First Visit in the Secret Place… My Conversation with My Interrogators, and How I Found a Way to Quench Their Thirst… Chain Reaction of Confessions… Goodness Comes Gradually… The Big Confession… A Big Milestone
Back in Camp Delta the Kibla was indicated with an arrow in every cell. Even the call to prayer could be heard five times a day in Camp Delta.* The U.S. has always repeated that the war is not against the Islamic religion—which is very prudent because it is strategically impossible to fight against a religion as big as Islam—and back there the U.S. was showing the rest of the world how religious freedom ought to be maintained.
But in the secret camps, the war against the Islamic religion was more than obvious. Not only was there no sign to Mecca, but the ritual prayers were also forbidden. Reciting the Koran was forbidden. Possessing the Koran was forbidden. Fasting was forbidden. Practically any Islamic-related ritual was strictly forbidden. I am not talking here about hearsay; I am talking about something I experienced myself. I don’t believe that the average American is paying taxes to wage war against Islam, but I do believe that there are people in the government who have a big problem with the Islamic religion.
For the first couple of weeks after my “Birthday Party” I had no clue about time, whether it was day or night, let alone the time of day. I could only pray in my heart lying down, because I could not stand straight or bend. When I woke up from my semi-coma, I tried to make out the difference between day and night. In fact it was a relatively easy job: I used to look down the toilet, and when the drain was very bright to lightish dark, that was the daytime in my life. I succeeded in illegally stealing some prayers, but Sergeant Big Boss busted me.
“He’s praying!” Big Boss yelled, and called his colleague. “Come on!” They put on their masks. “Stop praying.” I don’t recall whether I finished my prayer sitting, or if I finished at all. As a punishment Sergeant Big Boss forbade me to use the bathroom for some time.
As soon as the assessing doctor reported that I was relieved from my pain, it was time to hit again before the injuries healed, following the motto “Strike While the Iron’s Hot.” When I heard the melee behind the door, and recognized the voices of both Captain Collins and his Egyptian colleague, I drowned in sweat, got dizzy, and my feet failed to carry me.* My heart pounded so hard that I thought it was going to choke me and fly off through my mouth. Indistinct conversations involving Captain Collins and the guards took place.
“Meester Cooleens, let mee geet him,” said the Egyptian guy in his stretched-out out English to Captain Collins. “I wish Meester Cooleens let me in to have a little conversation with you,” said the Egyptian in Arabic, addressing me.
“Stand back now; let me see him alone,” Captain Collins said. I was shaking, listening to the bargaining between the Americans and the Egyptians about who was going to get me. I looked like somebody who was going through an autopsy while still alive and helpless.
“You are going to cooperate, whether you choose to or not. You can choose between the civilized way, which I personally prefer, or the other way,” said Captain Collins when the guards dragged me out of my cell to him. In the background the Egyptian guy was barking and threatening me with all kinds of painful revenge.
“I am cooperating,” I said in a weak voice. It had been a while since I had talked the last time, and my mouth was not used to talking anymore. My muscles were very sore. I was scared beyond belief. The Halloween-masked guard, Big Boss, was literally stuck on me, moving around and ready to strike at an eye’s wink.
“No, quit denying. We are not interested in your denials. Don’t fuck with me,” Captain Collins said.
“I’m not.”
“I am going to appoint some interrogators to question you. You know some of them, and some you don’t.”
“OK!” I said. The conversation was closed. Captain Collins ordered the guards to put me back in my cell, and he disappeared.
Then nothing short of a “miracle” happened: SFC Shally made it to the “far faraway secret place.”
“You’ve been causing me so much trouble—nah, well, in Paris it wasn’t that bad but in Mauritania the weather was terrible. I sat at the table across from Karim Mehdi, and when I asked him, ‘Who recruited you for al Qaeda?’ his answer was you. And the same with Christian Ganczarski. Both of them are working with us now. You know, you are a part of an organization which the free world wants to wipe out of the face of the earth,” said SFC Shally.
I was listening carefully, and wondering, Free world? I was saying to myself, Do I really have to listen to this crap? SFC Shally was accompanied by the same female sergeant that SSG Mary had brought about two months ago to molest me sexually.
“You know, in jail the one who talks first wins. You lost and Karim Mehdi won. He said everything about you,” said the female sergeant. “The good thing is, we don’t have to dirty our hands with you; we have Israelis and Egyptians doing the job for us,” she continued, while taunting me sexually by touching me everywhere. I neither talked nor showed any resistance. I was sitting there like a stone.*
“Why is he shaking so much?” asked the female sergeant.
“I don’t know,” SFC Shally answered.
“But his hands are sweating like crazy!”
“If I were him, the same would be happening to me,” said SFC Shally. “You think this place is like Camp Delta, where you survived every attempt to break you, but you won’t survive here if you keep playing games with us,” he said.
“Like what?” I wondered.
“Like your trip to Slovenia. You only told me about it because you knew I knew about it. Now: are you going to cooperate with us?” he asked.
“I was cooperating,” I said.
“No, you weren’t, and guess what? I am going to write in my report that you’re full of shit, and other people are going to take care of you. The Egyptian is very interested in you!”
Meanwhile the female sergeant stopped molesting me since I showed no resistance. “What’s wrong with him?” she wondered once more.
“I don’t know. But maybe he is too relaxed in this place. We should maybe take away some of his sleep,” said SFC Shally. He took the sergeant of the guards aside and whispered something that I figured was the recipe I would be receiving next. Whenever he took a guard aside to talk, I knew it wasn’t going to work out to my benefit. I’ve never seen a human being as emotionless as he was. He spoke about keeping me from sleeping without a single change in his voice, face, or composure. I mean, regardless of our religion or the race, we human beings always feel more or less bad for somebody who is suffering. I personally can never help breaking into tears when I read a sad story or watch a sad movie. I have no problem admitting this. Some people may say that I am a weak person; well, then, let me be!
“You should ask Captain Collins to forgive you the lies, and start everything over,” said the female sergeant. I didn’t say anything. “Start small. Give us a piece of information you never said before!” she continued. I had no response to that malicious, nonsense suggestion either.
“Your mom is an old lady. I don’t know how long she can withstand the conditions in the detention facility,” SFC Shally said. I knew that he was talking out of his tail. But I also knew that the government was ready to take any measures to pry information out of me, even if it would take injury to my family members, especially when you know that the Mauritanian government is cooperating blindly with the U.S. I mean the U.S. government has more power over Mauritanians than over U.S. nationals, that’s how far the cooperation goes. A U.S. citizen cannot be arrested without due process of law, but Mauritanian citizens can—and by the U.S. government! I always said to my interrogators, “Let’s say I am criminal. Is an American criminal holier than a non-American?” And most of them had no answer. But I am sure that Americans are not much luckier. I’ve heard of many of them getting persecuted and wrongly arrested, especially Muslims and Arabs, in the name of the War Against Terror. Americans, non-Americans: it is as the German proverb puts it, Heute die! Morgen du! Today Them, Tomorrow You!
