooked, and around 5 p.m. the postman showed up at my cell and handed me a letter, supposedly from my brother. Even before I read the letter, I shouted to the rest of the block, “I received a letter from my family. See, my dreams have come true, didn’t I tell you?” From everywhere my fellow detainees shouted back, “Congratulations, pass me the letter when you’re done!”
I hungrily started to read, but I soon got a shock: the letter was a cheap forgery. It was not from my family, it was the production of the Intel community.
“Dear brothers, I received no letter, I am sorry!”
“Bastards, they have done this with other detainees,” said a neighbor. But the forgery was so clumsy and unprofessional that no fool would fall for it. First, I have no brother with that name. Second, my name was misspelled. Third, my family doesn’t live where the correspondent mentioned, though it was close. Fourth, I know not only the handwriting of every single member of my family, but also the way each one phrases his ideas. The letter was kind of a sermon, “Be patient like your ancestors, and have faith that Allah is going to reward you.” I was so mad at this attempt to defraud me and play with my emotions.
The next day, Robert pulled me for interrogation.
“How’s your family doing?”
“I hope they’re doing well.”
“I’ve been working to get you the letter!”
“Thank you very much, good effort, but if you guys want to forge mail, let me give you some advice.”
“What are you talking about?”
I smiled. “If you don’t really know, it’s okay. But it was cheap to forge a message and make me believe I have contact with my dear family!” I said, handing the strange letter back.
“I don’t do shit like that,” Robert said.
“I don’t know what to believe. But I believe in God, and if I don’t see my family in this life, I hope to see them in the afterlife, so don’t worry about it.” I honestly don’t have proof or disproof of whether Robert was involved in that dirty business. But I do know that the whole matter is much bigger than Robert; there are a bunch of people working behind the scene.* The FBI was in charge of my case through Robert and his team, but I was taken for interrogation a couple of times by other intelligence agencies without his consent or even knowledge. As to letters from my family, I received my first letter, a Red Cross message, on February 14, 2004, 816 days after I was kidnapped from my house in Mauritania. The message was seven months old when it reached me.
Agent Robert finally came forth on his promise to deliver the reasons why his government was locking me up. But he didn’t show me anything that was incriminating. In March 2002 CNN had broadcast a report about me claiming that I was the coordinator who facilitated the communication between the September 11 hijackers through the guestbook of my homepage. Now Robert showed me the report.*
“I told you that you fucked up,” Robert said.
“I didn’t design my homepage for al Qaeda. I just made it a long time ago and never even checked on it since early 1997. Besides, if I decided to help al Qaeda, I wouldn’t use my real name. I could write a homepage in the name of John Smith.” Robert wanted to know everything about my homepage and why I even wrote one. I had to answer all that bullshit about a basic right of mine, writing a homepage with my real name and with some links to my favorite sites.
In one session, Robert asked, “Why did you study microelectronics?”
“I study whatever the heck I want. I didn’t know that I had to consult the U.S. government about what I should or should not study,” I said wryly.
“I don’t believe in the principle of black and white. I think everybody is somehow in between. Don’t you think so?” Robert asked.
“I’ve done nothing.”
“It is not a crime to help somebody to join al Qaeda and he ended up a terrorist!” Robert told me repeatedly. I understood exactly what he meant: Just admit that you are a recruiter for al Qaeda.
“Might be. I’m not familiar with U.S. laws. But anyway, I didn’t recruit anybody for al Qaeda, nor did they ask me to!” I said.
As a part of his “showing me the evidences against me,” Robert asked a colleague of his for help. It was Michael, one of the FBI agents who interrogated me back in Nouakchott in February 2000. Michael is one of those guys, when they speak you think they’re angry, and they might not be.
“I am happy that you showed up, because I would like to discuss some issues with you,” I said.
“Of course, Michael is here to answer your questions!” said Robert.
“Remember when you guys came to interrogate me in Mauritania?” I began. “Remember how sure you were that I was not only involved in Millennium, but that I was the brain behind it? How do you feel now, knowing that I have nothing to do with it?”
“That’s not the problem,” Michael answered. “The problem was that you weren’t honest with us.”
“I don’t have to be honest to you. And here’s a news flash for you: I’m not going to talk to you unless you tell me why I am here,” I said.
“That’s your problem,” Michael said. You could tell that Michael was used to humbled detainees who probably had to cooperate due to torture. He was by then interrogating Ramzi bin al-Shibh. He spoke very arrogantly; he as much as told me, “You’re gonna cooperate, even against your will, ha! ha!” I admit I was rude with him, but I was so angry since he had wrongly accused me of having been part of the Millennium Plot and now was dodging my requests to him to come clean and say he and his government were wrong.
Michael looked worn out from his trip; he was very tired that day. “I don’t see why you don’t cooperate,” he said. “They share food with you, and speak to you in a civilized way,” he said.
“Why should I cooperate with any of you? You’re hurting me, locking me up for no reason.”
“We didn’t arrest you.”
“Send me the guy who arrested me, I’d like to talk to him.” After that tense discussion, the interrogators left and sent me back to my cell.
“For these next sessions, I have asked for Agent Michael to help me in laying out your case. I want you to be polite to him,” Robert said at our next session.
I turned to his colleague. “Now you’re convinced that I am not a part of Millennium. What’s the next shit you’re gonna pull on me?”
“You know, sometimes we arrest people for the wrong thing, but it turns out they are involved in something else!” Michael said.
“And when are you going to stop playing this game on me? Every time there is a new suspicion, and when that turns out to be incorrect, I get a new one, and so on and so forth. Is there a possibility in the world that I am involved in nothing?”
“Of course; therefore you have to cooperate and defend yourself. All I am asking is for you to explain some shit to me,” said Robert. When Michael arrived he had a bunch of small papers with notes, and he started to read them to me. “You called Raouf Hannachi and asked him to bring you some sugar. When you told him about Hasni being back in Germany, he said, ‘Don’t say this over the phone.’ I wouldn’t say something like that to anybody I called.”
“I don’t care what Raouf Hannachi says over the phone. I am not here on behalf of Raouf; go and ask him. Remember, I’m asking you what I have done.”
“I just want you to explain these conversations to me—and there’s much more,” said Michael.
“No, I am not answering anything before you answer my question. What have I done?”
“I don’t say you’ve done anything, but there are a lot of things that need to be clarified.”
“I’ve answered those questions a thousand and one times; I told you I mean what I am saying and I’m not using any code. You’re just so unjust and so paranoid. You’re taking advantage of me being from a country with a dictatorship. If I were German or Canadian, you wouldn’t even have the opportunity to talk to me, nor would you arrest me.”
“In asking you to cooperate, we’re giving you an opportunity. After we share the cause of your arrest with you, it will be too late for you!” Michael said.
“I don’t need any opportunities. Just tell me why you arrested me, and let it be too late.” Agent Robert knew me better than Agent Michael did; thus, he tried to calm both of us down. Michael was trying to scare me, but the more he scared me, the sharper and less cooperative I got.
The camp was locked down the whole day. Around 10 p.m. I was pulled out of my cell and taken to Brown Building. The room was extremely cold. I hate to be woken up for interrogation, and my heart was pounding: Why would they take me so late?
I don’t know how long I’d been in the room, maybe two hours. I was just shaking. I made my mind up not to argue anymore with the interrogators. I’m just gonna sit there like a stone, and let them do the talking, I said to myself. Many detainees decided to do so. They were taken day after day to interrogation in order to break them. I am sure some got broken because nobody can bear agony the rest of his life.
After letting me sweat, or let’s say “shake,” for a couple hours, I was taken to another room in Brown Building, where Agents Robert and Michael and another FBI agent who called himself Chris sat. This room was acceptably cold. The military people were watching and listening from another room as usual.
“We couldn’t take you during day because the camp was locked down,” said Robert. “We had to take you now, because Michael is leaving tomorrow.”
I didn’t open my mouth. Robert sent his friends out. “What’s wrong with you?” he said. “Are you OK? Did anything happen to you?” But no matter how he tried, there was no making me talk.
The team decided to take me back to the cold room. Maybe it wasn’t so cold for somebody wearing regular shoes, underwear, and a jacket like the interrogators, but it was definitely cold for a detainee with flip-flops and no underwear whatsoever.
“Talk to us!” Robert said. “Since you refuse to talk, Michael is going to talk to you anyway.”
Michael started his lecture, “We have been giving you an opportunity, but you don’t seem to want to take advantage of it. Now it’s too late, because I am going to share some information with you.”
Michael put down three big pictures of four individuals who are believed to be involved in the September 11 attack. “This guy is Ramzi bin al-Shibh. He was captured in Karachi on September 11, 2002, and since then I’ve been interrogating him. I know more about him than he knows about himself. He was forthcoming and truthful with me. What he told me goes along with what we know about him. He said that he came to your house on advice of a guy named Khalid el Masri, whom he met on a train. Ramzi bin al-Shibh wanted somebody to help him getting to Chechnya.”
“That was around October 1999,” he continued. “He showed up at your house with these two guys,” he said, pointing at Ziad Jarrah and Marwan al-Shehhi. “The other guy,” he said, pointing at Mohamed Atta, “was not able to see you because he had a test. You advised them to travel through Afghanistan instead of Georgia, because their Arab faces would give them away and they probably would have been turned back. Furthermore, you gave them a phone contact in Quetta of a guy named Omar Abdel-Rahman. These guys traveled shortly after that meeting with you to Afghanistan, met Osama bin Laden, and swore a pledge to him. Bin Laden assigned them to the attack of September 11, and sent them back to Germany.”
He went on. “When I asked Ramzi what he thinks about you, he replied that he believes you to be a senior recruiter for Osama bin Laden. That’s his personal opinion. However, he said that without you, he would never have joined al Qaeda. In fact, I’d say without you September 11 would never have happened. These guys would have gone to Chechnya and died.”
