Guantánamo Diary (25 page)

“In Jordan they don’t torture unless they have evidence,”
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said. “If they knew what I do, they wouldn’t even
bother arresting you. The Americans told them to,”
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continued.

“The torture starts around midnight and finishes around dawn. Everybody takes part, the prison director, the interrogators, and the guards,”
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said.
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information was consistent with what I saw. I personally heard beatings, but I don’t know whether the detainees were hung up or not when the beating happened. And I witnessed sleep deprivation more than once.

Late one night when I was talking to some of my guard friends, I kept hearing sounds as if some people were performing harsh training with loud voices to get the whole energy out of their body, like in Kung-Fu. I heard heavy bodies hitting the floor. It was just too noisy, and too close to my
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.

“Are you guys training so late?” I asked one of the guards. Before he could say a word, another guy appeared dressed in a Ninja-like suit that covered him from head to toe. The guard looked at him and turned to me, smiling.

“Do you know this guy?” he asked. I forced an official smile.

“No.” The new guy took his mask off, and he looked like the devil himself. Out of fear, my smile turned to laughter. “Oh, yes! We know each other,” I said.

“
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asks if you guys are training now?” my guard wryly asked the Ninja.

“Yes! Do you want to train with us? We have many detainees enjoying PT,” he said sardonically. I knew right away that he meant torture. My laughter faded into a smile, and my smiled into fixed lips over my teeth. I didn’t want to reveal my disappointment, fear, and confusion.

“No, I’m just fine,” I said. The devil resumed his business,
and I asked the guard, “Why do they put on the masks for this type of job?”

“They want to protect their identities. In Jordan, you can get killed for doing such things.” He was right: most of the detainees were arrested because they know something, not because of crimes, and so they will be released sooner or later. I wished I hadn’t known about that mischief; it was just impossible for me to sleep when I was listening to grown-ups crying like babies. I tried to put every object in my ears and around my head but nothing helped. As long as the torture lasted, I couldn’t sleep. The good thing was that the torture wasn’t every day, and the voices didn’t always reach my cell.

In February 2002, the director of Jordan’s Antiterrorism Department was the subject of an assassination plot.
^*
He almost gave his soul back. Somebody planted a time bomb in the chassis of the car of the biggest target of the Islamic movement in Jordan. The bomb was supposed to explode on the way between his home and his office—and it did. But what happened seemed like a miracle. On his way to work, the Director felt like buying cigarettes. His driver stopped in front of a store and left to grab a pack of cigarettes. The director felt like going with his chauffeur. As soon as both left the car, the bomb exploded. Nobody was harmed, but the vehicle was history.

The investigation led to a suspect, but the secret police couldn’t find him. But the King of the Fight against Terrorism cannot be messed with; suspects must be arrested and the guilty party must be found. Immediately. The Jordanian secret Agency had to have revenge for the big head. The peaceful brother of the
suspect was to be taken as a pawn and tortured until his brother turned himself in. Special Forces were sent out, arrested the innocent boy in a crowded place, and beat him beyond belief. They wanted to show people the destiny of a family when one of its members tries to attack the government. The boy was taken to the prison and tortured every day by his interrogator.

“I don’t care how long it takes, I am going to keep torturing you until your brother turns himself in,” his interrogator said. The family of the boy was given the opportunity to visit the boy, not for humane reasons, but because the interrogator wanted the family to see the miserable situation of the boy so they would turn in the suspected son. The family was devastated, and soon the information leaked that the suspect was hiding in his family’s house. Late that night, an operation stormed the house and arrested him. The next day his brother was released.

“What will you say if somebody asks you about the bruises and injuries I caused you?” the interrogator asked him.

“I’ll say nothing!” answered the boy.

“Look, we usually keep people until they heal, but I’m releasing you. You go ahead and file anything you like against me. I did what I got to do to capture a terrorist, and you’re free to go.” As to his brother, he was taken care of by the director himself: he kept beating him for six straight hours. And that is not to mention what the other interrogators did to satisfy their chief. I learned all this from the guards when I noticed that the prison had become remarkably crowded. Not that I could see anybody, but the food supply shrunk decidedly; they kept moving detainees to and from their cells; whenever detainees were led past my cell the guards closed my bin hole; and I saw the different shifts of guards more frequently than usual. The situation started to improve in the summer of 2002.

By then, the Jordanians were basically done with me. When
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finished my hearing, he handed me my statements. “Read the statements and sign them,” he said.