It was very hard to start a conversation with SFC Shally; even the guards hated him. Today I couldn’t get anywhere with him; I just couldn’t find a handrail in the train of his speech. And as to the other female sergeant, she was only sent to harass me sexually, but I was at a stage where I had no feeling toward any female at all that way. Thus, her mission was dead before it was born.
“You know how it looks when you feel our wrath,” SFC Shally said, and left me with many other threats including sleep deprivation and starvation, which I believed to be true and serious. The guards put me roughly back in my cell.
Over the next several days, I almost lost my mind. Their recipe for me went like this: I must be kidnapped from Camp Delta and put in a secret place. I must be made to believe I was on a far, faraway island. I must be informed by Captain Collins that my mom was captured and put in a special facility.
In the secret place, the physical and psychological suffering must be at their highest extremes. I must not know the difference between day and night. I couldn’t tell a thing about days going by or time passing; my time consisted of a crazy darkness all the time. My diet times were deliberately messed up. I was starved for long periods and then given food but not given time to eat.
“You have three minutes: Eat!” a guard would yell at me, and then after about half a minute he would grab the plate. “You’re done!” And then it was the opposite extreme: I was given too much food and a guard came into my cell and forced me to eat all of it. When I said “I need water” because the food got stuck in my throat, he punished me by making me drink two 25-ounce water bottles.
“I can’t drink,” I said when my abdomen felt as if it was going to explode. But Sergeant Big Boss screamed and threatened me, pushing me against the wall and raising his hand to hit me. I figured drinking would be better, and drank until I vomited.
All the guards were masked with Halloween-like masks, and so were the Medics, and the guards were briefed that I was a high-level, smart-beyond-belief terrorist. They made me call them by the names of Star Wars characters, with the lead guard called Master Yoda.
“You know who you are?” said Yoda’s friend. “You’re a terrorist who helped killed 3,000 people!”
“Indeed I am!” I answered. I realized it was futile to discuss my case with a guard, especially when he knew nothing about me. The guards were all very hostile. They cursed, shouted, and constantly put me through rough Military-like basic training. “Get up,” “Walk to the bin hole.” “Stop!” “Grab the shit!” “Eat.” “You got two minutes!” “You’re done!” “Give the shit back!” “Drink!” “You better drink the whole water bottle!” “Hurry up!” “Sit down!” “Don’t sit down unless I say it!” “Search the piece of shit!” Most of the guards rarely attacked me physically, but Sergeant Big Boss hit me once until I fell face-down on the floor, and whenever he and his associate grabbed me they held me very tight and made me run in the heavy chains: “Move!”
No sleep was allowed. In order to enforce this, I was given 25-ounce water bottles in intervals of one to two hours, depending on the mood of the guards, 24 hours a day. The consequences were devastating. I couldn’t close my eyes for ten minutes because I was sitting most of the time on the bathroom. Later on, after the tension was relieved, I asked one of the guards, “Why the water diet? Why don’t you just make me stay awake by standing up, like in Camp Delta?”
“Psychologically it’s devastating to make somebody stay awake on his own, without ordering him,” said Master Yoda. “Believe me, you haven’t seen anything. We have put detainees naked under the shower for days, eating, pissing, and shitting in the shower!” he continued. Other guards told me about other torture methods that I wasn’t really eager to know about.
I was allowed to say three sentences: “Yes, sir!” “Need my interrogator!” and “Need the medics.” Every once in a while the whole guard team stormed my cell, dragged me out, put me facing the wall, and threw out whatever was in my cell, shouting and cursing in order to humiliate me. It wasn’t much: I was deprived from all comfort items that a detainee needs except for a mattress and a small, thin, worn-out blanket. For the first weeks I also had no shower, no laundry, no brushing. I almost developed bugs. I hated my smell.
No sleep. Water diet. Every move behind my door made me stand up in a military-like position with my heart pounding like boiling water. My appetite was non-existent. I was waiting every minute on the next session of torture. I hoped I would die and go to heaven; no matter how sinful I am, these people can never be more merciful than God. Ultimately we all are going to face the Lord and beg for his mercy, admitting our weaknesses and our sinfulness. I could hardly remember any prayers, all I could say was, “Please, God, relieve my pain…”
I started to hallucinate and hear voices as clear as crystal. I heard my family in a casual familial conversation that I couldn’t join. I heard Koran readings in a heavenly voice.* I heard music from my country. Later on the guards used these hallucinations and started talking with funny voices through the plumbing, encouraging me to hurt the guards and plot an escape. But I wasn’t misled by them, even though I played along.
“We heard somebody—maybe a genie!” they used to say.
“Yeah, but I ain’t listening to him,” I responded. I just realized I was on the edge of losing my mind. I started to talk to myself. Although I tried as hard as I could to convince myself that I was not in Mauritania, I was not near my family, so I could not possibly hear them speaking, I kept hearing the voices constantly, day and night. Psychological assistance was out of the question, or really any medical assistance, besides the asshole I didn’t want to see.
I couldn’t find a way on my own. At that moment I didn’t know if it was day or night, but I assumed it was night because the toilet drain was rather dark. I gathered my strength, guessed the Kibla, kneeled, and started to pray to God. “Please guide me. I know not what to do. I am surrounded by merciless wolves, who fear not thee.” When I was praying I burst into tears, though I suppressed my voice lest the guards hear me. You know there are always serious prayers and lazy prayers. My experience has taught me that God always responds to your serious prayers.
“Sir,” I said, when I finished my prayers. One of the guards showed up in his Halloween mask.
“What?” asked the guard with a dry, cold emotion.
“I want to see Captain Collins. Not the sergeant; I want the guy in charge,” I said.
“You mean Mr. Zuley?” Oops, the guard just made a big mistake by revealing the real name of Captain Collins. In fact I was already familiar with the name, because I saw it a long time before on a file SFC Shally carried, and if you can put two and two together the puzzle is solved.*
“Yes, I mean the one who decides things, not the sergeant.” I really wanted to speak to somebody who was likely to understand me, rather than SFC Shally, who hardly had an understanding for anything. But Mr. Zuley didn’t show up, SFC Shally did.
“You asked for Captain Collins?”
“I did.”
“And you asked not to see me?”
“I did.”
“Well, I work for Captain Collins, and he sent me!” said SFC Shally dryly.
“OK, I have no problem with cooperating with you just as I would with Captain Collins. However, I would also like the female Staff Sergeant to take part in the interviews,” I said.
“I am not the one who decides about that, but I guess it would be no problem,” he said.
“I am starving, I want you to tell the guards to give me some food.”
“If you start to cooperate, you’ll get more food. I am going to come later today to interview you. I just want to tell you that you made the right decision.”
Confessions are like the beads of a necklace: if the first bead falls, the rest follow.