Agent Michael excused himself and left. I was kept the rest of the night with Robert and Agent Chris, both staring at me in an eerie silence. I was so scared. The guy made me believe I was the one behind September 11. How could that possibly have happened? I was like, Maybe he’s right. And yet anybody who knew the basics about the attack, which were published and updated through time, can easily see what a swiss cheese Michael was trying to sell me. The guys he mentioned were reportedly trained in 1998, and joined al Qaeda and were assigned to the attack then. How could I possibly have sent them in October 1999 to join al Qaeda, when they not only already were al Qaeda, but had already been assigned to the attack for more than a year?
I was kept up the rest of the night and forced to see pictures of dead body parts which were taken at the site of the Pentagon after the attack. It was a nasty sight. I almost broke down, but I managed to keep myself silent and together.
“See the result of the attack?” Robert asked.
“I don’t think he foresaw what these were going to do,” said Agent Chris. They were talking to each other, asking and answering each other. I kept myself as the present-absent. They kept sliding those nasty pictures in front of me the whole night. At the break of dawn, they sent me back to a cell in a new block, Mike Block. I prayed and tried to sleep, but I was kidding myself. I could not get the human body parts out of my head. My new neighbors, especially David Hicks and Bisher al-Rawi, tried to help me.*
“Don’t worry! Just talk to them and everything is gonna be alright,” David Hicks encouraged me. Maybe his advice was prudent, and anyway I felt that things were going to get nastier. So I decided to cooperate.
Agent Robert pulled me to interrogation the next day. I was so worn out. I had no sleep last night, nor during the day.*
“I am ready to cooperate unconditionally,” I told him. “I don’t need any proof whatsoever. You just ask me questions and I’m gonna answer you.” And so our relationship seemed to enter a new era.
During his time with me, Robert made a couple of trips, one to Canada and one to Europe, I believe to Germany, in order to investigate my case and gather evidence against me. In February 2003, while he was on his trip to Canada an agent from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service pulled me to interrogation.
“My name is Christian, from Canada. I came here to ask you some questions about your time in my country,” said Christian while flashing his badge. He was accompanied by one female and one male who were just talking notes.*
“Welcome! I’m glad that you have come because I want to clarify some reports you produced about me which are very inaccurate.” I continued, “Especially since my case with the U.S. is spinning around my time in Canada, and every time I argue with the Americans they refer to you. Now I want you guys to sit with the Americans and answer one question: Why are you arresting me? What crime have I done?”
“You have done nothing,” Christian said.
“So I don’t belong here, do I?”
“We didn’t arrest you, the U.S. did.”
“That’s correct, but the U.S. claims that you pitted them on me.”
“We just have some questions about some bad people, and we need your help.”
“I’m not helping you unless you tell the Americans in front of me that one or the other of you lied.”
The agents went out and brought FBI Agent William in, who was probably watching the session through the one-way mirror in the next room.
“You are not honest, since you refuse to answer the Canadian’s questions. This is your opportunity to get help from them,” William said.
“Mr. William, I know this game better than you do. Stop trying to talk nonsense to me,” I said. “Look, you keep telling me the Canadians say such and such. Now it’s you guys’ opportunity to face me with my charges,” I said.
“We don’t accuse you of any crime,” said William.
“Then release me!”
“That’s not in my hands.” William tried to convince me but there was no convincing me. I was sent back to my cell and taken again the next day, but I just sat there like a stone. I didn’t waste a word because I had told them clearly the conditions of my cooperation. The CSIS agents also interrogated a teenager called Omar Khadr and made the Army take all his belongings. We detainees felt bad for him: he was just too young for this whole campaign.*
When Robert came back, he was pissed off because the JTF leadership had ignored him and were exposing me to whomever they wanted. Now I knew the FBI team had no control over my fate; they didn’t have the ability to deal with me, and henceforth I could not really trust them. I don’t like to deal to somebody who cannot keep his word. I knew then for a fact that the FBI team was nothing but a step, and the real interrogation was going to be led by the Department of Defense. If you look at the situation, it makes sense: most of the detainees were captured by DOD troops in a military operation, and they wanted to maintain the upper hand. FBI agents are only guests in GTMO, no more, no less; the facility is run by the U.S. military.
It happened again. When Robert went to Canada in May 2003, a team that claimed it was from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police reserved me for interrogation, and they were no luckier than their fellow citizens from CSIS. Agent Robert was completely overawed by his colleagues from the JTF command.
Robert came back from Canada. “I was ordered to quit your case and go back to the U.S. My boss believes that I’m only wasting my time. The MI will take your case,” Robert told me. I wasn’t happy that he was leaving, but I wasn’t really that upset. Agent Robert was the guy who understood the most about my case, but he had neither power nor people who backed him up.
The next day the team organized a pretty lunch party. They bought good food as a good-bye. “You should know that your next sessions will not be as friendly as these have been,” Robert said, smiling wryly. “You will not be brought food or drinks anymore.” I understood the hint as rough treatment, but I still never thought that I was going to be tortured. Furthermore, I believed that Robert and his associate Agent Chris would inform the proper authorities to stop a crime if they knew one was going to happen.
“I wish you good luck, and all I can tell you is to tell the truth,” Agent Robert said. We hugged, and bid each other good-bye.*
When I entered the room a desk was prepared with several chairs on the other side of the table. As soon as the guards locked me up to the floor, a tall female Navy Lieutenant and a tall female in civilian clothes entered the room. The Lieutenant, who said her name was Ronica, seemed to be the leader of the team. She had very long black hair and smiled most of the time, even when she was making sarcastic comments. Her associate, a blond woman in her mid-forties who called herself Sam, introduced herself to me as an agent of the FBI. You could tell they had a head start I didn’t. Ronica and Samantha brought heavy binders with them, and were talking to each other.*
“When is the guy supposed to come?”
“Nine o’clock.” Against interrogation customs, one of the supposed members of the team did not show up with the rest. It was a technique used to scare and irritate the detainee.
The door opened. “I am sorry, I was thinking diplomatic time,” the new arrival said. “You know, those of us not from JTF are on another time.” The older looking gentleman was dying to impress. I wasn’t sure how much he succeeded. He said he was from the Department of State, and acted very rushed. He even brought his McDonald’s with him, but offered nothing to anybody.
“I just arrived from Washington,” he commenced. “Do you know how important you are to the U.S. government?”
“I know how important I am to my dear mom, but I’m not sure when it comes to the U.S. government.” The Navy Lieutenant Ronica couldn’t help smiling, although she tried hard to keep her frown. I was supposed to be shown harshness.
“Are you ready to work with us? Otherwise your situation is gonna be very bad,” the man continued.
“You know that I know that you know that I have done nothing,” I said. “You’re holding me because your country is strong enough to be unjust. And it’s not the first time you have kidnapped Africans and enslaved them.”
“African tribes sold their people to us,” he replied.
“I wouldn’t defend slavery, if I were in your shoes.” I said. I could tell the Lieutenant was the one with the most power, even though the government let other agencies try their chances with detainees. It’s very much like a dead camel in the desert, when all kinds of bugs start to eat it.
“If you don’t cooperate with us we’re gonna send you to a tribunal and you’re gonna spend the rest of your life in the prison,” Lieutenant Ronica said.
“Just do it!”
“You must admit to what you have done,” Samantha said, gesturing to a big binder in front of her.
“What have I done?”
“You know what you’ve done.”
“You know what, I am not impressed, but if you have questions I can answer you,” I said.
“I have been working along with my colleagues Robert and Chris on your case. Robert and Chris are gone. But I’m still here to give you an opportunity.”
“Keep the opportunity for yourself, I need none.” The purpose of this session was to scare the hell out of me, but it takes more than that to scare me. The self-described “diplomat” disappeared for good, and I never saw him again; Lieutenant Ronica and Samantha kept interrogating me for some time, but there was nothing new. Both women were using dead-traditional methods and techniques I probably mastered better than they had.
“What is the name of your current wife?” was Samantha’s favorite question. When I arrived in Cuba on August 5, 2002, I was so hurt physically and mentally that I literally forgot the name of my wife and provided a wrong one. Samantha wanted to prove that I am a liar.
“Look, you won’t provide us information we don’t already know. But if you keep denying and lying, we’ll assume the worst,” said Lieutenant Ronica. “I have interrogated some other detainees and found them innocent. I really have a problem sleeping in a comfortable room while they suffer in the block. But you’re different. You’re unique. There’s nothing really incriminating, but there are a lot of things that make it impossible not to be involved.”
“And what is the straw that broke the camel’s back?”
“I don’t know!” Lieutenant Ronica answered. She was a respectable lady and I very much respected her honesty. She was appointed to torture me but she ultimately failed, which led to her separation from my case. To me Samantha was an evil person. She always laughed sardonically.
“You’re very rude,” she once said.
“So are you!” I replied. Our sessions were not fruitful. Both Lieutenant Ronica and Samantha wanted to reach a breakthrough, but there was no breakthrough to be reached. Both wanted me to admit to being part of the Millennium Plot, which I wasn’t. The only possible way to make me admit to something I haven’t done is to torture me beyond my limit of pain.
“You’re saying that I am lying about that? Well guess what, I have no reason not to keep lying. You don’t seem any more impressive than the hundred interrogators I have had lately,” I said.
“You’re funny, you know that?”
“Whatever that means!”
“We’re here to give you an opportunity. I’ve been in the block for a while, and I am leaving soon, so if you don’t cooperate…” Samantha continued.
“Bon Voyage!” I said. I felt good that she was leaving because I didn’t like her.
“You speak with a French accent.”
“Oh, God, I thought I speak like Shakespeare,” I said wryly.
“No you speak pretty well, I only mean the accent,” said Samantha. But Lieutenant Ronica was a polite and honest person. “Look, we have so many reports linking you to all kinds of stuff. There is nothing incriminating, really. But there are too many little things. We will not ignore anything and just release you.”
“I’m not interested in your mercy. I only want to be released if my case is completely cleared. I really am tired of being released and captured in an endless Catch-22.”
“You need your freedom, and we need information. You give us what we need and in return, you get what you need,” the Lieutenant said. The three of us argued this way for days without any success.
And then the guy I call “I-AM-THE-MAN” came into play. It was around noon when an army sergeant joined the two women while they were interrogating me.
“This Sergeant First Class will be joining us in your case,” the Navy Lieutenant said, gesturing to the new arrival.
