The Mauritanian

by Mohamedou Ould Slahi

  “I don’t know.”

  “All you have to say is, ‘I don’t remember, I don’t know, I’ve done nothing.’ You think you’re going to impress an American jury with these words? In the eyes of the Americans, you’re doomed. Just looking at you in an orange suit, chains, and being Muslim and Arabic is enough to convict you,” Sergeant Shally said.

  “That is unjust!”

  “We know that you are criminal.”

  “What have I done?”

  “You tell me, and we’ll reduce your sentence to thirty years, after which you’ll have a chance to lead a life again. Otherwise you’ll never see the light of day. If you don’t cooperate, we’re going to put you in a hole and wipe your name out of our detainee database.” I was so terrified because I knew that even though he couldn’t make such a decision on his own, he had the complete back-up of a high government level. He didn’t speak from thin air.

  “I don’t care where you take me, just do it.”

  In another session when he was talking to me, he seemed particularly angry. He brought up the transcripts of my phone calls in Canada. “What the fuck do you mean, tea or sugar?”

  “I just meant what I said, I was not talking in code.”

  “Fuck you!” SFC Shally said. I figured I wouldn’t degrade myself and lower myself to his level, so I didn’t answer him. When I failed to give him the answer he wanted to hear, he made me stand up, with my back bent because my hands were shackled to my feet and waist and locked to the floor. Sergeant Shally turned the temperature control all the way down, and made sure that the guards maintained me in that situation until he decided otherwise. He used to start a fuss before going to lunch, so he could keep me hurt during his lunch, which took at least two to three hours. Sergeant Shally likes his food; he never missed his lunch. I always wondered how he could possibly have passed the Army’s fitness test. But I realized he was in the Army for a reason: he was good at being inhumane.

  “Why are you in jail?” he asked me.

  “Because your country is unjust, and my country isn’t defending me?”

  “Now you’re saying that we Americans are just looking for skinny Arabs,” he said.

  Lieutenant Ronica came with him occasionally, and it was kind of a blessing for me. I grew tired of dealing with a lifeless face like Sergeant Shally’s. When the Navy Lieutenant came I felt like I was meeting with a human being. She offered me the appropriate chair for my back pain, while SFC Shally always insisted on the metal chair or the dirty floor.

  “Do you know that Ahmed Laabidi is dealing such and such?” Lieutenant Ronica asked me, naming some kind of drug.15

  “What the hell do you mean?” I asked.

  “You know what she means,” SFC Shally said. Lieutenant Ronica smiled because she knew that I wasn’t lying. I really could have been anything but a drug dealer, and SFC Shally was dying to link me to any crime no matter what.

  “It’s a type of narcotic,” Lieutenant Ronica replied.

  “I’m sorry, I am not familiar at all with that circle.”

  SFC Shally and his bosses realized that it took more than just isolation, threats, and intimidation to break me. And so they decided to bring another interrogator into play. Sometime in mid-July I was taken by the Golf escort team to Brown Building to reservation. The escorting team was confused.

  “They said Brown Building? That’s weird!” said one of the guards.

  When we entered the building there were no monitoring guards. “Call the D.O.C.!” said the other. 16 After the radio call, the two guards were ordered to stay with me in the room until my interrogators showed up.

  “Something’s wrong,” said the first one.

  The escort team didn’t realize that I understood what they were talking about; they always assume that detainees don’t speak English, which they typically don’t. The leadership in the camp always tried to warn the guards; signs like “DO NOT HELP THE ENEMY,” and “CARELESS TALK GIVES SECRETS AWAY,” were not rare, but the guards talked to each other anyway.

  Brown Building was at one point a regular interrogation booth, then a building for torture, then an administrative building. My heart was pounding; I was losing my mind. I hate torture so much. A slim, small female entered the room followed by Mr. Tough Guy, SFC Shally. Staff Sergeant Mary was a young woman in her early thirties, about five and a half feet tall, with long, light brown hair, of which she was very proud. She was with the National Guard, and had been called to duty after 9/11, I later learned. Neither greeted me, nor released my hands from the shackles.

  “What is this?” SSG Mary asked, showing me a plastic bag with a small welding stick inside.