To be honest and truthful, I am telling many things here that I had been holding back merely because of fear. I just couldn’t find any common ground to discuss my case comfortably in a relaxed environment. I had no crimes to confess to, and that is exactly where I got stuck with my interrogators, who were not looking for innocent undertakings. They were looking for evil enterprises. But through my conversations with the FBI and the DoD, I had a good idea as to what wild theories the government had about me.
“We know you came to Canada to plot to harm the U.S.,” said SFC Shally.
“And what was my evil plan?”
“Maybe not exactly to harm the U.S., but to attack the CN Tower in Toronto?” he said. I was thinking, Is the guy crazy? I’ve never heard of such a tower.
“You realize if I admit to such a thing I have to involve other people! What if it turns out I was lying?” I said.
“So what? We know your friends are bad, so if they get arrested, even if you lie about Ahmed Laabidi it doesn’t matter, because they’re bad.” I thought, “What an asshole! he wants to lock up innocent people just because they’re Muslim Arabs! That’s Nuts!” So SFC Shally very much told me a precise crime I could admit to which would comply with the Intel theory.
“Back in the states, if I recommend somebody to a good school and he ended up shooting and killing people, is that my fault?” Shally asked me once.
“No!”
“So, if you have recruited people for al Qaeda, it’s not your fault if they become terrorists!” he said.
“The only problem is that I haven’t, regardless of the consequences.”
SFC Shally made it clearer. “We don’t give a shit if you helped bin al-Shibh and two other hijackers go to Chechnya. We only give a shit if you sent them to your brother-in-law Abu Hafs.” So, according to SFC Shally, I could stop the torture if I said I recruited bin al-Shibh and two hijackers. To be honest with you, they made me believe I recruited Ramzi bin-al-Shibh; I thought, God, I might have recruited the guy before I was born!
“Looks like a dog, walks like a dog, smells like a dog, barks like a dog, must be a dog,” Agent Robert used to say repeatedly during his sessions with me. It sounded awful, I know I am not a dog, and yet I must be one. The whole police theory of doing every trick to keep people in jail by pinning things on them doesn’t make sense to me. I believe simply that an innocent suspect should be released. As the just, legendary Arabic King Omar put it, “I would rather release a criminal than imprison an innocent man.”
Agent Michael explained the recruitment scenario the most: “Bin al-Shibh said that you helped him go to Chechnya by suggesting that he and his friends transit through Afghanistan, because Georgia was sending Mujahideen back. Furthermore, when I asked bin al-Shibh what he thinks you do for al Qaeda, he said that you’re an al Qaeda recruiter.”
“I believe that without you September 11 would never have happened,” Michael concluded. According to his theory I was the guy; all I needed to do was to admit it. Many interrogators asked me, “What do you know about al Qaeda cells in Germany and Canada?” To be honest with you, I’d never heard of such a thing; I know al Qaeda organizations, but I don’t know about al Qaeda cells in other countries, though that doesn’t necessarily mean there aren’t.
Robert pushed the issue even more into the light. “You are a leader, people like you, respect you, and follow you,” he said to me multiple times. As you can see, my recipe was already cooked for me. I am not only a part of an al Qaeda cell in both Germany and Canada, but I am the leader.
I argued the case of bin al-Shibh with Robert many times. “According to you, I recruited Ramzi and his two friends for al Qaeda,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Okay, but that allegation requires many other things and coincidences.”
“Like what?” he said.
First, I explained, I supposedly knew bin al-Shibh, and Ramzi himself said he has seen me only once, and that is not enough for knowing somebody, let alone recruiting him. Second, I must have recruited bin al-Shibh without his knowledge, because all he claims is that I told him how to get to Chechnya. “According to you,” I told him, “And maybe to him, too, I told him to travel through Afghanistan, so what guaranteed that he was going to stay in Afghanistan? And if he miraculously stayed in Afghanistan, what guaranteed that he was going to train? And if he decided to train, what guaranteed that he was going to meet al Qaeda’s criteria? And if by chance he met al Qaeda’s criteria, what told me that he was ready to be suicide bomber, and was ready to learn how to fly? This is just ridiculous!”
“But you are very smart,” Agent Robert said.
“Under these circumstances, I agree with you that I’m beyond smart: I am a psychic! But what makes you guys think that I’m so evil?”
“We just don’t know, but smart people don’t leave any traces. For instance, we had an FBI Agent who had been working for Russia for 20 years without being noticed,” said Robert.*
“We have people who still believe that you conspired with Ressam,” said SSG Mary when I told her not to ask me about Ahmed Ressam because the FBI had settled his case since he had started cooperating.
“Obviously there is no way out with you guys,” I addressed SSG Mary.
“I’m telling you how!” she responded.
Now, thanks to the unbearable pain I was suffering, I had nothing to lose, and I allowed myself to say anything to satisfy my assailants. Session followed session since I called Captain Collins.
“People are very happy with what you’re saying,” said SFC Shally after the first session. I answered all the questions he asked me with incriminating answers. I tried my best to make myself look as bad as I could, which is exactly the way you can make your interrogator happy. I made my mind up to spend the rest of my life in jail. You see most people can put up with being imprisoned unjustly, but nobody can bear agony day in and day out for the rest of his life.
SFC Shally started to take the shape of a human being, though a bad one. “I write my report like newspaper articles, and the members of the community submit their comments. They’re really happy,” Sergeant Shally said.
“So am I,” I said. I was wondering about the new, half-happy face of SFC Shally. Normally Shally is an angry person; if he talks to you he always looks at the roof, he hardly ever looks anybody in the eyes. He can barely lead a dialogue, but he’s very good when it comes to monologues. “I divorced my wife because she was just so annoying,” he once said to me.
“Your request to see SSG Mary is not approved, in the meantime I am working on your case,” he said.
“Alright!” I knew that SFC Shally was a trial, and that the DoD still wanted me to deal with the “bad guy.”
“I told you I’m good at breaking detainees,” he said.
“But since you don’t know my limit, you drove me beyond it,” I responded. When I started to talk generously to SFC Shally, Richard Zuley brought SSG Mary back into the picture; for some reason the team wanted her back, too.
“Thank you very much for getting the sergeant back,” I said.
SSG Mary looked both sad and happy. “I enjoy talking to you, you’re easy to talk to, and you have pretty teeth,” she told me before I was kidnapped from Camp Delta. Mary was the closest person to me; she was the only one I could relate to.
“I can never do what Captain Collins is doing; all he’s worried about is getting his job done,” said SSG Mary, commenting on Zuley’s methods when Shally was absent. Mary and Shally were now interrogating me in turn. They dedicated the whole time until around November 10, 2003 to questioning me about Canada and September 11; they didn’t ask me a single question about Germany, where I really had the center of gravity of my life. Whenever they asked me about somebody in Canada I had some incriminating information about that person, even if I didn’t know him. Whenever I thought about the words, “I don’t know,” I got nauseous, because I remembered the words of SFC Shally, “All you have to say is, ‘I don’t know, I don’t remember, and we’ll fuck you!’ Or Captain Collins saying, “We don’t want to hear your denials anymore!” And so I erased these words from my dictionary.