“This sergeant is working for me. He is going to be seeing you often, among others who are working for me. But you’re gonna see me also,” Lieutenant Ronica continued. Sergeant Shally sat there like a stone; he didn’t greet me or anything. He was writing his notes and hardly looked at me, while the other women were asking questions. “Don’t make jokes, just answer her questions,” he said at one point. I was like, Oops. He expected me to be completely subdued, given my circumstances, and he was very disturbed at the defiant way I was addressing his colleagues. It soon became clear that Sergeant Shally was chosen with some others to do the dirty work. He had experience in MI; he had interrogated Iraqis who were captured during Operation Desert Storm. He speaks Farsi, he told me, but it was hard to imagine him learning a language. All he was able to hear was his own voice. I was always like, Is this guy listening to what I am saying? Or let’s just say his ears were programmed to what he wanted to hear.
“I’m an asshole,” he said once. “That is the way people know me, and I have no problem with it.”
For the next month I had to deal with Sergeant Shally and his small gang. “We are not the FBI; we don’t let lying detainees go unpunished. Just maybe not physical torture,” he said. I had been witnessing for the last months how detainees were consistently being tortured under the orders of the JTF command. Abdul Rahman Shalabi was taken to interrogation every single night, exposed to loud music and scary pictures, and molested sexually. I would see Abdul Rahman when the guards took him in the evening and brought him back in the morning. He was forbidden to pray during his interrogation. I remember asking the brothers what to do in that case. “You just pray in your heart since it’s not your fault,” said the Algerian Sheikh in the block. I profited from this fatwa since I would be exposed to the same situation for about a year. Abdul Rahman was not spared the cold room. Mohammed al-Qahtani suffered the same; moreover his interrogator smashed the Koran against the floor to break him, and had the guards push his face down against the rough floor.* Not to speak of the poor young Yemenis and Saudis who were grossly tortured the same way. But since I’m speaking in this book about my own experience, which reflects an example of the evil practices that took place in the name of the War Against Terrorism, I don’t need to talk about every single case I witnessed. Maybe on another occasion, if God so wills.*
When SFC Shally informed me about the intentions of his team, I was terrified. My mouth dried up, I started to sweat, my heart started to pound (a couple weeks later I developed hypertension) and I started to get nausea, a headache, a stomach-ache. I dropped into my chair. I knew that Sergeant Shally was not kidding, and I also knew that he was lying about physical pain-free torture. But I held myself together.
“I don’t care,” I said.
Things went more quickly than I thought. SFC Shally sent me back to the block, and I told my fellow detainees about being overtaken by the torture squad.
“You are not a kid. Those torturers are not worth thinking about. Have faith in Allah,” said my next-door neighbor, Abu Walid from Yemen.* I really must have acted like a child all day long before the guards pried me from the cellblock later that day. You don’t know how terrorizing it is for a human being to be threatened with torture. One literally becomes a child.
The Escort team showed up at my cell.
“You got to move.”
“Where?”
“Not your problem,” said the hateful escorting guard. But he was not very smart, for he had my destination written on his glove.
“Brothers pray for me, I am being transferred to India!” I called. The isolation India Block was reserved by then for the worst detainees in the camp; if one got transferred to India Block, many signatures must have been provided, maybe even the president of the U.S. The only people I know to have spent some time in India Block since it was designed for torture were a Kuwaiti detainee and another fellow detainee from Yemen.*
When I entered the block, it was completely empty of any signs of life. I was put at the end of the block and the Yemeni fellow was at the beginning, so there was no interaction whatsoever between us. The Kuwaiti man was put in the middle but with no contact with either. Later on both were transferred somewhere else, and the whole block was reserved for me, only me, ALLAH, my interrogation team, and the guards who worked for them. I was completely exposed to the total mercy of the interrogation team, and there was little mercy.
In the block the recipe started. I was deprived of my comfort items, except for a thin iso-mat and a very thin, small, worn-out blanket. I was deprived of my books, which I owned, I was deprived of my Koran, I was deprived of my soap. I was deprived of my toothpaste and of the roll of toilet paper I had. The cell—better, the box—was cooled down to the point that I was shaking most of the time. I was forbidden from seeing the light of the day; every once in a while they gave me a rec-time at night to keep me from seeing or interacting with any detainees. I was living literally in terror. For the next seventy days I wouldn’t know the sweetness of sleeping: interrogation 24 hours a day, three and sometimes four shifts a day. I rarely got a day off. I don’t remember sleeping one night quietly. “If you start to cooperate you’ll have some sleep and hot meals,” Sergeant Shally used to tell me repeatedly.
Within a couple of days of my transfer, a young Swiss woman from the International Committee of the Red Cross showed up at my cell and asked me whether I wanted to write a letter. “Yes!” I said. Natalie handed me a paper and I wrote, “Mama, I love you, I just wanted to tell you that I love you!” After that visit I wouldn’t see the ICRC for more than a year. They tried to see me, but in vain.*
“You’re starting to torture me, but you don’t know how much I can take. You might end up killing me,” I said when Lieutenant Ronica and Sergeant Shally pulled me for interrogation.
“We do recommend things, but we don’t have the final decision,” Lieutenant Ronica said.
“I just want to warn you: I’m suffering because of the harsh conditions you expose me to. I’ve already had a sciatic nerve attack. And torture will not make me more cooperative.”
“According to my experience, you will cooperate. We are stronger than you, and have more resources,” Lieutenant Ronica said. SFC Shally never wanted me to know his name, but he got busted when one of his colleagues mistakenly called him by his name. He doesn’t know that I know it, but, well, I do.
Sergeant Shally grew worse with every day passing by. He started to lay out my case. He began with the story of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and me having recruited him for September 11 attack.
“Why should he lie to us,” SFC Shally said.
“I don’t know.”
“All you have to say is, ‘I don’t remember, I don’t know, I’ve done nothing.’ You think you’re going to impress an American jury with these words? In the eyes of the Americans, you’re doomed. Just looking at you in an orange suit, chains, and being Muslim and Arabic is enough to convict you,” Sergeant Shally said.
“That is unjust!”
“We know that you are criminal.”
“What have I done?”
“You tell me, and we’ll reduce your sentence to thirty years, after which you’ll have a chance to lead a life again. Otherwise you’ll never see the light of day. If you don’t cooperate, we’re going to put you in a hole and wipe your name out of our detainee database.” I was so terrified because I knew that even though he couldn’t make such a decision on his own, he had the complete back-up of a high government level. He didn’t speak from thin air.
“I don’t care where you take me, just do it.”
In another session when he was talking to me, he seemed particularly angry. He brought up the transcripts of my phone calls in Canada. “What the fuck do you mean, tea or sugar?”
“I just meant what I said, I was not talking in code.”
“Fuck you!” SFC Shally said. I figured I wouldn’t degrade myself and lower myself to his level, so I didn’t answer him. When I failed to give him the answer he wanted to hear, he made me stand up, with my back bent because my hands were shackled to my feet and waist and locked to the floor. Sergeant Shally turned the temperature control all the way down, and made sure that the guards maintained me in that situation until he decided otherwise. He used to start a fuss before going to lunch, so he could keep me hurt during his lunch, which took at least two to three hours. Sergeant Shally likes his food; he never missed his lunch. I always wondered how he could possibly have passed the Army’s fitness test. But I realized he was in the Army for a reason: he was good at being inhumane.
“Why are you in jail?” he asked me.
“Because your country is unjust, and my country isn’t defending me?”
“Now you’re saying that we Americans are just looking for skinny Arabs,” he said.
Lieutenant Ronica came with him occasionally, and it was kind of a blessing for me. I grew tired of dealing with a lifeless face like Sergeant Shally’s. When the Navy Lieutenant came I felt like I was meeting with a human being. She offered me the appropriate chair for my back pain, while SFC Shally always insisted on the metal chair or the dirty floor.
“Do you know that Ahmed Laabidi is dealing such and such?” Lieutenant Ronica asked me, naming some kind of drug.*
“What the hell do you mean?” I asked.
“You know what she means,” SFC Shally said. Lieutenant Ronica smiled because she knew that I wasn’t lying. I really could have been anything but a drug dealer, and SFC Shally was dying to link me to any crime no matter what.
“It’s a type of narcotic,” Lieutenant Ronica replied.
“I’m sorry, I am not familiar at all with that circle.”
SFC Shally and his bosses realized that it took more than just isolation, threats, and intimidation to break me. And so they decided to bring another interrogator into play. Sometime in mid-July I was taken by the Golf escort team to Brown Building to reservation. The escorting team was confused.
“They said Brown Building? That’s weird!” said one of the guards.
When we entered the building there were no monitoring guards. “Call the D.O.C.!” said the other.* After the radio call, the two guards were ordered to stay with me in the room until my interrogators showed up.
“Something’s wrong,” said the first one.
The escort team didn’t realize that I understood what they were talking about; they always assume that detainees don’t speak English, which they typically don’t. The leadership in the camp always tried to warn the guards; signs like “DO NOT HELP THE ENEMY,” and “CARELESS TALK GIVES SECRETS AWAY,” were not rare, but the guards talked to each other anyway.
Brown Building was at one point a regular interrogation booth, then a building for torture, then an administrative building. My heart was pounding; I was losing my mind. I hate torture so much. A slim, small female entered the room followed by Mr. Tough Guy, SFC Shally. Staff Sergeant Mary was a young woman in her early thirties, about five and a half feet tall, with long, light brown hair, of which she was very proud. She was with the National Guard, and had been called to duty after 9/11, I later learned. Neither greeted me, nor released my hands from the shackles.
“What is this?” SSG Mary asked, showing me a plastic bag with a small welding stick inside.
“It’s Indian incense,” I replied. That was the first thing that came to my mind. I thought she wanted to give me a treat by burning the incense during the interrogation, which was a good idea.
“No, you’re wrong!” She almost stuck it in my face.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Now we have found evidence against you; we don’t need anymore,” said SSG Mary. I was like, What the hell is going on, is that a part of a bomb they want to pull on me?
“This is a welding stick you were hiding in your bathroom,” SSG Mary said.
