The Mauritanian

by Mohamedou Ould Slahi

  “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 going: I thought they were taking me to my execution.24

  When I entered the room where the test was supposed to take place, I expected to see a huge machine. I had told my neighbors in Lima Block about the upcoming polygraph test, and my neighbor Jabir Jubran Al Fayfi, who had been an MP in the Saudi army, told me he had taken one before. His description of the test was not exactly comforting. Adding to that, an Egyptian novel fell into my hands a few days before the test that dramatically described an Egyptian double agent undergoing a lie detector test that was given by the Israeli Mossad. If I believed in conspiracies, I would have assumed the interrogators sent the librarian to deliver me that particular book, but I couldn’t tell if it was to scare me or encourage me, or what the lesson was supposed to be. In the novel, after much sweating and panting, the Egyptian emerged victorious; the moral seemed to be that you could lie and pass the test, but if you are telling the truth, you can still fail.25

  From the book and from Jabir I somehow imagined the lie detector as a big, elliptical-like machine I would climb onto and be wired everywhere. Then I would start running and sweating as interrogators beside me threw random questions at me and recorded my vital signs, which would indicate my truthfulness or lack thereof. I expected a great deal of shouting and intimidation, like in the Egyptian novel. But when I entered the room, I found a big table with a laptop, a blood pressure cuff, a big belt, a small printer, and many thin cables and other stuff I didn’t understand. I was relieved because the equipment looked much less intimidating than I’d imagined. American genius never stopped impressing me: with such a small device they can decide whether or not you are lying!

  The guards sat me in a chair next to the empty table and left me alone. The tester was watching me from the next room to see how I behaved. When he decided to end his self-imprisonment behind the mirror he entered the room, accompanied by an interpreter whose Arabic was very weak. It was entertaining to watch the exchange between them as the interpreter struggled to keep up with his sermon.

  He started with stories of his great achievements, naming many high-profile people suspected of heinous acts of violence whom he had saved and sent home. The stories in the Thousand and One Nights paled in comparison to his imagination. He walked me through the technological part briefly, mostly to scare me and convince me to tell him the truth, as Abu Zubaydah and others supposedly had when he tested them. He ran a belt around my abdomen and another one around my rib cage to measure the pattern of my breathing. He placed a cuff around my upper arm to measure the changes in my blood pressure, and wrapped a sensor around the tip of my index finger, explaining that if I lied I would sweat and thus drive down the temperature on my finger. Then he hit the real meat, conducting a comprehensive and thorough interrogation. 26

  He laid out pictures of some of the suspected 9/11 hijackers and planners and asked me whether I knew or ever met them. I couldn’t understand his logic, because he kept showing me more than one picture at a time and asking questions about them, as if they were joined and did everything together. Why didn’t he take them one by one? I told the tester that I never met or talked to any one of them, even though I remembered seeing Ramzi bin al-Shibh once. But I couldn’t remember where, so I decided to skip that information because I was too scared, especially because I could see the FBI and the tester clearly suspected him of being a 9/11 co-conspirator.

  The tester told me the results of the test were “inconclusive.” He seemed to notice his mistake of not separating the guys and asking about them individually, but his attempts to convince me to take the test one more time fell on deaf ears. I was tired like never before, and I told him that I didn’t really need freedom that badly. The whole process was tedious and long, “comme un jour sans pain,” as the French say, except it really was a day without bread. I was sent back to my cell, sure they were now planning on me staying for the long haul.

  After a couple of days, I was taken to interrogation.

  “How are you?” said John. It had been a long time since I’d seen him.

  “Good!”

  John and his colleague talked about the polygraph and tried to get me to agree to take it again, but I refused. I really couldn’t see what good it would do. They also tried to gather intels from me about other detainees. The Joint Task Force was starting to turn up the heat against the detainees. Treatment in the interrogation rooms was getting worse and worse, and visits from the so-called IRF team to pick up “non-compliant detainees” were commonplace. One time, the whole unit was deployed to search detainees at the same time. It was in the dead of night when I was pulled out of my cell and searched by the guards, with the TV camera on me and contractors watching the whole show. I wasn’t the only one; the whole block of forty-eight detainees was searched. The relationship between the Joint Detention Group and the detainees was becoming very tense, and there was nothing much detainees could do to change their situation: the deck was stacked against us, and JDG held all the cards.27

  In Major General Dunlavey’s era, there were many issues, most of which were initiated by the desperation of the detainees. Endless interrogation. Disrespect of the Holy Koran by some of the guards. Torturing detainees by making them spend the night in a cold room (though this method was not practiced nearly as much as it would be in General Geoffrey Miller’s time). So we decided to go on a hunger strike; many detainees took part, including me. But I could only strike for four days, after which I was a ghost.28

  “Don’t break, you’re gonna weaken the group,” said my Saudi neighbor.

  “I told you guys I’m gonna hunger strike, not that I’m gonna commit suicide. I’m gonna break,” I replied.

  The situation grew even worse when General Miller took over. He was a hardworking man, the kind of man to be picked for the dirtiest job, when many others had failed. General Miller was a very radical hater. He completely changed the detention policies in GTMO in all aspects. He us
ed to tour the blocks nonstop, giving guards and interrogators instructions for what to do with us. I personally don’t know what he told them, but as someone on the receiving end of his orders, I definitely felt the pain.

  General Miller was responsible for a kind of class society he created in the camp. Blocks were defined by their levels, and there were five levels. The best was Level One, for so-called highly compliant detainees. Level Four was for isolation as a disciplinary measure, and Level Five was reserved for people who were considered of high intelligence value. Detainees of this level are completely under the mercy of their interrogators, which was very convenient for the interrogators. The system was designed to keep us on edge all the time: One day in paradise, and the next in hell.

  In the beginning, when we were informed about the new system, it was a given to me that I was Level One. But to my dismay, I was put with the pariah block, the supposed worst of the worst. I was like, what the heck is going on, I’ve never been in trouble with the guards, and I am answering my interrogators and cooperating with them. But I missed that cooperation meant telling your interrogators whatever they want to hear.

  I was put once more in Oscar Block toward the end of 2002.

  An escort team appeared in front of my cell.

  “760 reservation!” they said.

  “OK, just give me a second!” I put my clothes on and washed my face. My heart started to pound. I hated interrogation; I had gotten tired of being terrified all the time, living in constant fear day-in and day-out for the last thirteen months.

  “Allah be with you! Keep your head on! They work for Satan!” yelled my fellow detainees to keep me together, as we always did when somebody got pulled for interrogation. I hated the sounds of the heavy metal chains; I could hardly carry them when they were given to me. People were always getting taken from the block, and every time I heard the chains I thought it would be me. You never know what’s going to happen in the interrogation; people sometimes never came back to the block, they just disappeared. It happened to a Moroccan fellow detainee, and it would happen to me, as you’re going to learn, God willing.

  When 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 conversations took place again and again in different sessions. I kept saying, “You tell why I am here, I’ll cooperate; you don’t tell 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.”