“We would like you to write your answers on paper; it’s too much work to keep up with your talk, and you might forget things when you talk to us,” said SFC Shally.
“Of course!” I was really happy with the idea because I would rather talk to a paper than talk to him; at least the paper wouldn’t shout in my face or threaten me. SFC Shally drowned me in a pile of papers, which I duly filled with writings. It was a good outlet for my frustration and my depression.
“You’re very generous in your written answers; you even wrote a whole bunch about Abu Mohammed al-Kanadi, whom you really don’t know,” SFC Shally accurately said, forgetting that he forbade me to use the words “I don’t know.”
“Captain Collins reads your writing with a lot of interest,” said SFC Shally. I was extremely frightened, because this statement was ambiguous. “We’re gonna give you an assignment about Ahmed Laabidi. He is detained in Florida and they cannot make him talk; he keeps denying everything. You better provide us a Smoking Gun against him,” said SFC Shally. I was so sad: how rude was this guy, to ask me to provide a smoking gun about somebody I hardly know?
“All I can say is that Ahmed L. is a criminal and should be locked up the rest of his life. I’m ready to testify against him in court,” I said, though I was not ready to lie in court to burn an innocent soul.
“Ahmed Laabidi is facing the death penalty if we can make him guilty of drug smuggling,” SSG Mary said once, showing me his picture. I burst out laughing as soon as I saw the expression on his face and the Bob Barker–Calvin Klein prison uniform.*
“What are you laughing at?” Mary asked me.
“It’s just funny!”
“How can you laugh at your friend?” I felt guilty right away, even though I knew I was not laughing at him. After all, my situation was worse than his. I was laughing at the situation: I could read everything that was going on in his head just from the expression on his face. I’d been made to take that same picture many times, in Senegal, in Mauritania, in Germany, in Jordan, in Bagram, and in GTMO. I hate the pose, I hate the look, I hate the height measure. Let me tell you something, whenever you see that bleak-looking face in a jail uniform, posing in front of a height measure scaled on a wall, you can be sure that is not a happy person.
In fact, I really felt bad for that poor guy. He had sought asylum in Canada for a certain time but the Canadians refused his petition, partly because they considered him as Islamist. Ahmed Laabidi was willing to try his chances in the U.S., where he faced the harsh reality of the highly electrified environment against Muslims and Arabs, and where the U.S. gave him asylum in a high-level security prison and now was trying to link him to any crime. When I saw his face, I knew he was like, “Screw these Americans. How much I hate them! What do they want from me? How did I end up in jail when I came here seeking protection?”
“I talked today with the Canadians and they told me they don’t believe your story about Ahmed Laabidi being involved in drug smuggling into the U.S., but we know he is,” he told me once.
“I can only tell you what I know,” I said.
“But we want you to give an evidence linking Ahmed Laabidi to the Millennium Plot. Things like, he supports the Mujs or believes in Jihad are good, but not good enough to lock him up the rest of his life,” he told me.
“Oh, yes, I will,” I said. He handed me a bunch of papers and I went back in my cell. Oh, my God, I am being so unjust to myself and my brothers, I kept thinking, and then repeating “Nothing’s gonna happen to us.… They’ll go to hell.… Nothing’s gonna happen to us.… They’ll.…” I kept praying in my heart, and repeating my prayers. I took the pen and paper and wrote all kinds of incriminating lies about a poor person who was just seeking refuge in Canada and trying to make some money so he could start a family. Moreover, he is handicapped. I felt so bad, and kept praying silently, “Nothing’s gonna happen to you dear brother…” and blowing on the papers as I finished. Of course it was out of the question to tell them what I knew about him truthfully, because SFC Shally already gave me the guidelines: “Captain Collins is awaiting your testimony against Ahmed Laabidi with extreme interest!” I gave the assignment to SFC Shally, and after evaluation, I saw Captain Collins smiling for the first time.
“Your writing about Ahmed was very interesting, but we want you to provide more detailed information,” he said. I thought, What information does the idiot want from me? I don’t even remember what I’ve just written.
“Yes, no problem,” I said. I was very happy that God answered my prayers for Ahmed Laabidi when I learned in 2005 that he was unconditionally released from custody and sent back to his country. “He’s facing the death penalty,” SSG Mary used to tell me! I was really in no better situation.
“Since I am cooperating, what are you going to do with me?” I asked SFC Shally.
“It depends. If you provide us a great deal of information we didn’t know, it’s going to be weighed against your sentence. For instance, the death penalty could be reduced to life, and life to thirty years,” he responded. Lord have mercy on me! What harsh justice!
“Oh, that’s great,” I replied. I felt bad for everybody I hurt with my false testimonies. My only solaces were, one, that I didn’t hurt anybody as much as I did myself; two, that I had no choice; and three, I was confident that injustice will be defeated, it’s only a matter of time. Moreover, I would not blame anybody for lying about me when he gets tortured. Ahmed was just an example. During this period I wrote more than a thousand pages about my friends with false information. I had to wear the suit the U.S. Intel tailored for me, and that is exactly what I did.
At the beginning of this phase of cooperation the pressure hardly relieved. I was interrogated day and night, and I also had visits from interrogators from the FBI and other agencies who were using my vulnerability. It was so rude to question a human being like that, especially somebody who is cooperating. They made me write names and places and addresses in Germany, Canada, and Mauritania. They showed me military maps, pointing out places of interest. I was shown thousands of pictures. I knew them all by heart because I had seen them so many times; everything was deja-vu. I was like, What ruthless people!
The whole time, the guards were driven madly against me.
“Show him no mercy. Increase the pressure. Drive the hell out of him crazy,” said Captain Collins. And that was exactly what the guards did. Banging on my cell to keep me awake and scared. Taking me violently out of my cell at least twice a day for cell search. Taking me outside in the middle of the night and making me do PT I couldn’t due to my health situation. Putting me facing the wall several times a day and threatening me directly and indirectly. Sometimes they even interrogated me, but I never said a word to my interrogators because I knew the interrogators were behind everything.
“You know who you are?” said Yoda’s associate.
“You are a terrorist,” he continued.
“Yes, Sir!”
“If we kill you once it wouldn’t do. We must kill you three thousand times. But instead we feed you!”
“Yes, Sir.”
The water diet kept working on me harshly. “You haven’t seen nothing yet,” they kept telling me.
“I am not looking forward to see that. I’m just fine without further measures.”
