Guantánamo Diary (27 page)

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,”
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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
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and his associate
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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,”
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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
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entered the room
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. You
could tell they had a head start I didn’t.
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brought heavy binders with them, and were talking to each other.
^*

“When is the guy supposed to come?”

“Nine o’clock.” Against interrogation customs,
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. 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 from
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are on another time.” The
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looking gentleman was dying to impress. I wasn’t sure how much he succeeded. He was a
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. 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.”
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couldn’t help smiling, although
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tried hard to keep
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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
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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 prison,”
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said.

“Just do it!”

“You must admit to what you have done,”
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said, gesturing to a big binder in front of
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.

“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
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on your case.
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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
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disappeared for good, and I never saw him again;
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kept interrogating me for some time, but there was nothing new. Both
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were using dead-traditional methods and techniques I probably mastered better than they had.

“What is the name of your current wife?”
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favorite question. When I arrived in Cuba on August
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, 2002
I was so hurt physically and mentally that I literally forgot the name of my wife and provided a wrong one.
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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
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. “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!”
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answered.
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was a respectable
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and I very much respected
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honesty.
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was appointed to torture me but
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ultimately failed, which led to
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separation from my case. To me
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was an evil person.
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always laughed sardonically.

“You’re very rude,”
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once said.

“So are you!” I replied. Our sessions were not fruitful. Both
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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.
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was playing the smart interrogator–bad guy.

“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…”
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continued.

“Bon Voyage!” I said. I felt good that
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was leaving because I didn’t like
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.

“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.”
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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,”
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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
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joined
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while they were interrogating me.
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said, gesturing to
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.

“This
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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.”
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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
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were asking questions. “Don’t make jokes, just answer
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questions,” he said at one point. I was like, Oops.
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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
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. 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
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and his small gang. “We are not
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; 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
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.
^†
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was taken to interrogation every single night, exposed to loud music and scary pictures, and molested sexually. I would see
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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.
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was not spared the cold room.
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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.
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also suffered sexual molestation. I saw him taken back and forth almost every night as well. 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
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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
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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.
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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
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. 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
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guard. But he was not very smart, for he had my destination written on his glove.

“Brothers pray for me, I am being transferred
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was reserved by then for the worst detainees in the camp; if one got transferred
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, many signatures must have been provided, maybe even the president of the U.S. The only people I know to have spent some time
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since it was designed for torture were a Kuwaiti detainee and another fellow detainee from
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^*

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.
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was put in the middle but with no contact either. Later on both were transferred somewhere else, and the whole block was reserved for me, only me, ALLAH,
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, and the guards who worked for them. I was completely exposed to the total mercy
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, 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,”
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used to tell me repeatedly.

Within a couple of days of my transfer,
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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.
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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.
^*