“Do you speak German, or do we need an interpreter?” asked the younger agent.
“I am afraid we don’t,” I replied.
“Well, you understand the seriousness of the matter. We’ve come from Germany to talk to you.
“People have been killed,” continued the older man.
I smiled. “Since when are you allowed to interrogate people outside Germany?”
“We are not here to discuss the judicial grounds of our questioning!”
“I might, sometime in the future, be able to talk to the press and give you away,” I said. “Though I don’t know your names, I’ll recognize your pictures, no matter how long it takes!”
“You can say whatever you want, you’re not gonna hurt us! We know what we’re doing,” he said.
“So clearly you guys are using the lawlessness of this place to extract information out of me?”
The younger agent jumped in. “Herr Salahi, if we wanted to, we could ask the guards to hang you on the wall and kick your ass!”20 When he mentioned the crooked way he was thinking, my heart started to pound, because I was trying to express myself carefully and at the same time avoid torture.
“You can’t scare me, you’re not talking to a child. If you continue speaking to me with this tone, you can pack your luggage and go back to Germany.”
“We are not here to prosecute you or scare you, we would just be grateful if you would answer a couple of questions we have,” said the older agent.
“Look, I’ve been in your country, and you know that I was never involved in any kind of crimes. Plus, what are you worried about? Your country isn’t even threatened. I’ve been living peacefully in your country and never abused your hospitality. I am very grateful for all that your country helped me with; I don’t stab in the back. So what theater are you trying to play on me?”
The younger agent adjusted his tone. “Herr Salahi, we know that you are innocent, but we did not capture you, the Americans did. We are not here on behalf of the U.S. We work for the German government, and lately we stopped some bad plots. We know you cannot possibly know about these things. However, we only want to ask you about two individuals, Christian Ganczarski and Karim Mehdi, and we would be grateful if you would answer our questions about them.”21
“It’s just funny that you’ve come all the way from Germany to ask about your own people! Those two individuals are good friends of mine. We attended the same mosques, but I don’t know them to be involved in any terrorist operations.”
The session didn’t last much longer than that. They asked me how I was doing and about the life in the camp and bid me farewell. I never saw the Germans after that.
Meanwhile, the team with Agents John and Don kept questioning me.
“Do you know this guy, Ramzi bin al-Shibh?” asked John.
“No, I don’t,” I honestly answered.
“But he knows you!”
“I am afraid you have another file than mine!”
“No, I read your file very thoroughly.”
“Can you show me his picture?”
“Yes. I’m going to show it to you tomorrow.”
“Good. I might know him by another name!”
“Do you know about the American bases in Germany?”
“Why do you ask me about that? I didn’t go to Germany to study the American bases, nor am I interested in them in any way!” I angrily replied.
“My people respect detainees who tell the truth!” the skinny agent said, while his colleague Agent Don took notes. I took the hint that he was calling me a liar in a stupid way. The session was terminated.
The next day John and Don reserved me in the interrogation booth and showed me two pictures. The first one turned out to be that of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who was suspected of having participated in the September 11 attack and who was captured in Karachi in a joint operation exactly one year later. The second picture was of Mohamed Atta, one of the September 11 hijackers. As to Mohamed Atta, I had never heard of him or saw him, and as to Ramzi bin al-Shibh, I figured I’ve seen the guy, but where and when? I had no clue! But I also figured that the guy must be very important because the agencies were running fast together to find my link with him.22 Under the circumstances, I denied having seen the guy. Look at it, how would it have looked had I said I’d seen this guy, but I don’t know when and where? What interrogator would buy something like that? Not one! And to be honest with you, I was as scared as hell.
The FBI team reserved me again the next day and showed me the picture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and I denied that I knew him, the same way I had the day before. My denial that I knew a man that I don’t really know, I just saw him for a very short time once or twice and had no association whatsoever with him, gave fuel to all kind of wild theories linking me to the September 11 attack. The investigators were just drowning and were looking for any straw to grab, and I personally didn’t exactly want to be that straw.
“We’d like you to take a polygraph test,” said John.
“It’s not compulsory,” his partner added. But I knew that refusing to take the test would be seen as a clear indication that I was guilty, though there had been no discussion of what crime I was supposed to be guilty of. The agents explained the poly-graph process to me through an interpreter, and I agreed to take the test. I asked when the test would happen.
“In the next few days!”
In the meantime I was transferred to Lima Block, where I met an Algerian-Bosnian man named Mustafa Ait Idir for the first time. He was another one of the star detainees. Mustafa heard about my story, and like any other curious person, he wanted to have more information. On my side, I also wanted to converse with cultured people. As far as I could tell, Mustafa was a decent guy; I had a hard time picturing him as a criminal.23
Lima Block was filled with European and North African detainees. For the first time I got to know the Algerians, Moroccans, and Tunisians, and the Danish, Swedish, French, and Bosnian detainees as well. I was happy to be with the detainees from the Maghreb; being from the region, I could understand their jokes much better and quicker than the amazing ones from detainees from the Arab peninsula, and they got my jokes, too. The other Mauritanian on the block and I tried to get to know each other, but we weren’t allowed. Our only contact was when he and I felt sick and were transferred to the Navy hospital in the same truck, but we couldn’t talk much. On the way, he and our Syrian translator got into a heated debate about the job of translators in GTMO, and I used the distraction to look outside through the clumsily blinded window. I saw a woman jogging, and a bunch of water supply pipes. I was reminded that there’s a life outside GTMO, and I suddenly felt very afraid. Grimly, I realized that I felt safer shackled in a truck surrounded by guards who were given firearms as soon as we left the camp’s gate.
The day of the polygraph came, and the escort team led me silently to Gold Building. I always wanted to know where I was going and why. I remember one time when the escorting team refused to tell me where I was