The guards were working in a two-shift routine, day shift and night shift. Whenever the new shift showed up, they made their presence known by banging heavily on the door of my cell to scare me. Whenever the new shift appeared my heart started to pound because they always came up with new ideas to make my life a living hell, like giving me very little food by allowing me about 30 seconds to one minute to eat it, or forcing me to eat every bit of food I got in a very short time. “You better be done!” they would shout. Or they made me clean the shower excessively, or made me fold my towels and my blanket in an impossible way again and again until they were satisfied. To forbidding me any kind of comfort items, they added new rules. One: I should never be lying down; whenever a guard showed up at my bin hole, I always had to be awake, or wake up as soon as a guard walked into my area. There was no sleeping in the terms that we know. Two: My toilet should always be dry! And how, if I am always urinating and flushing? In order to meet the order, I had to use my only uniform to dry up the toilet and stay soaked in shit. Three: My cell should be in a predefined order, including having a folded blanket, so I could never use my blanket.
That was the guards’ recipe. I always showed more fear than I felt as self-defense technique. Not that I would like to play the hero; I’m not, but I wasn’t scared of the guards because I just knew they had orders from above. If they reported back that “detainee wasn’t scared!” the doses would have been increased.
Meanwhile, I had my own recipe. First of all, I knew that I was really just a stone’s throw away from Camp Delta. The interrogators and the guards always hinted at the “God-forsaken nowhere” I was in, but I ignored them completely, and when the guards asked me “Where do you think you are?” I just responded, “I’m not sure, but I am not worried about it; since I am far from my family, it doesn’t really matter to me where I am.” And so I always closed the door whenever they referred to the place. I was afraid that I would be tortured if they knew I knew where I was, but it was kind of solacing, knowing that you are not far from your fellow detainees.
Once I figured out how to tell day from night, I kept count of the days by reciting 10 pages of the Koran every day. In 60 days I would finish and start over, and so I could keep track of the days. “Shut the fuck up! There is nothing to sing about,” said Sergeant Big Boss when he heard me reciting the Koran. After that I recited quietly so nobody could hear me. But my days of the week were still messed up; I failed to keep track of them until I glimpsed SFC Shally’s watch when he pulled it out of his pocket to check the time. He was very vigilant and careful but it was too late, I saw it was a little past 10 a.m., Friday, October, 17, 2003, but he didn’t notice. Friday is a very important Muslim holiday, and that was the reason I wanted to keep track of the weekdays. Besides, I just hated the fact that they deprived me of one of my basic freedoms.
I tried to find out everybody’s name who was involved in my torture—not for retaliation or anything like that; I just didn’t want those people to have the upper hand over any of my brothers, or anybody, no matter who he is. I believe they should not only be deprived of their powers, but they should also be locked up. I succeeded in knowing the names of the boss himself, Richard Zuley, two of my interrogators, two of the guards, and other interrogators who weren’t involved directly in my torture but could serve as witnesses.
When I first met Americans I hated their language because of the pain they made me suffer without a single reason; I didn’t want to learn it. But that was emotion; the call of wisdom was stronger, and so I decided to learn the language. Even though I already knew how to conjugate “to be” and “to have,” my luggage of English was very light. Since I wasn’t allowed to have books, I had to pick up the language mostly from the guards and sometimes my interrogators, and after a short time I could speak like common folk: “He don’t care, she don’t care, I ain’t done nothin’, me and my friend did so and so, F—this and F—that, damn x and damn y…”
I also studied the people around me. My observations resulted in knowing that only white Americans were appointed to deal with me, both guards and interrogators. There was only one black guard, but he had no say. His associate was a younger, white Army specialist but the latter was always in charge. You might say, “How do you know the ranks of the guards, when they were covered?” I wasn’t supposed to know who was in charge, nor should they have given me a hint as to who the boss was, but in America it’s very easy to notice who the boss is: there’s just no mistaking him.
My suspicion of me being near Camp Delta was cemented when one day I got some of the diet I was used to back in Delta Three. “Why did they give me a hot meal?” I asked the sarcastic head guard. “Doctor said we had to.” I really looked like a ghost, just bones, no meat. In a matter of weeks I had developed gray hair on the lower half of the sides of my head, a phenomenon people in my culture refer to as the extreme result of depression. Keeping up the pressure was vital in the process of my interrogation. The plan worked: the more pressure, the more stories I produced and the better my interrogators felt toward me.
And then, slowly but surely, the guards were advised to give me the opportunity to brush my teeth, to give me more warm meals, and to give me more showers. The interrogators started to interrogate me without torture or threats; instead, they started using a reward system that included candies and cookies. From what I could see, SSG Mary was the one who took the first steps, but I am sure there had been a meeting about it. Everybody in the team realized that I was about to lose my mind due to my psychological and physical situation. I had been so long in segregation.
“Please, get me out of this living hell!” I said.
“You will not go back to the population anytime soon.” SSG Mary told me. Her answer was harsh but true: there was no plan to get me back. The focus was on holding me segregated as long as they could and gathering information from me.
I still had nothing in my cell. Most of the time I recited the Koran silently. The rest of the time I was talking to myself and thinking over and over about my life and the worst-case scenarios that could happen to me. I kept counting the holes of the cage I was in. There are about four thousand one hundred holes.
Maybe because of this, SSG Mary happily started to give me some puzzles that I could spend my time solving. “If we discover that you lied to us, you’re gonna feel our wrath, and we’re gonna take everything back. This can all go back to the old days, you know that,” SFC Shally used to tell me whenever he gave me a puzzle. My heart would pound, but I was like, What a jackass! Why can’t he let me enjoy my “reward” for the time being? Tomorrow is another day.
I started to enrich my vocabulary. I took a paper and started to write words I didn’t understand, and SFC Shally and SSG Mary explained them to me. If there is anything positive about SFC Shally, it is his rich vocabulary. I don’t remember asking him about a word he couldn’t explain to me. English was his only real language, though he claimed to be able to speak Farsi. “I wanted to learn French, but I hated the way they speak and I quit,” he said.
Captain Collins wants to see you in a couple of days,” SSG Mary said. I was so terrified; at this point I was just fine without his visit.
“He is welcome,” I said. I started to go to the toilet relentlessly. My blood pressure went crazily high. I was wondering what the visit would be like. But thank God the visit was much easier than what I thought. Captain Collins came, escorted by SFC Shally. He was, as always, practical and brief.
“I am very happy with your cooperation. Remember when I told you that I preferred civilized conversations? I think you have provided 85% of what you know, but I am sure you’re gonna provide the rest,” he said, opening an ice bag with some juice.
“Oh, yeah, I’m also happy!” I said, forcing myself to drink the juice just to act as if I were normal. But I wasn’t: I was like, 85% is a big step coming out of his mouth. Captain Collins advised me to keep cooperating.
“I brought you this present,” he said, handing me a pillow. Yes, a pillow. I received the present with a fake overwhelming happiness, and not because I was dying to get a pillow. No, I took the pillow as a sign of the end of the physical torture. We have a joke back home about a man who stood bare naked on the street. When someone asked him, “How can I help you?” He replied, “Give me shoes.” And that was exactly what happened to me. All I needed was a pillow! But it was something: alone in my cell, I kept reading the tag over and over.
