Guantánamo Diary (35 page)

“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.
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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
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told you about the 15% you’re holding back,” said
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a couple of days after
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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
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and
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.
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went to Russia to get us the supply of explosives.
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wrote an explosives simulation software that I picked up, tested myself, and handed in a data medium to
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. The latter was supposed to send it with the whole plan to
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in London so we could get the final fatwa from the Sheikh.
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was supposed to buy a lot of sugar to mix with the explosives in order to increase the damage.
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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
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read it happily.

“This statement makes perfect sense.”

“If you’re ready to buy, I am selling,” I said.
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could hardly hold himself on the chair; he wanted to leave immediately. I guess the prey was big, and
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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!
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almost had a heart attack from happiness.

“I’ll go see him!”

I think the only unhappy person in the team was
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, because
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doubted the truthfulness of the story.

Indeed the next day
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came to see me, escorted as always by his
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. “Remember when I told you 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?”

“
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did.

“And you, too?”
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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
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. 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,”
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said.

“I am happy.”

“Is the story true?” asked
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.

“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,”
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“If you want the truth, this story didn’t happen,” I said sadly.
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had brought some drinks and candies that I forced myself to swallow. They tasted like dirt because I was so nervous.
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took his
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outside and pitted him on me.
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came back harassing me and threatening me with all kinds of suffering and agony.
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.

“You know how it feels when you experience our wrath,”
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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
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made me sweat to the last drop in my body,
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called him and gave him advice about the next tactics.
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left and
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continued.

“
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has overall control. If he is happy everybody is. And if he isn’t, nobody is.”
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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
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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 the 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
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while
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was taking notes.

“I know.”

“Let’s talk hypothetically. You understand hypothetical?”
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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
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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
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, 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.
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, let alone conspire with him as part of a corps that never existed.
^*
But anyway I could not tell something
like that to
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; 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.
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and
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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.

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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,”
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said.

“I’ll read it.”

“I think this is something for you.”

“Sure.”
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gestured to the guards to take me back in my cell. They were still holding me all this time
■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
.
^*

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?
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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
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.

“You think the
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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.
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provided me stories about other criminals who became friends of the U.S.
government, such as
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and another communist 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
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, when he told you you’re hiding 15%,”
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said in our next session.

“Yeah, but you see I can’t argue with
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. Otherwise he gets mad.”
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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.”
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smiled.

“But that’s not we wanted to hear when we asked you what you meant by ‘sugar.’ As a matter of fact,
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.”

“
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I really don’t know that,” I said.

“You cannot possibly lie about something as big as that,”
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said. “We have a highly qualified expert who could come and question you. What do you think about
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?”

“
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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 a
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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!”
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genuinely.

“Thank you very much.”
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left with that promise and I retreated back to my cell, completely depressed.

“Remember that the
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is decidedly important in your life,” said
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shortly before he left one of his sessions, trying with the help of his executioner
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to pry nonexistent information out of my mouth. He scared the hell out of me, because my whole life was now hanging on a
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.