“How can I possibly have such a thing in my cell, unless you or my guards gave it to me? I have no contact whatsoever with any detainees.”
“You’re smart, you could have smuggled it,” said SSG Mary.
“Take him to the bathroom,” she said. SSG Mary called the Golf team that was waiting outside the door to unhook me. The guards grabbed me to the bathroom. I was thinking, “Are these people so desperate to pull shit on me, I mean any shit?” In the meantime, a senior NCO guard was explaining to SSG Mary how these welding sticks end up in the cells; I caught his last words when the guards were leading me back from the restroom. “It’s common. The contractors keep throwing them in the toilets after finishing with them.” As soon as I entered, everybody suddenly shut up. SSG Mary put the welding stick back in a yellow envelope. SSG Mary never introduced herself, nor did I expect her to do so. The worse an interrogator’s intention is, the more he or she covers his or her identity. But those people get busted the most, and so did SSG Mary, when one of her colleagues mistakenly called her by her name.
“How does your new situation look?” SSG Mary asked me.
“I’m just doing great!” I answered. I was really suffering, but I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of having reached their evil goal.
“I think he’s too comfortable,” SFC Shally said.
“Get off the chair!” SSG Mary said, pulling the chair from beneath me. “I’d rather have a dirty farmer sitting on the chair than a smart ass like you,” she continued, when my whole body dropped on the dirty floor. My back pain from my sciatic nerve condition was killing me. Since June 20th I never got relief from them. SFC Shally obviously was getting tired of dealing with me, so his boss offered him fresh blood, manifesting in the person of SSG Mary. SSG Mary started the session. She spread the pictures of some September 11 suspects in front of me, namely Mohamed Atta, Ziad Jarrah, Marwan al-Shehhi, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and others.
“Look at these motherfuckers,” said SSG Mary. “OK, now tell us what you know about those motherfuckers!” she said.
“I swear to God, I will not tell you one word, no matter what.”
“Stand up! Guards! If you don’t stand up, it’ll be ugly,” SSG Mary said. And before the torture squad entered the room I stood up, with my back bent because the heavy chains bound my hands to my feet so I was tied hands and feet to the floor. This type of restraints didn’t allow me to stand up straight.* I had to suffer every-inch-of-my-body pain the rest of the day. I dealt with the pain silently; I kept praying until my assailants got tired and sent me back to my cell at the end of the day, after exhausting their resources of humiliations for that day. I didn’t say a single word, as if I had not been there. You, Dear Reader, said more words to them than I did.
“If you want to go to the bathroom, ask politely to use the restroom, say ‘Please, may I?’ Otherwise, do it in your pants,” SSG Mary said.
Before lunch SSG Mary and SFC Shally dedicated the time to speaking ill about my family, and describing my wife with the worst adjective you can imagine. For the sake of my family, I dismiss their degrading quotations. The whole time the two sergeants offered me just water and a cold meal; “You are not entitled to a warm meal unless you cooperate,” SFC Shally said once. Whenever they started to torture me I refused to drink or eat. SSG Mary brought her lunch from outside to frustrate me.
“Yummy, ham is tasty,” she said, eating her meal.
That afternoon was dedicated to sexual molestation. SFC Shally left the interrogation booth to watch from next door. SSG Mary started to press her body against me, all over, and said that if I refused to talk, she would rape me; a “fair warning,” one could say. She started shyly to perform the lamest strip you could imagine.
“You know, it’s not against the law to have sex with detainees,” she said, as she was taking off her uniform blouse and was whispering in my ear, “You know how good I am in bed,” and “American men like me to whisper in their ears,” she said, slowly removing her uniform piece by piece, hoping I would crack and relieve her from the pain of humiliation she was inflicting upon herself. I could tell it wasn’t her first choice to act in this way. But I couldn’t help her, and said nothing. She kept talking about what American men like, and self-consciously praising herself, saying things like “I have a great body.”
Every once in a while SSG Mary offered me the other side of the coin. “If you start to cooperate, I’m gonna stop harassing you. Otherwise I’ll be doing the same with you and worse every day. I am very good at this kind of work and that’s why my government designated me to this job. I’ve always been successful. Having sex with somebody is not considered torture.”*
SSG Mary was leading the monologue, while SFC Shally watched from next door. Every now and then he entered and tried to make me speak, “You cannot defeat us: we have too many people, and we’ll keep humiliating you with American sex.”
“I have a big-boobed friend I’m gonna bring tomorrow to help me,” she said. “At least she’ll cooperate,” said SSG Mary wryly. SSG Mary didn’t undress me, but she was touching my private parts with her body.
In the late afternoon, another torture squad started with another poor detainee. I could hear loud music playing. “Do you want me to send you to that team, or are you gonna cooperate?” SSG Mary asked. I didn’t answer. The guards used to call Brown Building “The Party House” because most of the torture took place in those buildings, and at night, when darkness started to cover the sorry camp.
SSG Mary sent me back to my cell, warning me, “Today is just the beginning, what’s coming is worse.”
But in order for this special JTF team to know how much torture a detainee can take, they need medical assistance. I was sent to a doctor, an officer in the Navy. I would describe him as a decent and humane person.*
“Are you going to remove the chains? I don’t examine people with that shit on them,” he said to the escorting Golf team.
“The gentleman has a pretty serious case of sciatic nerve,” he said.
“I cannot take the conditions I am in anymore,” I told him. I am being stopped from taking my pain medication and my Ensure, which were necessary to maintain my head above water,” I said. The interrogators would organize the sessions so that they would cover the time when you are supposed to take your medication. I had two prescriptions, tabs for the sciatic nerve back pain and Ensure to compensate the loss of weight I had been suffering since my arrest. I usually got my meds between 4 and 5 p.m., and so the interrogators made sure that I was with them and missed my medication. But look at it, what sense does it make, if the interrogators work on hurting my back and then give me back pain medication, or to give me a bad diet and want me to gain weight?
“I don’t have much power. I can write a recommendation, but it’s the decision of other people. Your case is very serious!” he told me. I left the clinic with some hope, but my situation only worsened.
“Look, the doctor said I’ve developed high blood pressure. That’s serious; you know that I was a hypotensive person before,” I said the next time SSG Mary called me to interrogation.
“You’re alright, we spoke with the doctor,” the interrogators replied. I knew then that my recipe was going to continue.
The torture was growing day by day. The guards on the block actively participated in the process. The interrogators tell them what to do with the detainees when they came back to the block. I had guards banging on my cell to prevent me from sleeping. They cursed me for no reason. They repeatedly woke me, unless my interrogators decided to give me a break. I never complained to my interrogators about the issue because I knew they planned everything with the guards.
As promised, SSG Mary pulled me early in the day. Lonely in my cell, I was terrified when I heard the guards carrying the heavy chains and shouting at my door “Reservation!” My heart started to pound heavily because I always expected the worst. But the fact that I wasn’t allowed to see the light made me “enjoy” the short trip between my freakin’ cold cell and the interrogation room. It was just a blessing when the warm GTMO sun hit me. I felt life sneaking back into every inch of my body. I would always get this fake happiness, though only for a very short time. It’s like taking narcotics.
“How you been?” said one of the Puerto Rican escorting guards in his weak English.
“I’m OK, thanks, and you?”
“No worry, you gonna back to your family,” he said. When he said that I couldn’t help breaking in tears. Lately, I’d become so vulnerable. What was wrong with me? Just one soothing word in this ocean of agony was enough to make me cry. Around this time in Delta Camp we had a complete Puerto Rican division. They were different than other Americans; they were not as vigilant and unfriendly. Sometimes, they took detainees to shower outside the prescribed time. Everybody liked them. But they got in trouble with those responsible for the camps because of their friendly and humane approach to detainees. I can’t objectively speak about the people from Puerto Rico because I haven’t met enough; however, if you ask me, Have you ever seen a bad Puerto Rican guy? My answer would be no. But if you ask, Is there one? I just don’t know. It’s the same way with the Sudanese people.
“Keep the shackles on and give him no chair,” said the D.O.C. worker on the radio when the escort team dropped me in Brown Building. SSG Mary and the promised big-breasted woman entered the room. They brought a picture of an American black man named Christopher Paul, who I met one time many years before in Afghanistan. “We’re gonna talk today about this guy, ‘Abdulmalek,’” SSG Mary said, after bribing me with a weathered metal chair.*
“I have told you what I know about Abdulmalek.”
“No, that’s bullshit. Are you gonna tell us more?”
“No, I have no more to tell.”
The new female interrogator pulled the metal chair away and left me on the floor. “Now, tell us about Christopher Paul, a.k.a. Abdulmalek!”
“No, that’s passé,” I said.
“Yes, you’re right. So if it is passé, talk about it, it won’t hurt,” the new female interrogator said.
“No.”
“Then today, we’re gonna teach you about great American sex. Get up!” said SSG Mary. I stood up in the same painful position as I had every day for about seventy days. I would rather follow the orders and reduce the pain that would be caused when the guards come to play; the guards used every contact opportunity to beat the hell out of the detainee. “Detainee tried to resist,” was the “Gospel truth” they came up with, and guess who was going to be believed? “You’re very smart, because if you don’t stand up it’s gonna be ugly,” SSG Mary said.
As soon as I stood up, the two women took off their blouses, and started to talk all kind of dirty stuff you can imagine, which I minded less. What hurt me most was them forcing me to take part in a sexual threesome in the most degrading manner. What many women don’t realize is that men get hurt the same as women if they’re forced to have sex, maybe more due to the traditional position of the man. Both women stuck on me, literally one on the front and the other older woman stuck on my back rubbing her whole body on mine. At the same time they were talking dirty to me, and playing with my sexual parts. I am saving you here from quoting the disgusting and degrading talk I had to listen to from noon or before until 10 p.m. when they turned me over to Mr. X, the new character you’ll soon meet.
To be fair and honest, the two women didn’t deprive me of my clothes at any time; everything happened with my uniform on. The senior interrogator SFC Shally was watching everything through the one-way mirror from the next room. I kept praying all the time.