“Remember when Captain Collins told you about the 15% you’re holding back,” said SFC Shally a couple of days after Mr. Zuley’s visit. “I believe that your story about Canada doesn’t make sense. You know what we have against you, and you know what the FBI has against you,” he continued.
“So what would make sense?” I asked.
“You know exactly what makes sense,” he said sardonically.
“You’re right, I was wrong about Canada. What I did exactly was.…”
“I want you to write down what you’ve just said. It made perfect sense and I understood, but I want it on paper.”
“My pleasure, Sir!” I said.
I came to Canada with a plan to blow up the CN Tower in Toronto. My accomplices were Ahmed, Mohamed, Hasni, and Raouf. Hasni went to Russia to get us the supply of explosives. Mohamed wrote an explosives simulation software that I picked up, tested myself, and handed in a data medium to Raouf. The latter was supposed to send it with the whole plan to Sheikh Abu Qatada in London so we could get the final fatwa from the Sheikh. Raouf was supposed to buy a lot of sugar to mix with the explosives in order to increase the damage. Ahmed provided the financing. Thanks to Canadian Intel, the plan was discovered and sentenced to failure. I admit that I am as guilty as any other participants and am so sorry and ashamed for what I have done. Signed, M.O. Slahi.
When I handed the paper to SFC Shally, he read it happily.
“This statement makes perfect sense.”
“If you’re ready to buy, I am selling,” I said. SFC Shally could hardly hold himself on the chair; he wanted to leave immediately. I guess the prey was big, and SFC Shally was overwhelmed because he reached a breakthrough where no other interrogators had, in spite of almost four years of uninterrupted interrogation from all kinds of agencies from more than six countries. What a success! SFC Shally almost had a heart attack from happiness.
“I’ll go see him!”
I think the only unhappy person in the team was SSG Mary, because she doubted the truthfulness of the story.
Indeed the next day Captain Collins came to see me, escorted as always by two uniformed men he wanted people to think were his bodyguards. “Remember when I told about the 15% you were holding back?”
“Yes, I do.”
“I think this confession covered that 15%!” I was like, Hell, yes!
“I am happy that it did,” I said.
“Who provided the money?”
“Ahmed did.”
“And you, too?” Captain Collins asked.
“No, I took care of the electrical part.” I don’t really know why I denied the financial part. Did it really make a difference? Maybe I just wanted to maintain the consistency.
“What if we tell you that we found your signature on a fake credit card?” said Captain Collins. I knew he was bullshitting me because I knew I never dealt with such dubious things. But I was not going to argue with him.
“Just tell me the right answer. Is it good to say yes or to say no?” I asked. At that point I hoped I was involved in something so I could admit to it and relieve myself of writing about every practicing Muslim I ever met, and every Islamic organization I ever heard of. It would have been much easier to admit to a true crime and say that’s that. “This confession is consistent with the Intels we and other agencies possess,” Captain Collins said.
“I am happy.”
“Is the story true?” asked Captain Collins.
“Look, these people I was involved with are bad people anyway, and should be put under lock and key. And as to myself, I don’t care as long as you are pleased. So if you want to buy, I am selling.”
“But we have to check with the other agencies, and if the story is incorrect, they’re gonna find out,” Captain Collins said.
“If you want the truth, this story didn’t happen,” I said sadly. Captain Collins had brought some drinks and candies that I forced myself to swallow. They tasted like dirt because I was so nervous. Captain Collins took his henchman outside and pitted him on me. SFC Shally came back harassing me and threatening me with all kinds of suffering and agony. It was amazing how much control Captain Collins had over this man who was way over forty years old. Now Shally was telling me I was going to be put back to intensive torture, and for what? Because my false confession wasn’t tight enough.
“You know how it feels when you experience our wrath,” SFC Shally said. I was like, what the heck does this asshole want from me? If he wants a confession, I already provided one. Does he want me to resurrect the dead? Does he want me to heal his blindness? I am not a prophet, nor does he believe in them. “The Bible is just the history of the Jewish people, nothing more,” he used to say. If he wants the truth, I told him I have done nothing! I couldn’t see a way out. “Yes!… Yes!… Yes!” After SFC Shally made me sweat to the last drop in my body, Captain Collins called him and gave him advice about the next tactics. Captain Collins left and SFC Shally continued.
“Captain Collins has overall control. If he is happy everybody is. And if he isn’t, nobody is.” SFC Shally started to ask me other questions about other things, and I used every opportunity to make myself look as bad as I could. “I’m going to leave you alone with papers and pen, and I want you to write everything you remember about your plan in Canada!”
“Yes, Sir.”
Two days later they were back at my door.
“Get up! Get your hands through the bin hole!” said an unfriendly-sounding guard. I didn’t welcome the visit: I hadn’t missed my interrogators’ faces over the weekend, and they scared the hell out of me. The guards shackled me and took me outside the building where Captain Collins and SFC Shally were waiting for me. It was my first time seeing the daylight. Many people take daylight for granted, but if you are forbidden to see it, you’ll appreciate it. The brightness of the sun made my eyes squint until they adjusted. The sun hit me mercifully with its warmth. I was terrified and shaking.
“What’s wrong with you?” one of guards asked me.
“I am not used to this place.”
“We brought you outside so you can see the sun. We will have more rewards like this.”
“Thank you very much,” I managed to say, though my mouth was dry and my tongue was heavy as steel.
“Nothing is gonna happen to you if you tell us about the bad things. I know you’re afraid that we will change our opinion toward you,” said Captain Collins while SFC Shally was taking notes.
“I know.”
“Let’s talk hypothetically. You understand hypothetical?” Captain Collins said.
“Yes, I do.”
“Let’s assume you’ve done what you confessed to.”
“But I haven’t.”
“Just let’s assume.”
“Okay,” I said. As high-ranking as Captain Collins was, he was the worst interrogator I’ve ever met. I mean professionally. He just jumps back and forth without focusing on any specific thing. If I had to guess, I would say his job was anything but interrogating people.
“Between you and Raouf Hannachi, who was in charge?”
“It depends: in the mosque I was in charge, and outside he was in charge,” I answered. The questions assumed that Hannachi and I are members of a gang, but I didn’t even know Mr. Hannachi, let alone conspire with him as part of a corps that never existed.* But anyway I could not tell something like that to Captain Collins; I had to tell him something that made me look bad.
“Have or haven’t you conspired with those individuals as you admitted?”
“You want the truth?”
“Yes!”
“No, I haven’t,” I said. Captain Collins and SFC Shally tried to play all kinds of tricks on me, but first of all I knew all the tricks, and second I had already told them the truth. So it was futile to play tricks on me. But they drove me into the infamous Catch-22: if I lie to them, “You’ll feel our wrath.” And if I tell the truth, it will make me look good, which would make them believe I am withholding information because in their eyes I AM A CRIMINAL and I wasn’t yet able to change that opinion.
Captain Collins handed me a printed version of the so-called Witness Protection Program. He obviously forgot to disable the date printout footnote, so I could read it. I wasn’t supposed to know the date, but nobody is perfect.