  “It’s Indian incense,” I replied. That was the first thing that came to my mind. I thought she wanted to give me a treat by burning the incense during the interrogation, which was a good idea.

  “No, you’re wrong!” She almost stuck it in my face.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Now we have found evidence against you; we don’t need anymore,” said SSG Mary. I was like, What the hell is going on, is that a part of a bomb they want to pull on me?

  “This is a welding stick you were hiding in your bathroom,” SSG Mary said.

  “How can I possibly have such a thing in my cell, unless you or my guards gave it to me? I have no contact whatsoever with any detainees.”

  “You’re smart, you could have smuggled it,” said SSG Mary.

  “How?”

  “Take him to the bathroom,” she said. SSG Mary called the Golf team that was waiting outside the door to unhook me. The guards grabbed me to the bathroom. I was thinking, “Are these people so desperate to pull shit on me, I mean any shit?” In the meantime, a senior NCO guard was explaining to SSG Mary how these welding sticks end up in the cells; I caught his last words when the guards were leading me back from the restroom. “It’s common. The contractors keep throwing them in the toilets after finishing with them.” As soon as I entered, everybody suddenly shut up. SSG Mary put the welding stick back in a yellow envelope. SSG Mary never introduced herself, nor did I expect her to do so. The worse an interrogator’s intention is, the more he or she covers his or her identity. But those people get busted the most, and so did SSG Mary, when one of her colleagues mistakenly called her by her name.

  “How does your new situation look?” SSG Mary asked me.

  “I’m just doing great!” I answered. I was really suffering, but I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of having reached their evil goal.

  “I think he’s too comfortable,” SFC Shally said.

  “Get off the chair!” SSG Mary said, pulling the chair from beneath me. “I’d rather have a dirty farmer sitting on the chair than a smart ass like you,” she continued, when my whole body dropped on the dirty floor. My back pain from my sciatic nerve condition was killing me. Since June 20th I never got relief from them. SFC Shally obviously was getting tired of dealing with me, so his boss offered him fresh blood, manifesting in the person of SSG Mary. SSG Mary started the session. She spread the pictures of some September 11 suspects in front of me, namely Mohamed Atta, Ziad Jarrah, Marwan al-Shehhi, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and others.

  “Look at these motherfuckers,” said SSG Mary. “OK, now tell us what you know about those motherfuckers!” she said.

  “I swear to God, I will not tell you one word, no matter what.”

  “Stand up! Guards! If you don’t stand up, it’ll be ugly,” SSG Mary said. And before the torture squad entered the room I stood up, with my back bent because the heavy chains bound my hands to my feet so I was tied hands and feet to the floor. This type of restraints didn’t allow me to stand up straight.17 I had to suffer every-inch-of-my-body pain the rest of the day. I dealt with the pain silently; I kept praying until my assailants got tired and sent me back to my cell at the end of the day, after exhausting their resources of humiliations for that day. I didn’t say a single word, as if I had not been there. You, De
ar Reader, said more words to them than I did.

  “If you want to go to the bathroom, ask politely to use the restroom, say ‘Please, may I?’ Otherwise, do it in your pants,” SSG Mary said.

  Before lunch SSG Mary and SFC Shally dedicated the time to speaking ill about my family, and describing my wife with the worst adjective you can imagine. For the sake of my family, I dismiss their degrading quotations. The whole time the two sergeants offered me just water and a cold meal; “You are not entitled to a warm meal unless you cooperate,” SFC Shally said once. Whenever they started to torture me I refused to drink or eat. SSG Mary brought her lunch from outside to frustrate me.

  “Yummy, ham is tasty,” she said, eating her meal.

  That afternoon was dedicated to sexual molestation. SFC Shally left the interrogation booth to watch from next door. SSG Mary started to press her body against me, all over, and said that if I refused to talk, she would rape me; a “fair warning,” one could say. She started shyly to perform the lamest strip you could imagine.

  “You know, it’s not against the law to have sex with detainees,” she said, as she was taking off her uniform blouse and was whispering in my ear, “You know how good I am in bed,” and “American men like me to whisper in their ears,” she said, slowly removing her uniform piece by piece, hoping I would crack and relieve her from the pain of humiliation she was inflicting upon herself. I could tell it wasn’t her first choice to act in this way. But I couldn’t help her, and said nothing. She kept talking about what American men like, and self-consciously praising herself, saying things like “I have a great body.”