“Stop the fuck praying! You’re having sex with American whores and you’re praying? What a hypocrite you are!” said SFC Shally angrily, entering the room. I refused to stop speaking my prayers, and after that, I was forbidden to perform my ritual prayers for about one year to come. I also was forbidden to fast during the sacred month of Ramadan October 2003, and fed by force. During this session I also refused to eat or to drink, although they offered me water every once in a while. “We must give you food and water; if you don’t eat it’s fine.” They also offered me the nastiest MRE they had in the camp. We detainees knew that JTF interrogators gathered Intels about what food a detainee likes or dislikes, when he prays, and many other things that are just ridiculous.
I was just wishing to pass out so I didn’t have to suffer, and that was really the main reason for my hunger strike; I knew people like these don’t get impressed by hunger strikes. Of course they didn’t want me to die, but they understand there are many steps before one dies. “You’re not gonna die, we’re gonna feed you up your ass,” said SSG Mary.
I have never felt as violated in myself as I had since the DOD Team started to torture me to get me to admit to things I haven’t done. You, Dear Reader, could never understand the extent of the physical, and much more the psychological pain people in my situation suffered, no matter how hard you try to put yourself in another’s shoes. Had I done what they accused me of, I would have relieved myself on day one. But the problem is that you cannot just admit to something you haven’t done; you need to deliver the details, which you can’t when you hadn’t done anything. It’s not just, “Yes, I did!” No, it doesn’t work that way: you have to make up a complete story that makes sense to the dumbest dummies. One of the hardest things to do is to tell an untruthful story and maintain it, and that is exactly where I was stuck. Of course I didn’t want to involve myself in devastating crimes I hadn’t done—especially under the present circumstances, where the U.S. government was jumping on every Muslim and trying to pin any crime on him.
“We are going to do this with you every single day, day in, day out, unless you speak about Abdulmalek and admit to your crimes,” said SSG Mary.
“You have to provide us a smoking gun about another friend of yours. Something like that would really help you,” SFC Shally said in a later session. “Why should you take all of this, if you can stop it?”
I decided to remain silent during torture and to speak whenever they relieved me. I realized that even asking my interrogators politely to use the bathroom, which was a dead basic right of mine, I gave my interrogators some kind of control they don’t deserve. I knew it was not just about asking for the bathroom: it was more about humiliating me and getting me to tell them what they wanted to hear. Ultimately an interrogator is interested in gathering Intels, and typically the end justifies the means in that regard. And that was another reason why I refused both to drink and to eat: so I didn’t have to use the rest room. And it worked.
The extravagance of the moment gave me more strength. My statement was that I was going to fight to the last drop of my blood.
“We’re stronger than you, we have more people, we have more resources, and we’re going to defeat you. But if you start to cooperate with us, you’ll start to have some sleep and hot meals,” said SFC Shally numerous times. “You cooperate not, you eat not, you get remedy not.”
Humiliation, sexual harassment, fear, and starvation was the order of the day until around 10 p.m. Interrogators made sure that I had no clue about the time, but nobody is perfect; their watches always revealed it. I would be using this mistake later, when they put me in dark isolation.
“I’m gonna send you to your cell now, and tomorrow you’ll experience even worse,” said SSG Mary after consulting with her colleagues. I was happy to be relieved; I just wanted to have a break and be left alone. I was so worn out, and only God knew how I looked. But SSG Mary lied to me; she just organized a psychological trick to hurt me more. I was far from being relieved. The D.O.C., which was fully cooperating when it came to torture, sent another escort team. As soon as I reached the doorstep leading out of Brown Building I fell face down, my legs refused to carry me, and every inch in my body was conspiring against me. The guards failed to make me stand up, so they had to drag me on the tips of my toes.
“Bring the motherfucker back!” shouted Mr. X, a celebrity among the torture squad.* He was about my age and about six feet tall, athletically built, and had special clothes for his work. He wore dark blue coveralls, not like an Air Force pilot’s but like meat locker workers wear, and a black mask covering his face. Mr. X was aware that he was committing heavy war crimes, and so he was ordered by his bosses to cover himself. But if there is any kind of basic justice, he will get busted through his bosses; we know their names and their ranks.
When I got to know Mr. X more and heard him speaking I wondered, How could a man as smart as he was possibly accept such a degrading job, which surely is going to haunt him the rest of his life? For the sake of fairness and honesty, I must say that Mr. X spoke convincingly to me, although he had no information and was completely misled. Maybe he had few choices, because many people in the Army come from poor families, and that’s why the Army sometimes gives them the dirtiest job. I mean theoretically Mr. X could have refused to commit crimes of war, and he might even get away with it. Later on I discussed with some of my guards why they executed the order to stop me from praying, since it’s an unlawful order. “I could have refused, but my boss would have given me a shitty job or transferred me to a bad place. I know I can go to hell for what I have done to you,” one of them told me. History repeats itself: during World War II, German soldiers were not excused when they argued that they received orders.
“You’ve been giving the female sergeant a hard time,” continued Mr. X, dragging me into a dark room with the help of the guards. He dropped me on the dirty floor. The room was as dark as ebony. Mr. X started playing a track very loudly—I mean very loudly. The song was, “Let the bodies hit the floor.” I might never forget that song. At the same time, Mr. X turned on some colored blinkers that hurt the eyes. “If you fucking fall asleep, I’m gonna hurt you,” he said. I had to listen to the song over and over until next morning. I started praying.*
“Stop the fuck praying,” he said loudly. I was by this time both really tired and terrified, and so I decided to pray in my heart. Every once in a while Mr. X gave me water. I drank the water because I was only scared of being hurt. I really had no real feeling for time.
To the best of my knowledge, M. X sent me back to my cell around 5 a.m. in the morning.
“Welcome to hell,” said the female BNCO guard when I stepped inside the block. I didn’t answer, and she wasn’t worth it.* But I was like, “I think you deserve hell more than I do because you’re working dutifully to get there!”
When Mr. X joined the team, they organized a 24-hour shift regime. The morning shift with SFC Shally started between 7 and 9 a.m. and ended between 3 and 4 p.m.; the dayshift with SSG Mary ran between 4:30 and 10 or 11 p.m.; and the nightshift was with Mr. X. He always took over when SSG Mary left; she would literally hand me over to him. This went on until August 24, 2003; I rarely got a break or relief from even one of the shifts.
“Three shifts! Is it not too much for a human being to be interrogated 24 hours a day, day after day?” I asked. SSG Mary was the least of many evils, so I just tried to talk to her as a human being. You might be surprised if I tell you that she possesses good qualities as a person. As much as I hated what she was doing, I must be just, fair, and honest.
“We could put on more personnel and make four shifts. We have more people,” SSG Mary answered. And that’s exactly what happened. The team was reinforced with another young male army sergeant, and instead of a three-shift team I had to deal with four fresh people during a 24-hour period.
“You fucked up!” said an escorting guard who by accident had to escort me twice in one day from one building to another. “What are you doing here? You’ve been in reservation already!”
“I get interrogated for 24 hours.”
The guard laughed loudly and evilly repeated, “You fucked up!” I just looked at him and smiled.
On day three of the shifts the escorting team showed up at my door in the early morning, as soon as I fell asleep after a rough, 20-hour interrogation. You know, when you just fall asleep and the saliva starts to come out of your mouth?
“Reservation!” shouted one of the guards. My feet barely carried me. “Hurry up!” I quickly washed my face and my mouth. I tried to use every opportunity to keep myself clean, although I was deprived from the right to take a shower like other detainees. The team wanted to humiliate me.
“What a smell!” SFC Shally used to say when he entered the room where he interrogated me.
“Man, you smell like shit!” said one of the guards more than once. I only got the opportunity to shower and change my clothes when his lowness SFC Shally couldn’t bear my smell anymore; “Take the guy, give him a shower, he smells like shit,” he would say. Only then would I get a shower, for months to come.
“Hurry up!” the guards kept saying. I was taken out of India Block, a block I hated less only than the interrogation room. I had a headache, nausea, and heartburn from the sleeplessness of the last several days. My eyes were playing games on me. I hated the place where I was going.
The guards dropped me in Brown Building. Nobody was in the room. I kept dozing off while waiting on SFC Shally. Oh, my neck really hurt. I badly wanted him to show up, because I hated to sleep like that: at least he would enjoy depriving me of sleeping. SFC Shally is one of the laziest people I ever knew. He didn’t take time to read reports, and so he always mistook me for other suspects. Most of the time he came late, but he reserved me early anyway, so I couldn’t sleep.
There really was not a lot of news: SFC Shally and I facing each other with the same topics, like the movie Groundhog Day. But I had grown very nervous now that they were depriving me of the sweetness of sleep.
The order of the day always went as follows. SFC Shally started to read some paper crap he brought with him and asked me questions.
“Why the fuck did you go to Canada?”
“I wanted to find a job and have a nice life.”
“Fuck you! Stand up!”
“I’d rather stand up like this until death than talk to your ugly face!” When SFC Shally made me stand up, he made sure that the guards maintained his orders while he was stuffing his big stomach during lunch; whenever I tried to change my inconvenient position, the guards surged from nowhere and forced me to stay as straight as I could. Every interrogator I knew missed a meal sometimes, for whatever reason. SFC Shally never missed his meal no matter what.
“If you stop denying what you’ve done, we’ll start to give you hot meals and some sleep. We are stronger than you.”
“I don’t need what I don’t have.”
“We’re gonna put you in a hole the rest of your life. You’re already convicted. You will never see your family.”
“It’s not in your hands, but if it is, just do it, the sooner the better!”
Sometimes SFC Shally went through the propaganda posters of detainees who were supposedly released. “Look at this guy, he’s a criminal but he admitted to everything, and now he’s able to lead a normal life.” I mean, all interrogators lie, but SFC Shally’s lies were more than obvious. Though if another interrogator lies, his appearance changes, but SFC Shally recounts a lie as well as the truth: his face always had the same hateful look.
When the pain became unbearable, I became smooth for negotiation, and he agreed to let me sit on the uncomfortable chair. But he soon got shocked when I didn’t give him the answers he wanted to hear.