“Oh, thank you very much,” I said.
“If you help us, you’ll see how generous our government is,” Captain Collins said.
“I’ll read it.”
“I think this is something for you.”
“Sure.” Captain Collins gestured to the guards to take me back in my cell. They were still holding me all this time in Camp Echo Special.*
As soon as the interrogation team left, one of the guards was opening my cell and shouting, “Get up Motherfucker.” I was like, Oh my God, again? Master Yoda and his friend took me out of the cell and made me face the wall.
“You fucking pussy. Why don’t you admit?”
“I’ve been telling the truth.”
“You ain’t. Interrogators never ask if they don’t have proof. They just wanted to test you. And guess what? You failed. You blew your chance,” he continued. I was sweating and shaking, and I showed even more fear than I really felt. “It’s so easy: we just want you to tell us what you’ve done, how you’ve done it, and who else was involved with you. We use this information to stop other attacks. Is that not easy?”
“Yeah, it is.”
“So why do you keep being a pussy?”
“Because he’s gay!” said Yoda’s colleague.
“You think the Captain just gave you the Witness Protection information for fun? Hell, we should kill you, but we don’t; instead, we’re gonna give you money, a house, and a nice car, how frustrating is that? In the end, you are a terrorist,” he continued. “You better tell them everything the next time they come. Take a pen and paper and write everything down.”
The interrogators and guards believed the Witness Protection Program is a U.S. specialty, but it isn’t. It’s practiced all over the world; even in the darkest dictatorship countries, criminals can profit from such a program. Captain Collins provided me stories about other criminals who became friends of the U.S. government, such as Wernher von Braun and Viktor Belenko, who fled the Soviets during the Cold War. I was really not enlightened by any of this, but I took the papers anyway: something to read beside the pillow tag. I kept reading and reading and reading it again because I just like to read and I had nothing to read.
“You remember what you told Captain Collins, when he told you you’re hiding 15%,” SSG Mary said in our next session.
“Yeah, but you see I can’t argue with Captain Collins. Otherwise he gets mad.” SSG Mary took a printed version of my confession and started to read it, smiling.
“But you’re not only hurting yourself. You’re hurting other innocent people.”
“That’s correct. But what else should I do?”
“You said you guys wanted to mix sugar with explosives?”
“Yes, I did.” SSG Mary smiled.
“But that’s not what we wanted to hear when we asked you what you meant by ‘sugar.’ As a matter of fact,” she said, “it’s obvious you have no clue about this stuff.”
“Sergeant, I really don’t know,” I said.
“You cannot possibly lie about something as big as that,” SSG Mary said. “We have a highly qualified expert who could come and question you. What do you think about a polygraph test?”
“Polygraph? I’m dying to take one!” I said, though my heart was pounding because I knew I might fail the test even if was telling the truth.
“I’m gonna organize one for you as soon as possible.”*
“I know you want to make yourself look good,” I said.
“No, I care about you. I would like to see you out of jail, leading a normal life. There are some detainees I want to see stay here the rest of their lives. But you, no!” SSG Mary said genuinely.
“Thank you very much.” Mary left with that promise and I retreated back to my cell, completely depressed.
“Remember that the polygraph is decidedly important in your life,” said Captain Collins shortly before he left one of his sessions, trying with the help of his executioner SFC Shally to pry nonexistent information out of my mouth. He scared the hell out of me, because my whole life was now hanging on a polygraph machine.
“Yes, Sir, I know.”
“Who would you like to have with you during the polygraph,” asked Captain Collins a couple of days before the test.
“I think the male sergeant wouldn’t be a good idea, but I would be just fine if you would be here!”
“Or the other male sergeant?” he said, pointing to SFC Shally.
“Yeah,” I said reluctantly. “But why don’t you just come?”
“I’ll try, but if not me, it will be the sergeant.”
“I am very scared because of what your boss Captain Collins said,” I told SSG Mary the day before the test.
“Look, I’ve taken the test several times and passed. All you need to do is clear your mind and be honest and truthful,” SSG Mary answered.
On November 12, 2003, SSG Mary showed up. “Guess what?” she asked, looking at me through the cage of my cell. I quickly stood up at the bin hole.
“Yes, Sir!” I thought she was one of the guards. She got me startled, and she looked at me, smiling.
“Oh, it’s you! I am sorry, I thought you were one of the guards. You came for the polygraph, didn’t you?”
“Yes, in a couple of hours I’ll be back with the guy with the equipment. I just want you to be prepared.”
“OK, thank you very much.” SSG Mary left. I performed a ritual wash and managed to steal a prayer off the guards, I don’t remember whether I performed it formally or informally. “Oh, God! I need your help more than ever. Please show them that I am telling the truth. Please give not these merciless people any reason to hurt me. Please. Please!” After the prayer I exercised a kind of yoga. I never really practiced that meditation technique before, but now I sat on my bed, put my hands on my thighs, and imagined my body connected to the poly.
“Have you done any crimes against the U.S.?” I asked myself.
“No.” Would I really pass? Screw them! I’ve done no crimes; why should I be worried? They’re evil! And then I thought, No, they’re not evil: it’s their right to defend their own country. They’re good people. They really are! And then again, Screw them, I don’t owe them anything. They tortured me, they owe me! I did the yoga with all the possible questions.
“Did you tell the truth about Ahmed Laabidi?”
“No.” Oh, that’s a big problem, because SFC Shally said, “When we catch you lying you’re gonna feel our wrath.” Screw him and Captain Collins; I’m not gonna lie to please him and destroy my own life. No way. I’m gonna tell the truth no matter what. But what if I fail the test, even after answering truthfully? OK! No problem, I’m gonna lie. But what if the polygraph shows my new lies? Then I’m really gonna be stuck in a cul-de-sac. Only God can help me: my situation is serious and the Americans are crazy. Don’t worry about that, just take the test and you’re gonna be alright. I was going to the bathroom so often that I thought I was going to urinate my kidneys.
The doorbell rang and SSG Mary surged through with the polygraph tester. He was a small white male in his early forties, with hair that was sprinkled gray, the perfect candidate for a DOD contractor.
“My name is John Smith. Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said, shaking his hand. I knew he was dishonest about his name. He unluckily chose the wrong name, John Smith, which I knew to be a generic name. But I really didn’t care. After all, what interrogator is honest about anything? He could as well have introduced himself as Joe Dirt with the same effect. “You will be working with me today. How are you?”
“I am very nervous,” I answered.
“Perfect. That is the way you should be. I don’t like relaxed detainees. Give me a minute, I am going to install the equipment.” In fact, SSG Mary and I helped him in setting up his equipment. He was complaining that the building wasn’t steady enough and he was worried about the vibrations, and it took a long time for him to decide where to set up the machine. We ended up in a corner outside my cell. A firm plastic chair was placed next to the table, and I was told to sit facing a thick white wooden wall, so close it almost kissed my nose.