  Every once in a while SSG Mary offered me the other side of the coin. “If you start to cooperate, I’m gonna stop harassing you. Otherwise I’ll be doing the same with you and worse every day. I am very good at this kind of work and that’s why my government designated me to this job. I’ve always been successful. Having sex with somebody is not considered torture.”18

  SSG Mary was leading the monologue, while SFC Shally watched from next door. Every now and then he entered and tried to make me speak, “You cannot defeat us: we have too many people, and we’ll keep humiliating you with American sex.”

  “I have a big-boobed friend I’m gonna bring tomorrow to help me,” she said. “At least she’ll cooperate,” said SSG Mary wryly. SSG Mary didn’t undress me, but she was touching my private parts with her body.

  In the late afternoon, another torture squad started with another poor detainee. I could hear loud music playing. “Do you want me to send you to that team, or are you gonna cooperate?” SSG Mary asked. I didn’t answer. The guards used to call Brown Building “The Party House” because most of the torture took place in those buildings, and at night, when darkness started to cover the sorry camp.

  SSG Mary sent me back to my cell, warning me, “Today is just the beginning, what’s coming is worse.”

  But in order for this special JTF team to know how much torture a detainee can take, they need medical assistance. I was sent to a doctor, an officer in the Navy. I would describe him as a decent and humane person.19

  “Are you going to remove the chains? I don’t examine people with that shit on them,” he said to the escorting Golf team.

  “The gentleman has a pretty serious case of sciatic nerve,” he said.

  “I cannot take the conditions I am in anymore,” I told him. I am being stopped from taking my pain medication and my Ensure, which were necessary to maintain my head above water,” I said. The interrogators would organize the sessions so that they would cover the time when you are supposed to take your medication. I had two prescriptions, tabs for the sciatic nerve back pain and Ensure to compensate the loss of weight I had been suffering since my arrest. I usually got my meds between 4 and 5 p.m., and so the interrogators made sure that I was with them and missed my medication. But look at it, what sense does it make, if the interrogators work on hurting my back and then give me back pain medication, or to give me a bad diet and want me to gain weight?

  “I don’t have much power. I can write a recommendation, but it’s the decision of other people. Your case is very serious!” he told me. I left the clinic with some hope, but my situation only worsened.

  “Look, the doctor said I’ve developed high blood pressure. That’s serious; you know that I was a hypotensive person before,” I said the next time SSG Mary called me to interrogation.

  “You’re alright, we spoke with the doctor,” the interrogators replied. I knew then that my recipe was going to continue.

  The torture was growing day by day. The guards on the block actively participated in the process. The interrogators tell them what to do with the detainees when they came back to the block. I had guards banging on my cell to prevent me from sleeping. They cursed me for no reason. They repeatedly woke me, unless my interrogators decided to give me a break. I never complained to my interrogators about the issue because I knew they planned everything with the guards.

  As promised, SSG Mary pulled me early in the day. Lonely in my cell, I was terrified when I heard the guards carrying the heavy chains and shouting at my door “Reservation!” My heart started to pound heavily because I always expected the worst. But the fact that I wasn’t allowed to see the light made me “enjoy” the short trip between my freakin’ cold cell and the interrogation room. It was just a blessing when the warm GTMO sun hit me. I felt life sneaking back into every inch of my body. I would always get this fake happiness, though only for a very short time. It’s like taking narcotics.

  “How you been?” said one of the Puerto Rican escorting guards in his weak English.

  “I’m OK, thanks, and you?”

  “No worry, you gonna back to your family,” he said. When he said that I couldn’t help breaking in tears. Lately, I’d become so vulnerable. What was wrong with me? Just one soothing word in this ocean of agony was enough to make me cry. Around this time in Delta Camp we had a complete Puerto Rican division. They were different than other Americans; they were not as vigilant and unfriendly. Sometimes, they took detainees to shower outside the prescribed time. Everybody liked them. But they got in trouble with those responsible for the camps because of their friendly and humane approach to detainees. I can’t objectively speak about the people from Puerto Rico because I haven’t met enough; however, if you ask me, Have you ever seen a bad Puerto Rican guy? My answer would be no. But if you ask, Is there one? I just don’t know. It’s the same way with the Sudanese people.