“I am going to do everything I am allowed to to break you!” SFC Shally said angrily. He threatened me with all kind of horrible scenarios. “You’re gonna spend the rest of your life in jail.” “We will wipe you out of the database and put you in a hole where nobody knows about you.” “You will never see your family again.” My answer was always, “Do what you got to do! I have done nothing!” and as soon as I spit my words SFC Shally went wildly crazy, as if he wanted to devour me alive. So I avoided answering him and let him for the most part do the talking. As I say, SFC Shally likes to talk and hates to listen. I sometimes doubted that his ears functioned. He spoke as if he were reading some Gospels.
I was just wondering how he was so sure I was a criminal. “Sergeant, what if you are wrong in what you’re suspecting me of?” I asked him.
“I would be wasting my time,” he answered.
“Fair enough.”
“If you provide incriminating information about somebody, say about Karim Mehdi or Ahmed Laabidi, that leads to his conviction, your life would change to a better one.” I didn’t answer him, because I didn’t have what he was looking for. SFC Shally’s view of justice was very rough: even if I provided him everything he wanted, he would reduce my sentence from the electric chair to life, and then maybe thirty years in prison. I honestly was not interested in his offer.
During his shift, SFC Shally would be reporting to his boss during the breaks. I was not sure who his boss was at that point, probably Richard Zuley. But I’m sure that the highest authority in his chain of command in GTMO was General Geoffrey Miller, and that he was briefed regularly about my case and always gave the orders for what to do next with “that bastard.” According to Mary, President Bush was regularly briefed about my case, and so was Donald Rumsfeld. Donald Rumsfeld even sent his secretary, a large dark gentleman the guards told me was named Butler, to check on me in summer 2004. He asked me some Intel questions. By that time, though, the tension was already relieved.*
I spent the afternoon shift with SSG Mary. Like I mentioned before, she was the least evil of all. Her order of day went as follows. When she pulled me to interrogation, she informed the D.O.C. not to give me a chair, so I had to settle for the dirty floor—but I didn’t even get that, because the D.O.C. always asked the guards to make me stand up until SSG Mary arrived. Then she decided whether to allow me to sit or make me stand up during her whole shift, and after that Mr. X made me stand up for the rest of the 24 hours.*
I started to recite the Koran quietly, for prayer was forbidden. Once, back in Gold Building, she said, “Why don’t you pray? go ahead and pray!” I was like, How friendly! But as soon as I started to pray, she started to make fun of my religion, and so I settled for praying in my heart so I didn’t give her the opportunity to commit blasphemy. Making fun of somebody else’s religion is one of the most barbaric acts. President Bush described his holy war against the so-called terrorism as a war between the civilized and barbaric world. But his government committed more barbaric acts than the terrorists themselves. I can name tons of war crimes that Bush’s government is involved in.
This particular day was one of the roughest days in my interrogation before the day around end of August that was my “Birthday Party” as SSG Mary called it. She brought someone who was apparently a Marine; he wore a woodland camouflage combat uniform. He was small and very loud for his size, and even brought his own boom box into the room.
SSG Mary offered me a metal chair. “I told you, I’m gonna bring some people to help me interrogate you,” she said, sitting inches away in front of me. The guest sat almost sticking on my knee. The Marine started to ask me some questions I don’t remember,
“Yes or no?” the guest shouted, loud beyond belief, in a show to scare me, and maybe to impress SSG Mary, who knows? I found his method very childish and silly.
I looked at him, smiled, and said, “Neither!” The guest threw the chair from beneath me violently. I fell on the chains. Oh, it hurt.
“Stand up, motherfucker,” they both shouted, almost synchronous. Then a session of torture and humiliation started. They started to ask me the questions again after they made me stand up, but it was too late, because I told them a million times, “Whenever you start to torture me, I’m not gonna say a single word.” And that was always accurate; for the rest of the day, they exclusively talked.
The Marine turned the air conditioner all the way down to bring me to freezing. This method had been practiced in the camp at least since August 2002. I had seen people who were exposed to the frozen room day after day; by then, the list was long. The consequences of the cold room are devastating, such as rheumatism, but they show up only at a later age because it takes time until they work their way through the bones. The torture squad was so well trained that they were performing almost perfect crimes, avoiding leaving any obvious evidence. Nothing was left to chance. They hit in predefined places. They practiced horrible methods, the aftermath of which would only manifest later. The interrogators turned the A/C all the way down trying to reach 0°, but obviously air conditioners are not designed to kill, so in the well insulated room the A/C fought its way to 49°F, which, if you are interested in math like me, is 9.4°C—in other words, very, very cold, especially for somebody who had to stay in it more than twelve hours, had no underwear and just a very thin uniform, and who comes from a hot country. Somebody from Saudi Arabia cannot take as much cold as somebody from Sweden; and vice versa, when it comes to hot weather. Interrogators took these factors in consideration and used them effectively.
You may ask, Where were the interrogators after installing the detainee in the frozen room? Actually, it’s a good question. First, the interrogators didn’t stay in the room; they would just come for the humiliation, degradation, discouragement, or other factor of torture, and after that they left the room and went to the monitoring room next door. Second, interrogators were adequately dressed; for instance Mr. X was dressed like somebody entering a meat locker. In spite of that, they didn’t stay long with the detainee. Third, there’s a big psychological difference when you are exposed to a cold place for purpose of torture, and when you just go there for fun and challenge. And lastly, the interrogators kept moving in the room, which meant blood circulation, which meant keeping themselves warm while the detainee was shackled the whole time to the floor, standing for the most part. All I could do was move my feet and rub my hands. But the Marine guy stopped me from rubbing my hands by ordering a special chain that shackled my hands on my opposite hips. When I get nervous I always start to rub my hands together and write on my body, and that drove my interrogators crazy.
“What are you writing?” the Marine shouted. “Either you tell me or you stop the fuck doing that.” But I couldn’t stop; it was unintentional. The Marine guy started to throw chairs around, hit me with his forehead, and describe me with all kind of adjectives I didn’t deserve, for no reason.
“You joined the wrong team, boy. You fought for a lost cause,” he said, alongside a bunch of trash talk degrading my family, my religion, and myself, not to mention all kinds of threats against my family to pay for “my crimes,” which goes against any common sense. I knew that he had no power, but I knew that he was speaking on behalf of the most powerful country in the world, and obviously enjoyed the full support of his government. However, I would rather save you, Dear Reader, from quoting his garbage. The guy was nuts. He asked me about things I have no clue about, and names I never heard.
“I have been in Mauritania,” he said, “and do you know who was our host? The President! We had a good time in the palace.” The Marine guy asked questions and answered them himself.
When the man failed to impress me with all the talk and humiliation, and with the threat to arrest my family since the Mauritanian president was an obedient servant of the U.S., he started to hurt me more. He brought ice-cold water and soaked me all over my body, with my clothes still on me. It was so awful; I kept shaking like a Parkinson’s patient. Technically I wasn’t able to talk anymore. The guy was stupid: he was literally executing me but in a slow way. SSG Mary gestured to him to stop pouring water on me. Another detainee had told me a “good” interrogator suggested he eat in order to reduce the pain, but I refused to eat anything; I couldn’t open my mouth anyway.
The guy was very hot when Mary stopped him because she was afraid of the paperwork that would result in case of my death. So he found another technique, namely he brought a CD player with a booster and started to play some rap music. I didn’t really mind the music because it made me forget my pain. Actually, the music was a blessing in disguise; I was trying to make sense of the words. All I understood was that the music was about love. Can you believe it? Love! All I had experienced lately was hatred, or the consequences thereof.
“Listen to that, Motherfucker!” said the guest, while closing the door violently behind him. “You’re gonna get the same shit day after day, and guess what? It’s getting worse. What you’re seeing is only the beginning,” said the Marine. I kept praying and ignoring what they were doing.
“Oh, ALLAH help me.… Oh Allah have mercy on me” SSG Mary kept mimicking my prayers, “ALLAH, ALLAH.… There is no Allah. He let you down!” I smiled at how ignorant she was, talking about the Lord like that. But the Lord is very patient, and doesn’t need to rush to punishment, because there is no escaping him.
Detainees knew the policy in the camp: if the MI believes that you’re hiding crucial information, they torture you in Camp Delta, in India Block, but if that doesn’t work, they kidnap you to a secret place and nobody knows what they’re doing with you. During my time in Delta Camp two individuals were kidnapped and disappeared for good, namely Abdullah Tabarak Ahmad from Morocco and Mohammed al-Qahtani from Saudi Arabia.* I started to get the feeling that I was going to be kidnapped because I really got stuck with my interrogators, and so I started to gather Intels.
“The camp out there is the worst one,” said a young MP.
“They don’t get food?” I wondered.
“Something like that,” he replied.
Between 10 and 11 p.m., SSG Mary handed me over to Mr. X, who gave orders to the guards to move me to his specially prepared room. It was freezing cold and full of pictures showing the glories of the U.S.: weapons arsenals, planes, and pictures of George Bush. “Don’t pray! You’ll insult my country if you pray during my national anthem. We’re the greatest country in the free world, and we have the smartest president in the world,” he said. For the whole night I had to listen to the U.S. anthem. I hate anthems anyway. All I can remember was the beginning, “Oh say can you see…” over and over. I was happy that no ice-cold water was poured over me. I tried at the beginning to steal some prayers, but Mr. X was watching closely by means of cameras and the one-way mirror. “Stop the fuck praying, you’re insulting my country!” I was really tired and worn out, and I was anything but looking for trouble, and so I decided to pray in my heart. I was shaking all night long.
Between 4 and 5 a.m., Mr. X released me, just to be taken a couple of hours later by SFC Shally to start the same routine over. But the hardest step is the first step; the hardest days were the first days, and with every day going by I grew stronger. Meanwhile I was the main subject of talk in the camp. Although many other detainees were suffering similar fates, I was “Criminal Number One,” and I was being treated that way. Sometimes when I was in the rec yard, detainees shouted, “Be patient. Remember Allah tests the people he loves the most.” Comments like that were my only solace beside my faith in the Lord.
