I entered the room in Brown Building, it was crowded with another new FBI-led team. William introduced me to an FBI agent named Robert and someone from the New York Police Department he called Tom; with them was a military intelligence officer and a young Moroccan man who they explained was a French, not an Arabic, interpreter.29
“Hi!”
“Hi!” they said, almost in unison.
“I’ve chosen Robert and Tom based on their experience and maturity,” William said. “ They’ll be assessing your case from now on. There are a couple of things that need to be completed in your case. For instance, you didn’t tell us everything about Raouf Hannachi. He’s a very important guy.”30
“First, I told you what I know about Raouf Hannachi, even though I don’t need to be providing you information about anybody. We’re talking here about me. Second, in order to continue my cooperation with you, I need you to answer me one question: WHY AM I HERE? If you don’t give me the answer, you can consider me a non-existent detainee.” Later on I learned from my great lawyers Nancy Hollander, Sylvia Royce, and Theresa Duncan that the magic formulation of my request is a Petition for a Writ of Habeas Corpus. Obviously that phrase makes no sense to the average, mortal man like me. The average person would just say, “Why the hell are you locking me up?” I’m not a lawyer, but common sense dictates that after three years of interrogating me and depriving me of my liberty, the government at least owes me an explanation why it’s doing so. What exactly is my crime?
“It makes no sense: It’s like somebody who quits a 10-mile trip after traveling nine miles,” said William. It would have been more accurate had he said “a million mile trip after traveling one mile.”
“Look, it’s as simple as ABC: answer me the question and I’ll cooperate with you fully!”
“I have no answer!” William said.
“Neither do I!” I replied.
“It says in the Koran somebody who kills one soul is considered to have killed all of humanity,” said the French translator, trying to reach a breakthrough. I looked at him disrespectfully with the side of my face.
“I am not the guy you’re looking for!” I said in French, and I repeated it in plain English.
Tom, the NYPD officer, started. “I am sure you’re against killing people. We’re not looking for you. We’re looking for those guys who are out there trying to hurt innocents.” He said this while showing me a bunch of ghostly pictures. I refused to look at them, and whenever he tried to put them under my sight I looked somewhere else. I didn’t even want to give him the satisfaction of having taken a look at them.
“Look, Ahmed Ressam is cooperating, and he has a good chance of getting his sentence reduced to twenty-seven years—and Ressam is really a bad person. Somebody like you needs only to talk for five minutes, and you’re a free man,” said Robert. He was everything but reasonable. When I contemplated his statement, I was like, God, a guy who is cooperating is gonna be locked up for 27 more years, after which he won’t be able to enjoy any kind of life. What kind of harsh country is that?” I am sorry to say that Robert’s statement wasn’t worth an answer. He and William tried to reason with the help of the MI guy, but there was no convincing me to talk.31
You could tell that the interrogators were getting used to detainees who refused to cooperate after having cooperated for a while. Just as I was learning from other detainees how not to cooperate, the interrogators were learning from each other how to deal with non-cooperating detainees. The session was closed and I was sent back to my cell. I was satisfied with myself, since I now officially belonged to the majority, the non-cooperating detainees. I minded less being locked up unjustly for the rest of my life; what drove me crazy was to be expected to cooperate, too. You lock me up, I give you no information. And we both are cool.
The sessions continued with the new team. William rarely attended the sessions; “I won’t come as long as you don’t give us every piece of information you have,” he once said. “Still, because we’re Americans we treat you guys according to our high standards. Look at ISN 207, we’re offering him the latest medical technology.” The detainee he mentioned, a young Saudi named Mishal Alhabiri, had been gravely injured in detention, and the JTF people said that he tried to commit suicide. Interrogators brought up his situation a couple of times to showcase that the U.S. was treating detainees humanely.32
“You want just to keep him alive because he might have some Intels, and if he dies, they’re gonna die with him!” I responded. U.S. interrogators always tended to mention free food and free medical treatment for detainees. I don’t really understand what other alternatives they have! I personally have been detained in non-Democratic countries, and the medical treatment was the highest priority. Common sense dictates that if a detainee goes badly ill there will be no Intels, and he’ll probably die.
We spent almost two months of argumentation. “Bring me to the court, and I’ll answer all your questions,” I would tell the team.
“There will be no court!” they would answer.
“Are you a Mafia? You kidnap people, lock them up, and blackmail them,” I said.
“You guys are a law enforcement problem,” said Tom. “We cannot apply the conventional law to you. We need only circumstantial evidence to fry you.”
“I’ve done nothing against your country, have I?”
“You’re a part of the big conspiracy against the U.S.!” Tom said.
“You can pull this charge on anybody! What have I done?”
“I don’t know, you tell me!”
“Look, you kidnap me from my home in Mauritania, not from a battlefield in Afghanistan, because you suspected me of having been part of the Millennium Plot—which I am not, as you know by now. So what’s the next charge? It looks to me as if you want to pull any shit on me.”
“I don’t want to pull any shit on you. I just wish you had access to the same reports as I do!” said Robert.
“I don’t care what the reports say. I’d just like you to take a look at the reports from January 2000 linking me to the Millennium Plot. And you now know that I’m not a part of it, after the cooperation of Ahmed Ressam.
“I don’t think that you are a part of it, nor do I believe that you know Ahmed Ressam,” Robert said. “ But I do know that you know people who know Ressam.”
“I don’t know, but I don’t see the problem if it is the case,” I replied, “Knowing somebody is not a crime, no matter who he is.”
A young Egyptian who was serving as interpreter that day tried to convince me to cooperate. Like almost every other interpreter in GTMO, he called himself Mohamed. “Look, I have come here sacrificing my time to help you guys, and the only way to help yourself is to talk,” he said.
“Aren’t you ashamed to work for these evil people, who arrest your brothers in faith for no reason than being Muslim?” I asked him. “Mohamed, I am older than you are, speak more languages, I have a higher college grade, and I’ve been in many more countries than you have. I understand you’re here to help yourself and make money. If you’re trying to fool anybody, it’s only yourself!” I was just so mad because he talked to me as if I were a child. Robert and Tom were just staring.
These