“Now, I want you to sit and look at me the whole time while I am speaking to you.” John Smith was not exactly the evil-looking interrogator. He was, I think, skeptical but fair.
“Have you taken a polygraph test before?
“Yes, I have!”
“So you understand the process and how the test works?”
“I guess I do.”
But John started a long explanation anyway. I noticed an ant walking up the wall, and then many more leading and following her. I learned to follow ants in the Mauritanian secret prison, watching them until they left the cell and me behind. I watched this one climb, going about her daily business and not realizing the drama that was unfolding before her very eyes. I drowned myself in her world, and I missed a lot of what the tester was saying. I was so nervous, but I took this as the first good omen of the morning. I was wondering if I should just concentrate on the ant and answer the questions without thinking.
John warned me that if I was planning to lie to him, I should just forget it and tell him the truth so I could pass the test. He was aware of my fear and anxiety. He knew that I was afraid of Captain Collins and his henchmen, including the Egyptian and the Jordanian, and he used that, saying he would report back to Captain Collins with his findings. SSG Mary told me that Captain Collins decided not to show up because he didn’t want to ruin the test results with his presence; he saw himself as a man who “exudes authority,” according to Mary. I had the feeling that his colleagues, who were aware of his past practices, decided he shouldn’t come to the test. But as a matter of fact, he followed the whole thing through a hole he poked in the thick black plastic screen that separated the detainee’s area from the guards’ area, and he was really clumsy; I kept hearing the rustling of the plastic during the test. I learned later that Master Jedi and Master Luke were watching, too.
John told me his questions would be in a random order, and that his laptop spat them out as it pleased. In reality, programmers talk about pseudorandom numbers, because producing true randomness is not as easy as one would think. But his questions really weren’t very random at all. I was asked to answer two types of questions, relevant and non-relevant; the sole purpose of the non-relevant questions was to “calibrate” me and the equipment.
“Are you wearing shoes?”
“Is your name Mohamedou?”
“Are you sitting on a chair?”
“Are you an astronaut?”
“Have you ever cheated on a test?” I answered yes. I remembered a time that I was frustrated with a teacher and his subject and decided to attend exactly zero classes. I ended up having to study the subject in a hurry, and I brought his textbook with me to the test for when I couldn’t answer a question on my own.
John took some time to scold me. He told me that he never cheated in his life, and that he hated people who cheat to get where they don’t deserve. I tried to explain that in most subjects at the university we were allowed to look things up during tests, because that is what we would do in real life, but some teachers denied that opportunity. But no amount of whitewashing myself would make him have sympathy for me or give me a break. SSG Mary was looking at me and smiling; she told me later on that she had cheated in college, too.
The real meat for John was in some direct, straightforward questions, like, “When you were in Canada, did you plan to attack the United States?” When he asked me this, I asked him to add Canada to the question because the U.S. government was trying to link me to terrorist plots there, too.
“Let’s worry about the U.S. for now,” he told me. But he must have changed his mind, maybe when he saw conclusively that I had done nothing against the United States, because he later started adding Canada to his questions automatically.
“Do you know any al Qaeda members in the U.S. or Canada you haven’t told us about?”
“No,” I answered.
“Do you know about future attacks in the U.S. or Canada?”
“No.”
“Have you said anything about Ahmed Laabidi that isn’t true?”
“Yes,” I said. I told him Ahmed was basically an innocent man as far as I knew. When I said that, both he and Mary told me that they both had that feeling, and more importantly, that the leadership thought so, too. John went behind the screen to consult with Captain Collins and others who were watching. I knew this was a bitter pill for Captain Collins, who was watching two people being cleared before his eyes. He was obsessed with getting people convicted and sent to jail, not only in GTMO and the U.S., but even in Germany. One day he came to me upset and said he badly needed my help because a Moroccan on trial in Germany named Abdelghani Mzoudi was acquitted. My job was to provide information that would change the mind of a German federal judge, to convict a person whose name I never heard before. Looking at a picture Captain Collins must have printed from the internet, I was speechless. “I don’t know this man,” I said reluctantly. To Captain Collins, anyone who is arrested is a criminal; there are no innocent suspects.
Captain Collins must have advised the team to learn from me what information I had provided about Laabidi that was false, which was everything except that Ahmed Laabidi was a Muslim man from Tunisia. John amended the questions and posed them again. Until now my physiological responses were all over the place, John said, and I was just hoping he could tell the difference between a lie and a person who is simply a nervous wreck. But I felt more comfortable talking about Laabidi with Mary, because she and I were on the same wavelength. John asked me if I was now giving any false information about Laabidi.
“No.”
“Have you withheld any information about Laabidi?” he asked.
“No.”
John kept asking these questions until he was satisfied with my physiological responses. He also repeated the questions about whether I planned to attack the U.S. or Canada. He kept trying to reassure me because he could see on the machine my extreme fear and anxiety. At one point, he wondered how I could be a terrorist, and I told him I was “a clumsy one,” which he found very funny.
“You did good,” he said to me when the test was over. He didn’t mean that I passed, only that I calmed down enough for him to be able to evaluate me; the evaluation had to wait until the next day. I spent a long, sleepless night, expecting the worst.
SSG Mary came to see me the next day with the broadest smile I’d seen so far.
“I always believed in you,” she told me. “You passed with flying colors, and this time there was no ‘inconclusive’ stuff.” She brought me some cookies. If I told you that I wasn’t more excited about passing the exam than Mary, I would hardly be overstating her satisfaction. I realized that Captain Collins had gone too far in his quest to get me convicted, and all of a sudden I wasn’t afraid of the polygraph anymore. I told her I was ready to take another one over any other statements I had made in the past.
I soon had my chance. Some in the team couldn’t believe the results, and I was asked to take the same test again a week later. The tester claimed that he just wanted to make sure everything was OK, and that I was too nervous the first time. I really don’t think he doubted his judgment, but there were others who had a lot to lose if I passed. The most obvious person was Captain Collins, but I think it was more than just him, and that there was a real interagency fight going on over my case.
The equipment was installed again next to my cell. This time I had a level of confidence that I didn’t have the last time. I was more frustrated than scared, and I figured if I passed the first one, why shouldn’t I pass this one? I also had the feeling the tester was pissed that others were doubting his expertise, and I figured he must be on my side now, if only to save his own reputation.
He didn’t speak to me as much this time. The first time, it seemed like every second word he said was “for instance”; on this day, I don’t remember hearing it from him once. I sat like a stone on that hard chair, looking for an ant to accompany me, but I had to settle for the stark white wooden wall.
The tester asked the same questions. After a couple of runs, he wrapped it up and off he went. The verdict did not change; the tester stuck to his guns, and one more time I passed the test. Master Jedi kept making fun of me for days, asking why I was so nervous during the first test. I told him it was because I’m “sensible,” but that wasn’t what I meant; I was using the wrong word. He laughed, and we agreed that I should say “sensitive” instead.*