Nothing really interesting changed in my routine: cold room, standing up for hours, interrogators repeating the same threats about me being kidnapped and locked up forever.* Mr. X made me write tons of pages about my life, but I never satisfied him. One night he undressed me with the help of a blond female and a male guard. Expecting the cold room, I had put shorts on over my pants to reduce the cold that was penetrating through my bones, but he was extremely mad, which led him to make a female guard undress me. I never felt so violated. I stood up all the night in the ice-cold room praying, ignoring all his barking and ordering me to stop praying. I couldn’t have cared less about whatever he was going to do.*
The boss of the group, Mr. Richard Zuley, crawled from behind the scene. SSG Mary told me a couple of times before his visit about a very high level government person who was going to visit me and talk to me about my family. I didn’t take the information negatively; I thought he was going to bring me some messages from my family. But I was wrong, it was about hurting my family. Mr. Zuley was escalating the situation with me relentlessly.
Mr. Zuley came around 11 a.m., escorted by SSG Mary and the new male sergeant. He was brief and direct. “My name is Captain Collins. I work for the Department of Defense. My government is desperate to get information out of you. Do you understand?”*
“Yes.”
“Can you read English?”
“Yes.”
“Captain Collins” handed me a letter that he had obviously forged. The letter was from DoD, and it said, basically, “Ould Slahi is involved in the Millennium attack and recruited three of September 11 hijackers. Since Slahi has refused to cooperate, the U.S. government is going to arrest his mother and put her in a special facility.”
I read the letter. “Is that not harsh and unfair?” I said.
“I am not here to maintain justice. I’m here to stop people from crashing planes into buildings in my country.”
“Then go and stop them. I’ve done nothing to your country,” I said.
“You have two options: either being a defendant or a witness,”
“I want neither.”
“You have no choice, or your life is going to change decidedly,” he said.
“Just do it, the sooner, the better!” I said. Richard Zuley put the forged letter back in his bag, closed it angrily, and left the room. Mr. Zuley would lead the team working on my case until August or September 2004. He always tried to make me believe that his real name was Captain Collins, but what he didn’t know was that I knew his name even before I met him.
After that meeting I had no doubt about the intentions of “Captain Collins”; he was just seeking the required formalities to kidnap me from the camp to an unknown place. “Your being here required many signatures. We’ve been trying for some time to get you here,” one of my guards would tell me later. Captain Collins was also putting together a complete team which would execute the Abduction. All of this was carried out in secrecy; participants knew only as much as they needed to. I know for instance that SSG Mary didn’t know about the details of the plan.
On Monday August 25, 2003, around 4 p.m., SSG Mary reserved me for interrogation in Gold Building. By then I had spent the weekend on Romeo Block, which was entirely emptied of any other detainees, in order to keep me isolated from the rest of the community. But I saw it as a positive thing: the cell was warmer and I could see daylight, while in India Block I was locked in a frozen box.
“Now I have overall control. I can do anything I want with you; I can even move you to Camp Four,” said SSG Mary.*
“I know why you moved me to Romeo Block,” I said. “It’s because you don’t want me to see anybody.” SSG Mary didn’t comment; she just smiled. It was more of a friendly talk. Around 5:30 p.m., she brought me my cold MRE. I had gotten used to my cold portions; I didn’t savor them, but I had been suffering weight loss like never before, and I knew in order to survive I had to eat.
I started to eat my meal. SSG Mary was going in and out, but there was nothing suspicious about that, she had always been that way. I barely finished my meal, when all of a sudden Mary and I heard a commotion, guards cursing loudly (“I told you motherfucker…!”), people banging the floor violently with heavy boots, dogs barking, doors closing loudly. I froze in my seat. Mary went speechless. We were staring at each other, not knowing what was going on. My heart was pounding because I knew a detainee was going to be hurt. Yes, and that detainee was me.
Suddenly a commando team consisting of three soldiers and a German shepherd broke into our interrogation room. Everything happened quicker than you could think about it. Mr. X and a masked guard punched me violently, which made me fall face down on the floor.
“Motherfucker, I told you, you’re gone!” said Mr. X. His partner kept punching me everywhere, mainly on my face and my ribs. He, too, was masked from head to toe; he punched me the whole time without saying a word, because he didn’t want to be recognized. The third man was not masked; he stayed at the door holding the dog’s collar, ready to release it on me.
“Who told you to do that? You’re hurting the detainee!” screamed SSG Mary, who was no less terrified than I was. Mr. X was the leader of the assailing guards, and he was executing Captain Collins’s orders. As to me, I couldn’t digest the situation. My first thought was, They mistook me for somebody else. My second thought was to try to recognize my environment by looking around while one of the guards was squeezing my face against the floor. I saw the dog fighting to get loose. I saw SSG Mary standing up, looking helplessly at the guards working on me.
“Blindfold the Motherfucker, if he tries to look—”
One of them hit me hard across the face, and quickly put the goggles on my eyes, ear muffs on my ears, and a small bag over my head. I couldn’t tell who did what. They tightened the chains around my ankles and my wrists; afterwards, I started to bleed. All I could hear was Mr. X cursing, “F-this and F-that!” I didn’t say a word, I was overwhelmingly surprised, I thought they were going to execute me.
Thanks to the beating I wasn’t able to stand, so Mr. X and the other guard dragged me out with my toes tracing the way and threw me in a truck, which immediately took off. The beating party would go on for the next three or four hours before they turned me over to another team that was going to use different torture techniques.
“Stop praying, Motherfucker, you’re killing people,” Mr. X said, and punched me hard on my mouth. My mouth and nose started to bleed, and my lips grew so big that I technically could not speak anymore. The colleague of Mr. X turned out to be one of my guards, a tall white sergeant in his late twenties who I called Big Boss. Mr. X and Big Boss each took a side and started to punch me and smash me against the metal of the truck. One of the guys hit me so hard that my breath stopped and I was choking; I felt like I was breathing through my ribs. I almost suffocated without their knowledge. I was having a hard time breathing due to the head cover anyway, plus they hit me so many times on my ribs that I stopped breathing for a moment.
Did I pass out? Maybe not; all I know is that I kept noticing Mr. X several times spraying Ammonia in my nose. The funny thing was that Mr. X was at the same time my “lifesaver,” as were all the guards I would be dealing with for the next year, or most of them. All of them were allowed to give me medication and first aid.
After ten to fifteen minutes, the truck stopped at the beach, and my escorting team dragged me out of the truck and put me in a high-speed boat. Mr. X and Big Boss never gave me a break; they kept hitting me, Mr. X while talking, Big Boss silently, and jerking on my shackles in order to make them stab me. “You’re killing people,” said Mr. X. I believe he was thinking out loud: he knew his was the most cowardly crime in the world, torturing a helpless detainee who completely went to submission and turned himself in. What a brave operation! Mr. X was trying to convince himself that he was doing the right thing.
Inside the boat, Mr. X made me drink salt water, I believe it was directly from the ocean. It was so nasty I threw up. They would put any object in my mouth and shout, “Swallow, Motherfucker!”, but I decided inside not to swallow the organ-damaging salt water, which choked me when they kept pouring it in my mouth. “Swallow, you idiot!” I contemplated quickly, and decided for the nasty, damaging water rather than death.
Mr. X and Sergeant Big Boss escorted me for about three hours in the high-speed boat. The goal of such a trip was, first, to torture the detainee and claim that “the detainee hurt himself during transport,” and second, to make the detainee believe he was being transferred to some far, faraway secret prison. We detainees knew all of that; we had detainees reporting they had been flown around for four hours and found themselves in the same jail where they started. I knew from the beginning that I was going to be transferred to Camp Echo, about a five-minute ride. Camp Echo had a very bad reputation: just hearing the name gave me nausea.* I knew the whole long trip I was going to take was meant to terrorize me. But what difference does it make? I cared less about the place, and more about the people who were detaining me. No matter where I got transferred, I would still be a detainee of the U.S. Armed Forces; and as for rendition to a third country, I thought I was through with that because I was already sent to Jordan for eight months. The politics of the DoD toward me was to take care of me on their own; “September 11 didn’t happen in Jordan; we don’t expect other countries to pry Intels off detainees as we do,” Mr. X said once. The Americans obviously were not satisfied with the results achieved by their “torture allies.”
But I think when torture comes into play, things get out of control. Torture doesn’t guarantee that the detainee cooperates. In order to stop torture, the detainee has to please his assailant, even with untruthful, and sometimes misleading, Intels; sorting information out is time-consuming. And experience shows that torture doesn’t stop or even reduce terrorist attacks: Egypt, Algeria, Turkey are good examples. On the other hand, discussion has brought tremendously good results. After the unsuccessful attack on the Egyptian president in Addis Ababa, the government reached a cease-fire with Al Gawaa al-Islamiyah, and the latter opted later on for a political fight. Nevertheless, the Americans had learned a lot from their torture-practicing allies, and they were working closely together.
When the boat reached the coast, Mr. X and his colleague dragged me out and made me sit, crossing my legs. I was moaning from the unbearable pain.
“Uh… Uh… ALLAH… ALLAH.… I told you not to fuck with us, didn’t I?” said Mr. X, mimicking me. I hoped I could stop moaning, because the gentleman kept mimicking me and blaspheming the Lord. However, the moaning was necessary so I could breathe. My feet were numb, for the chains stopped the blood circulation to my hands and my feet; I was happy for every kick I got so I could alter my position. “Do not move Motherfucker!” said Mr. X, but sometimes I couldn’t help changing position; it was worth the kick.
“We appreciate everybody who works with us, thanks gentlemen,” said Captain Collins. I recognized his voice; although he was addressing his Arab guests, the message was addressed to me more than anybody. It was nighttime. My blindfold didn’t keep me from feeling the bright lighting from some kind of high-watt projectors.
“We happy for zat. Maybe we take him to Egypt, he say everything,” said an Arab guy whose voice I had never heard, with a thick Egyptian accent. I could tell the guy was in his late twenties or early thirties based on his voice, his speech, and later on his actions. I could also tell that his English was both poor and decidedly mispronounced. Then I heard indistinct conversations here and there, after which the Egyptian and another guy approached. Now they’re talking directly to me in Arabic:
“What a coward! You guys ask for civil rights? Guess you get none,” said the Egyptian.