“I don’t need to read them, I trust you!” I lied. Why should I read something when I didn’t have the option to sign or to refuse? No judge would take into consideration somebody’s statements that were coerced in a prison facility such as the Jordanian Military prison.

After about a week
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took me to interrogation in a nice room. “Your case is closed. You haven’t lied. And I thank you for your cooperation. When it comes to me, I am done with you, but it’s the decision of my boss when you’ll go home. I hope soon.”

I was happy with the news; I had expected it, but not that soon.

“Would you like to work for us?” he asked me.

“I’d like to, but I really am not qualified for this type of work,” I said, partly lying and partly telling the truth. He tried in a friendly way to convince me, but I, with the most friendliness I could manage, told him that I was way too much of an idiot for Intel work.

But when the Jordanians shared the result of their investigation with the U.S. and sent them the file, the U.S. took the file and slapped the Jordanians in their faces. I felt the anger of Uncle Sam thousands of miles away, when
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came back into his old skin during the last two months of my incarceration in Jordan. The interrogations resumed. I tried all I could to express myself. Sometimes I talked, sometimes I refused. I hunger-struck for days, but
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made me eat under threat of torture. I wanted to compel the Jordanians to send me back home, but I failed. Maybe I wasn’t hardcore enough.

T
he 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.”

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showed me the worst people in
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. There were fifteen, and I was number 1; number 2 was
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.
^*

“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
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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
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, 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 a fellow detainee
called
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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.
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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
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.

“Y-e-e-s!” I said, trying to keep myself together, though my blushing face said everything about me.
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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 Usama 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 Usama bin Laden is behind September 11,”
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said.

“You realize I am not Usama bin Laden, don’t you? This is between you and Usama 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 Usama 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
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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
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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.

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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,
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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 shit like that,”
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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
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was involved in that dirty business. But I do know that the whole matter is much bigger than
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; there are a bunch of people working behind the scene.
^*
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was in charge of my case through
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, but I was taken for interrogation a couple of times by other
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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.

“I am gonna show you the evidence bit by bit,” said
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one day. “There is a big al Qaeda guy who told us that you are involved.”

“I guess you shouldn’t ask me questions then, since you have a witness. Just take me to court and roast me,” I said. “What have I done, according to your witness?”

“He said you are a part of the conspiracy.” I grew tired of the words Big Conspiracy against the U.S.
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could not give me anything to grab onto, no matter how much I argued with him.

As to
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, he was not an argumentative guy. “If
the government believes that you’re involved in bad things, they’re gonna send you to Iraq or back to Afghanistan,”
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said.
^*

“So if you guys torture me, I’m gonna tell you everything you want to hear?”

“No, look: if a mom asks her kid whether he’s done something wrong, he might lie. But if she hits him, he’s gonna admit it,” replied
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. I had no answer to this analogy. Anyway, the “big al Qaeda” guy who testified against me turned out to be
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.
^†
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was said to have said that I helped him to go to Chechnya with two other guys who were among the hijackers, which I hadn’t done. Though I had seen
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once or twice in Germany, I didn’t even know his name. Even if I had helped them to go to Chechnya, that would be no crime at all, but I just hadn’t.

By then I knew about the horrible torture that
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had suffered after his arrest
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. Eyewitnesses who were captured with him in Karachi said, “We thought he was dead. We heard his cries and moans day and night until he was separated from us.” We had even heard rumors in the camp that he died under torture. Overseas torture was obviously a
common practice and professionally executed; I heard so many testimonies from detainees who didn’t know each other that they couldn’t be lies. And as you shall see, I was subject to torture in this base of GTMO, like many other fellow detainees. May Allah reward all of us.

“I don’t believe in torture,” said
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. I didn’t share with him my knowledge about Ramzi having been tortured. But because the government has sent detainees including me,
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, and
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overseas to facilitate our interrogation by torture, that meant that the government believes in torture; what
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believes in doesn’t have much weight when it comes to the harsh justice of the U.S. during war.

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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
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showed me the report.
^*

“I told you that you fucked up,”
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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.”
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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,
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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?”
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asked.

“I’ve done nothing.”

“It is not a crime to help somebody to join al Qaeda and he ended up a terrorist!”
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. I understood exactly what
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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,”
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asked a colleague of his for help.
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, a
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who interrogated me back in
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.
^*
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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,
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is here to answer your questions!” said
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.

“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,”
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answered. “The problem was that you weren’t honest with us.”