  “Keep the shackles on and give him no chair,” said the D.O.C. worker on the radio when the escort team dropped me in Brown Building. SSG Mary and the promised big-breasted woman entered the room. They brought a picture of an American black man named Christopher Paul, who I met one time many years before in Afghanistan. “We’re gonna talk today about this guy, ‘Abdulmalek,’” SSG Mary said, after bribing me with a weathered metal chair.20

  “I have told you what I know about Abdulmalek.”

  “No, that’s bullshit. Are you gonna tell us more?”

  “No, I have no more to tell.”

  The new female interrogator pulled the metal chair away and left me on the floor. “Now, tell us about Christopher Paul, a.k.a. Abdulmalek!”

  “No, that’s passé,” I said.

  “Yes, you’re right. So if it is passé, talk about it, it won’t hurt,” the new female interrogator said.

  “No.”

  “Then today, we’re gonna teach you about great American sex. Get up!” said SSG Mary. I stood up in the same painful position as I had every day for about seventy days. I would rather follow the orders and reduce the pain that would be caused when the guards come to play; the guards used every contact opportunity to beat the hell out of the detainee. “Detainee tried to resist,” was the “Gospel truth” they came up with, and guess who was going to be believed? “You’re very smart, because if you don’t stand up it’s gonna be ugly,” SSG Mary said.

  As soon as I stood up, the two women took off th
eir blouses, and started to talk all kind of dirty stuff you can imagine, which I minded less. What hurt me most was them forcing me to take part in a sexual threesome in the most degrading manner. What many women don’t realize is that men get hurt the same as women if they’re forced to have sex, maybe more due to the traditional position of the man. Both women stuck on me, literally one on the front and the other older woman stuck on my back rubbing her whole body on mine. At the same time they were talking dirty to me, and playing with my sexual parts. I am saving you here from quoting the disgusting and degrading talk I had to listen to from noon or before until 10 p.m. when they turned me over to Mr. X, the new character you’ll soon meet.

  To be fair and honest, the two women didn’t deprive me of my clothes at any time; everything happened with my uniform on. The senior interrogator SFC Shally was watching every-thing through the one-way mirror from the next room. I kept praying all the time.

  “Stop the fuck praying! You’re having sex with American whores and you’re praying? What a hypocrite you are!” said SFC Shally angrily, entering the room. I refused to stop speaking my prayers, and after that, I was forbidden to perform my ritual prayers for about one year to come. I also was forbidden to fast during the sacred month of Ramadan October 2003, and fed by force. During this session I also refused to eat or to drink, although they offered me water every once in a while. “We must give you food and water; if you don’t eat it’s fine.” They also offered me the nastiest MRE they had in the camp. We detainees knew that JTF interrogators gathered Intels about what food a detainee likes or dislikes, when he prays, and many other things that are just ridiculous.

  I was just wishing to pass out so I didn’t have to suffer, and that was really the main reason for my hunger strike; I knew people like these don’t get impressed by hunger strikes. Of course they didn’t want me to die, but they understand there are many steps before one dies. “You’re not gonna die, we’re gonna feed you up your ass,” said SSG Mary.

  I have never felt as violated in myself as I had since the DOD Team started to torture me to get me to admit to things I haven’t done. You, Dear Reader, could never understand the extent of the physical, and much more the psychological pain people in my situation suffered, no matter how hard you try to put yourself in another’s shoes. Had I done what they accused me of, I would have relieved myself on day one. But the problem is that you cannot just admit to something you haven’t done; you need to deliver the details, which you can’t when you hadn’t done anything. It’s not just, “Yes, I did!” No, it doesn’t work that way: you have to make up a complete story that makes sense to the dumbest dummies. One of the hardest things to do is to tell an untruthful story and maintain it, and that is exactly where I was stuck. Of course I didn’t want to involve myself in devastating crimes I hadn’t done—especially under the present circumstances, where the U.S. government was jumping on every Muslim and trying to pin any crime on him.