“Somebody like this coward takes us only one hour in Jordan to spit everything,” said the Jordanian. Obviously, he didn’t know that I had already spent eight months in Jordan and that no miracle took place.
“We take him to EEEgypt,” said the Egyptian, addressing Captain Collins.
“Maybe later,” Captain Collins said.
“How poor are these Americans! They really are spoiling these fuckers. But now we’re working with them,” said the Egyptian guy, now addressing me directly in Arabic. When I heard Egypt, and a new rendition, my heart was pounding. I hated the endless world tour I was forcibly taking. I seriously thought rendition to Egypt on the spot was possible, because I knew how irritated and desperate the Americans were when it came to my case. The government was and still is misled about my case.
“But you know we’re working with Americans in the field,” said the Egyptian. He was right: Yemeni detainees had told me that they were interrogated by Jordanians and Americans at the same table when they were captured in Karachi and afterward transferred to a secret place on September 11, 2002.*
After all kinds of threats and degrading statements, I started to miss a lot of the trash talk between the Arabs and their American accomplices, and at one point I drowned in my thoughts. I felt ashamed that my people were being used for this horrible job by a government that claims to be the leader of the democratic free world, a government that preaches against dictatorship and “fights” for human rights and sends its children to die for that purpose: What a joke this government makes of its own people!
What would the dead average American think if he or she could see what his or her government is doing to someone who has done no crimes against anybody? As much as I was ashamed for the Arabic fellows, I knew that they definitely didn’t represent the average Arab. Arabic people are among the greatest on the planet, sensitive, emotional, loving, generous, sacrificial, religious, charitable, and light-hearted. No one deserves to be used for such a dirty job, no matter how poor he is. No, we are better than that! If people in the Arab world knew what was happening in this place, the hatred against the U.S. would be heavily watered, and the accusation that the U.S. is helping and working together with dictators in our countries would be cemented. I had a feeling, or rather a hope, that these people would not go unpunished for their crimes. The situation didn’t make me hate either Arabs or Americans; I just felt bad for the Arabs, and how poor we are!
All these thoughts were sliding through my head, and distracted me from hearing the nonsense conversations. After about forty minutes, I couldn’t really tell, Captain Collins instructed the Arabic team to take over. The two guys grabbed me roughly, and since I couldn’t walk on my own, they dragged me on the tips of my toes to the boat. I must have been very near the water, because the trip to the boat was short. I don’t know, they either they put me in another boat or in a different seat. This seat was both hard and straight.
“Move!”
“Move, Fucker!” They gave this order knowing that I was too hurt to be able to move. After all I was bleeding from my mouth, my ankles, my wrists, and maybe my nose, I couldn’t tell for sure. But the team wanted to keep the factor of fear and terror maintained.
“Sit!” said the Egyptian guy, who did most of the talking while both were pulling me down until I hit the metal. The Egyptian sat on my right side, and the Jordanian on my left.
“What’s your fucking name?” asked the Egyptian.
“M-O-O-H-H-M-M-EE-D-D-O-O-O-U!” I answered. Technically I couldn’t speak because of the swollen lips and hurting mouth. You could tell I was completely scared. Usually I wouldn’t talk if somebody starts to hurt me. In Jordan, when the interrogator smashed me in the face, I refused to talk, ignoring all his threats. This was a milestone in my interrogation history. You can tell I was hurt like never before; it wasn’t me anymore, and I would never be the same as before. A thick line was drawn between my past and my future with the first hit Mr. X delivered to me.
“He is like a kid!” said the Egyptian accurately, addressing his Jordanian colleague. I felt warm between them both, though not for long. With the cooperation of the Americans, a long torture trip was being prepared.
I couldn’t sit straight in the chair. They put me in a kind of thick jacket which fastened me to the seat. It was a good feeling. However, there was a destroying drawback to it: my chest was so tightened that I couldn’t breathe properly. Plus, the air circulation was worse than the first trip. I didn’t know why, exactly, but something was definitely going wrong.
“I c.… a… a… n’t br… e… a… the!”
“Suck the air!” said the Egyptian wryly. I was literally suffocating inside the bag around my head. All my pleas and my begging for some free air ended in a cul-de-sac.
I heard indistinct conversations in English, I think it was Mr. X and his colleague, and probably Captain Collins. Whoever it was, they were supplying the Arab team with torture materials during the three-or four-hour trip. The order went as follows: They stuffed the air between my clothes and me with ice cubes from my neck to my ankles, and whenever the ice melted, they put in new, hard ice cubes. Moreover, every once in a while, one of the guards smashed me, most of the time in the face. The ice served both for the pain and for wiping out the bruises I had from that afternoon. Everything seemed to be perfectly prepared. People from cold regions might not understand the extent of the pain when ice cubes get stuck on your body. Historically, kings during medieval and pre-medieval times used this method to let the victim slowly die. The other method, of hitting the victim while blindfolded in inconsistent intervals, was used by the Nazis during World War II. There is nothing more terrorizing than making somebody expect a smash every single heartbeat.
“I am from Hasi Matruh, where are you from?” said the Egyptian, addressing his Jordanian colleague. He was speaking as if nothing was happening. You could tell he was used to torturing people.
“I am from the south” answered the Jordanian. I tried to keep my prayers in my heart. I could hardly remember a prayer, but I did know I needed the Lord’s help, as I always do, and in that direction went my prayers. Whenever I was conscious, I drowned in my thoughts. I finally had gotten used to the routine, ice cubes until melted, smashing. But what would it be like if I landed in Egypt after about twenty-five hours of torture? What would the interrogation there look like? Mamdouh Habib, an Australian detainee who was born in Egypt, once described his unlucky trip from Pakistan to Egypt to me; so far everything I was experiencing, like the ice cubes and smashing, was consistent with Mamdouh’s story. So I expected electric shocks in the pool. How much power can my body, especially my heart, handle? I know something about electricity and its devastating, irreversible damage: I saw Mamdouh collapsing in the blocks a couple of times every week with blood gushing out of his nose until it soaked his clothes. Mamdouh Habib was a Martial art trainer and athletically built.*
I was constructing the whole interrogation over and over, their questions, my answers. But what if they don’t believe me? No, they would believe me, because they understand the recipe of terrorism more than the Americans, and have more experience. The cultural barrier between the Christian and the Muslim world still irritates the approach of Americans to the whole issue considerably; Americans tend to widen the circle of involvement to catch the largest possible numbers of Muslims. They always speak about the Big Conspiracy against the U.S. I personally had been interrogated about people who just practiced the basics of the religion and sympathized with Islamic movements; I was asked to provide every detail about Islamic movements, no matter how moderate. That’s amazing in a country like the U.S., where Christian terrorist organizations such as Nazis and White Supremacists have the freedom to express themselves and recruit people openly and nobody can bother them. But as a Muslim, if you sympathize with the political views of an Islamic organization you’re in big trouble. Even attending the same mosque as a suspect is big trouble. I mean this fact is clear for everybody who understands the ABCs of American policy toward so-called Islamic Terrorism.
The Arabo-American party was over, and the Arabs turned me over once more to the same U.S. team. They dragged me out of the boat and threw me, I would say, in the same truck as the one that afternoon. We were obviously riding on a dirt road.
“Do not move!” said Mr. X, but I didn’t recognize any words anymore. I don’t think that anybody beat me, but I was not conscious. When the truck stopped, Mr. X and his strong associate towed me from the truck, and dragged me over some steps. The cool air of the room hit me, and boom, they threw me face down on the metal floor of my new home.
“Do not move, I told you not to fuck with me, Motherfucker!” said Mr. X, his voice trailing off. He was obviously tired. He left right away with a promise of more actions, and so did the Arab team.
A short time after my arrival, I felt somebody taking the heavy headgear with the earmuffs and goggles off my head. Removing these things was both painful and relieving, painful because they had started to penetrate my skin and stick, leaving scars, and relieving because I started to breathe normally and the pressure around my head went away. When the blindfold was taken off I saw a masked male who seemed to be both a medical professional and part of the torture team. He wore an Army uniform but I couldn’t see his rank. His way of speaking suggested he was in his early thirties. I figured he was a Doctor, but why the heck is he hiding behind a mask, and why is he U.S. Army, when the Navy is in charge of the medical care of detainees?
“If you fuckin’ move, I’m gonna hurt you!” I was wondering how could I possibly move, and what possible damage I could do. I was in chains, and every inch in my body was hurting. That is not a Doctor, that is a human butcher!
When the young man checked on me, he realized he needed more stuff. He left and soon came back with some medical gear. I glimpsed his watch: it was about 1:30 a.m., which meant about eight hours since I was kidnapped from Delta Camp. The Doctor started to wash the blood off my face with a soaked bandage. After that, he put me on a mattress—the only item in the stark cell—with the help of the guards.
“Do not move,” said the guard who was standing over me. The Doctor wrapped many elastic belts around my chest and ribs. After that, they made me sit. “If you try to bite me, I’m gonna fuckin’ hurt you!” said the Doctor while stuffing me with a whole bunch of tablets. I didn’t respond; they were moving me around like an object. Sometime later they took off the chains, and later still one of the guards threw a thin, small, worn-out blanket onto me through the bin hole, and that was everything I would have in the room. No soap, no toothbrush, no iso mat, no Koran, nothing.
I tried to sleep, but I was kidding myself; my body was conspiring against me. It took some time until the medications started to work, then I trailed off, and only woke up when one of the guards hit my cell violently with his boot.
“Get up, piece of shit!” The Doctor once more gave me a bunch of medication and checked on my ribs. “Done with the motherfucker,” he said, showing me his back as he headed toward the door. I was so shocked seeing a Doctor act like that, because I knew that at least 50 percent of medical treatment is psychological. I was like, This is an evil place, since my only solace is this bastard Doctor.*
I soon was knocked out. To be honest I can report very little about the next couple of weeks because I was not in the right state of mind. I was lying on my bed the whole time, and I was not able to realize my surroundings. I tried to find out the Kibla, the direction of Mecca, but there was no clue.