Guantánamo Diary (30 page)

“You fucked up!” said an escorting guard who by accident had to escort me twice in one day from one building to another. “What are you doing here? You’ve been in reservation already!”

“I get interrogated for 24 hours.”

The guard laughed loudly and evilly repeated, “You fucked up!” I just looked at him and smiled.

On day three of the shifts the escorting team showed up at my door in the early morning, as soon as I fell asleep after a rough, 20-hour interrogation. You know, when you just fall asleep and the saliva starts to come out of your mouth?

“Reservation!” shouted one of the guards. My feet barely carried me. “Hurry up!” I quickly washed my face and my mouth. I tried to use every opportunity to keep myself clean,
although I was deprived from the right to take a shower like other detainees. The team wanted to humiliate me.

“What a smell!”
■■■■■■
used to say when he entered the room where he interrogated me.

“Man, you smell like shit!” said one of the guards more than once. I only got the opportunity to shower and change my clothes when his lowness
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couldn’t bear my smell anymore; “Take the guy, give him a shower, he smells like shit,” he would say. Only then would I get a shower, for months to come.

“Hurry up!” the guards kept saying.
■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
. I had a headache, nausea, and heartburn from the sleeplessness of the last several days. My eyes were playing games on me. I hated the place where I was going.

The guards dropped me in
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. Nobody was in the room. I kept dozing off while waiting on
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. Oh, my neck really hurt. I badly wanted him to show up, because I hated to sleep like that: at least he would enjoy depriving me of sleeping.
■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
is one of the laziest people I ever knew. He didn’t take time to read reports, and so he always mistook me for other suspects. Most of the time he came late, but he reserved me early anyway, so I couldn’t sleep.
^*

There really was not a lot of news:
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and I facing each other with the same topics, like the movie
Groundhog Day
. But I had grown very nervous now that they were depriving me of the sweetness of sleep.

The order of the day always went as follows.
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started to read some paper crap he brought with him and asked me questions.

“Why the fuck did you go to Canada?”

“I wanted to find a job and have a nice life.”

“Fuck you! Stand up!”

“I’d rather stand up like this until death than talk to your ugly face!” When
■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
made me stand up, he made sure that the guards maintained his orders while
■■■■■■■■
was stuffing his big stomach during lunch; whenever I tried to change my inconvenient position, the guards surged from nowhere and forced me to stay as straight as I could. Every interrogator I knew missed a meal sometimes, for whatever reason.
■■■■■■■■■■
never missed his meal no matter what.

“If you stop denying what you’ve done, we’ll start to give you hot meals and some sleep. We are stronger than you.”

“I don’t need what I don’t have.”

“We’re gonna put you in a hole the rest of your life. You’re already convicted. You will never see your family.”

“It’s not in your hands, but if it is, just do it, the sooner the better!”

Sometimes
■■■■■■■■■■
went through the propaganda posters of detainees who were supposedly released. “Look at this guy, he’s a criminal but he admitted to everything, and now he’s able to lead a normal life.” I mean, all interrogators lie, but
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lies were more than obvious. Though if another interrogator lies, his appearance changes, but
■■■■■■■■■■
recounts a lie as well as the truth: his face always had the same hateful look.

When the pain became unbearable, I became smooth for negotiation, and he agreed to let me sit on the uncomfortable chair. But he soon got shocked when I didn’t give him the answers he wanted to hear.

“I am going to do everything I am allowed to to break you!”
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said angrily.
■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
threatened me with all kind of horrible scenarios. “You’re gonna spend the rest of your life in jail.” “We will wipe you out of the database and put you in a hole where nobody knows about you.” “You will never see your family again.” My answer was always, “Do what you got to do! I have done nothing!” and as soon as I spit my words
■■■■■■■■■
went wildly crazy, as if he wanted to devour me alive. So I avoided answering him and let him for the most part do the talking. As I say,
■■■■■■■■
likes to talk and hates to listen. I sometimes doubted that his ears functioned. He spoke as if he were reading some Gospels.

I was just wondering how he was so sure I was a criminal. “
■■■■■■■■■
, what if you are wrong in what you’re suspecting me of?” I asked him.

“I would be wasting my time,” he answered.

“Fair enough.”

“If you provide incriminating information about somebody, say
■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
, that leads to his conviction, your life would change to a better one.” I didn’t answer him, because I didn’t have what he was looking for.
■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
view of justice was very rough: even if I provided him everything he wanted, he would reduce my sentence from the electric chair to life, and then maybe thirty years in prison. I honestly was not interested in his offer.

During his shift,
■■■■■
would be reporting to his boss during the breaks. I was not sure who his boss was at that point, probably
■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
. But I’m sure that the highest authority in his chain of command in GTMO was
■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
, and that he was briefed regularly about my case and always gave the orders for what to do next with “that bastard.” According to
■■■■■
, President Bush
was regularly briefed about my case, and so was
■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
.
■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
even sent his secretary
■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
to check on me in summer 2004. He asked me some Intel questions. By that time, though the tension was already relieved.
^*

I spent the afternoon shift with
■■■■■■■■
. Like I mentioned before,
■■■■■■■
was the least evil of all.
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order of day went as follows. When
■■■■
pulled me to interrogation,
■■■■■
informed the D.O.C. not to give me a chair, so I had to settle for the dirty floor—but I didn’t even get that, because the D.O.C. always asked the guards to make me stand up until
■■■■■■■
arrived. Then
■■■■
decided whether to allow me to sit or make me stand up during her whole shift, and after that
■■■■
made me stand up for the rest of the 24 hours.
^†

I started to recite the Koran quietly, for prayer was forbidden. Once
■■■■■■■■
said, “Why don’t you pray? go ahead and pray!” I was like, How friendly! But as soon as I started to pray,
■■■■
started to make fun of my religion, and so I settled for praying in my heart so I didn’t give
■■■■
the opportunity to commit blasphemy. Making fun of somebody else’s religion is one of the most barbaric acts. President Bush described his holy war against the so-called terrorism as a war between the civilized and barbaric world. But his government committed more barbaric acts than the terrorists themselves. I can name tons of war crimes that Bush’s government is involved in.

