me, I’m not gonna cooperate. But we can talk about anything else beside interrogation.”
Robert welcomed that idea. He assured me that he was going to ask his boss to provide him the cause of my arrest, because he didn’t know it himself. In the meantime he taught me a lot about American culture and history, the U.S. and Islam, and the U.S. and the Arab world. The team started to bring movies in; I saw The Civil War, Muslims in the U.S., and several other Frontline broadcasts regarding terrorism. “All of this shit happens because of hatred,” he would say. “Hatred is the reason for all disasters.”
“I am gonna show you the evidence bit by bit,” said Robert one day. “There is a big al Qaeda guy who told us that you are involved.”33
“I guess you shouldn’t ask me questions then, since you have a witness. Just take me to court and roast me,” I said. “What have I done, according to your witness?”
“He said you are a part of the conspiracy.” I grew tired of the words Big Conspiracy against the U.S. Robert could not give me anything to grab onto, no matter how much I argued with him.
As to Tom from the NYPD, he was not an argumentative guy; “If the government believes that you’re involved in bad things, they’re gonna send you to Iraq or back to Afghanistan,” he said.34
“So if you guys torture me, I’m gonna tell you everything you want to hear?”
“No, look: if a mom asks her kid whether he’s done something wrong, he might lie. But if she hits him, he’s gonna admit it,” replied Tom. I had no answer to this analogy. Anyway, the “big al Qaeda” guy who testified against me turned out to be Ramzi bin al-Shibh. Ramzi was said to have said that I helped him to go to Chechnya with two other guys who were among the hijackers, which I hadn’t done. Though I had seen him once or twice in Germany, I didn’t even know his name. Even if I had helped them to go to Chechnya, that would be no crime at all, but I just hadn’t.
By then I knew about the horrible torture that Ramzi bin al-Shibh had suffered after his arrest in Karachi. Eyewitnesses who were captured with him in Karachi said, “We thought he was dead. We heard his cries and moans day and night until he was separated from us.” We had even heard even rumors in the camp that he died under torture. Overseas torture was obviously a common practice and professionally executed; I heard so many testimonies from detainees who didn’t know each other that they couldn’t be lies. And as you shall see, I was subject to torture in this base of GTMO, like many other fellow detainees. May Allah reward all of us.
“I don’t believe in torture,” said Robert. I didn’t share with him my knowledge about Ramzi having been tortured. But because the government has sent detainees including me, Mamdouh Habib, and Mohamed Saad Iqbal overseas to facilitate our interrogation by torture, that meant that the government believes in torture; what Robert believes in doesn’t have much weight when it comes to the harsh justice of the U.S. during war.35
As for Tom, he was interested in getting information as quickly as possible using classic police methods. He offered me McDonald’s one day, but I refused because I didn’t want to owe him anything. “The Army are fighting to take you to a very bad place, and we don’t want that to happen!” he warned me.
“Just let them take me there; I’ll get used to it. You keep me in jail whether or not I cooperate, so why should I cooperate?” I said this still not knowing that Americans use torture to facilitate interrogations. I was very tired from being taken to interrogation every day. My back was just conspiring against me. I even sought Medical help.
“You’re not allowed to sit for such a long time,” said the female Navy physiotherapist.
“Please tell my interrogators that, because they make me sit for long hours almost every day.”
“I’ll write a note, but I’m not sure whether it will have an effect,” she replied.
It didn’t. Instead, in February 2003, Tom washed his hands of me.36
“I am going to leave, but if you’re ready to talk about your telephone conversations, request me, I’ll come back,” he said.
“I assure you, I am not going to talk about anything unless you answer my question: Why am I here?”
1 A Council of Europe investigation confirms that a CIA-leased Gulf-stream jet with the tail number N379P departed Amman, Jordan, at 11:15 p.m. on July 19, 2002, for Kabul, Afghanistan. An addendum to that 2006 report listing the flight records is available at http://assembly.coe.int/CommitteeDocs/2006/20060614_Ejdoc162006PartII-Appendix.pdf.
EDITOR’S NOTE ON THE FOOTNOTES: None of Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s attorneys holding security clearances has reviewed the footnotes in this book, contributed to them in any way, or confirmed or denied my speculations contained in them. Nor has anyone else with access to the unredacted manuscript reviewed the footnotes, contributed to them in any way, or confirmed or denied my speculations contained in them.
2 Abu Hafs is MOS’s cousin and former brother-in-law. His full name is Mahfouz Ould al-Walid, and he is also known as Abu Hafs al-Mauritani. Abu Hafs married the sister of MOS’s former wife. He was a prominent member of al-Qaeda’s Shura Council, the group’s main advisory body, in the 1990s and up until the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States. It has been widely reported that Abu Hafs opposed those attacks; the 9/11 Commission recorded that “Abu Hafs the Mauritanian reportedly even wrote Bin Ladin a message basing opposition to the attacks on the Qur’an.” Abu Hafs left Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks and spent the next decade under house arrest in Iran. In April 2012 he was extradited to Mauritania, where he was held briefly and then released. He is now a free man. The relevant section of the 9/11 Commission report is available at http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch7.pdf.
3 At his December 15, 2005, Administrative Review Board (ARB) hearing, MOS described a U.S. interrogator in Bagram who was Japanese American and whom Bagram prisoners referred to as “William the Torturer.” ARB transcript, 23. MOS’s 2005 ARB hearing transcript is available at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/guantanamo/detainees/760-mohamedou-ould-slahi/documents/2.
4 Omar Deghayes was released and returned to the United Kingdom, his country of residence, on December 18, 2007.
5 At his 2005 ARB hearing, MOS indicated that an interrogator nicknamed “William the Torturer” made him kneel for “very long hours” to aggravate his sciatic nerve pain and later threatened him. ARB transcript, 23.
6 Department of Justice. This is not true, of course. The Guantánamo Bay detention camp is located on the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base and is run by a U.S. military joint task force under the command of the U.S. Southern Command.
7 Press accounts indicate that MOS was eventually interrogated by both German and Canadian intelligence agents in Guantánamo; later in the manuscript, in the scene where he meets with what appear to be BND interrogators in GTMO, MOS specifically references such a prohibition on external interrogations. See footnote on page 49; see also http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/from-germany-to-guantanamo-the-career-of-prisoner-no-760-a-583193-3.html;