This particular day was one of the roughest days in my interrogation before the day around the end of August that was my “Birthday Party” as
■■■■■■■
called it.
■■■■■■■
brought someone who was apparently a Marine; he wore a
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.

■■■■■■■
offered me a metal chair. “I told you, I’m gonna bring some people to help me interrogate you,”
■■■■■■■
said, sitting inches away in front of me. The guest sat almost sticking on my knee.
■■■■■■■
started to ask me some questions I don’t remember.

“Yes or no?” the guest shouted, loud beyond belief, in a show to scare me, and maybe to impress
■■■■■■■
, who knows? I found his method very childish and silly.

I looked at him, smiled, and said, “Neither!” The guest threw the chair from beneath me violently. I fell on the chains. Oh, it hurt.

“Stand up, motherfucker,” they both shouted, almost synchronous. Then a session of torture and humiliation started. They started to ask me the questions again after they made me stand up, but it was too late, because I told them a million times, “Whenever you start to torture me, I’m not gonna say a single word.” And that was always accurate; for the rest of the day, they exclusively talked.

■■■■■■■
turned the air conditioner all the way down to bring me to freezing. This method had been practiced in the camp at least since August 2002. I had seen people who were exposed to the frozen room day after day; by then, the list was long. The consequences of the cold room are devastating, such as
■■■■■■
tism, but they show up only at a later age because it takes time until they work their way through the bones. The torture squad was so well trained that they were performing almost perfect crimes, avoiding leaving any obvious evidence. Nothing was left to chance. They hit in predefined places. They practiced horrible methods, the aftermath of which would only manifest later. The interrogators turned the A/C all the way down trying to reach 0°, but obviously air conditioners are not designed to kill, so in the well insulated room the A/C fought its way to 49°F, which, if you are interested in math like me, is 9.4°C—in other words, very, very cold, especially for somebody who had to stay in it more than twelve hours, had no underwear and just a very thin uniform, and who comes from a hot country. Somebody from Saudi Arabia cannot take as much cold as somebody from Sweden; and vice versa, when it comes to hot weather. Interrogators took these factors in consideration and used them effectively.

You may ask, Where were the interrogators after installing the detainee in the frozen room? Actually, it’s a good question. First, the interrogators didn’t stay in the room; they would just come for the humiliation, degradation, discouragement, or other factor of torture, and after that they left the room and went to the monitoring room next door. Second, interrogators were adequately dressed; for instance
■■■■■■
was dressed like somebody entering a meat locker. In spite of that, they didn’t stay long with the detainee. Third, there’s a big psychological difference when you are exposed to a cold place for purpose of torture, and when you just go there for fun and a challenge. And lastly, the interrogators kept moving in the room, which meant blood circulation, which meant keeping themselves warm while the detainee was
■■■■■■■■■
the whole time to the floor, standing for the most part.
^*
All I could do was move my feet and rub my hands. But the Marine guy stopped me from rubbing my hands by ordering a special chain that shackled my hands on my opposite hips. When I get nervous I always start to rub my hands together and write on my body, and that drove my interrogators crazy.

“What are you writing?”
■■■■■■■■■■■
shouted. “Either you tell me or you stop the fuck doing that.” But I couldn’t stop; it was unintentional. The Marine guy started to throw chairs around, hit me with his forehead, and describe me with all kinds of adjectives I didn’t deserve, for no reason.

“You joined the wrong team, boy. You fought for a lost cause,” he said, alongside a bunch of trash talk degrading my family, my religion, and myself, not to mention all kinds of threats against my family to pay for “my crimes,” which goes against any common sense. I knew that he had no power, but
I knew that he was speaking on behalf of the most powerful country in the world, and obviously enjoyed the full support of his government. However, I would rather save you, Dear Reader, from quoting his garbage. The guy was nuts. He asked me about things I have no clue about, and names I never heard.

“I have been in
■■■■■■■■■■
,” he said, “and do you know who was our host? The President! We had a good time in the palace.” The Marine guy asked questions and answered them himself.
^*

When the man failed to impress me with all the talk and humiliation, and with the threat to arrest my family since the
■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
was an obedient servant of the U.S., he started to hurt me more. He brought ice-cold water and soaked me all over my body, with my clothes still on me. It was so awful; I kept shaking like a Parkinson’s patient. Technically I wasn’t able to talk anymore. The guy was stupid: he was literally executing me but in a slow way.
■■■■■■■
gestured to him to stop pouring water on me. Another detainee had told me a “good” interrogator suggested he eat in order to reduce the pain, but I refused to eat anything; I couldn’t open my mouth anyway.

The guy was very hot when
■■■■■■■
stopped him because
■■■■
was afraid of the paperwork that would result in case of my death. So he found another technique, namely he brought a CD player with a booster and started to play some rap music. I didn’t really mind the music because it made me forget my pain. Actually, the music was a blessing in disguise; I was trying to make sense of the words. All I understood was that the music
was about love. Can you believe it? Love! All I had experienced lately was hatred, or the consequences thereof.

“Listen to that, Motherfucker!” said the guest, while closing the door violently behind him. “You’re gonna get the same shit day after day, and guess what? It’s getting worse. What you’re seeing is only the beginning,” said
■■■■■■■
. I kept praying and ignoring what they were doing.