The Mauritanian

by Mohamedou Ould Slahi

  The Schmidt-Furlow report, the DOJ IG report, the Senate Armed Services Committee report, and several other sources all document the sexual humiliation and sexual assault of Guantánamo prisoners, often carried out by female military interrogators. After the release of the Schmidt-Furlow report in 2005, a New York Times op-ed titled “The Women of GTMO” decried the “exploitation and debasement of women in the military,” noting that the report “contained page after page of appalling descriptions of the use of women soldiers as sexual foils in interrogations.” See http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/15/opinion/15fri1.html.

  12 Walid Said Bin Said Zaid, ISN 550, was one of several Yemeni prisoners in Guantánamo who remained imprisoned long after they were cleared for release. He was brought to Guantánamo on May 3, 2002. As early as 2006, the Guantánamo Task Force recommended that he be transferred out of the facility, and he was one of seventeen Yemeni prisoners approved for release in 2010. Their releases were stalled, however, when Congress banned the transfer of Yemeni prisoners following the attempt by twenty-three-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to detonate a bomb aboard a U.S.-bound flight on December 25, 2009. Walid Said Bin Said Zaid was one of a group of ten Yemeni prisoners who were transferred to Oman on January 14, 2017, less than a week before the end of Barack Obama’s presidency. No prisoners have been released from Guantánamo since that transfer.

  13 Other former detainees who were held for a time in India Block describe windowless solitary confinement cells that were often kept at frigid temperatures. See, e.g., James Meek, “People the Law Forgot,” Guardian, December 2, 2003. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/dec/03/guantanamo.usa1.

  14 An October 9, 2003, JTF-GTMO Memorandum for the Record recounts a contentious meeting between a visiting delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross and Guantánamo commander General Geoffrey Miller. During the meeting, General Miller “informed [ICRC team leader Vincent] Cassard that ISN 760, 558, and 990 were off limits during this visit due to military necessity.” MOS is ISN 760. The minutes of the ICRC meeting are available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/documents/GitmoMemo10-09-03.pdf.

  15 Ahmed Laabidi, a Tunisian national, lived in Montreal in 2000, where he and MOS were friends. Laabidi was later detained in the United States on an immigration violation. Laabidi was held in U.S. immigration custody and then deported to Tunisia in September 2003. See footnote on page 290 for more on Laabidi.

  16 DOC is the acronym for the Detention Operations Center, which directs all movements within Guantánamo.

  17 The Senate Armed Services Committee found that shackling MOS to the floor was prescribed in his “Special Interrogation Plan.” SASC, 137.

  18 This incident is well documented in the Schmidt-Furlow report, the DOJ IG’s report, and elsewhere. Lt. Gen. Randall Schmidt and Lt. Gen. John Furlow, Army Regulation 15-6: Final Report, Investigation into FBI Allegations of Detainee Abuse at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba Detention Facility (hereinafter cited as Schmidt-Furlow). Schmidt-Furlow, 22–23; DOJ IG, 124. The Schmidt-Furlow Report is available at https://www.thetorturedatabase.org/files/foia_subsite/pdfs/schmidt_furlow_report.pdf.

  19 Court papers filed in MOS’s habeas appeal reference records that seem to be from this exam: “The medical records document increased low back pain ‘for the past 5 days while in isolation and under more intense interrogation’” and note that the pain medication prescribed for him could not be administered throughout July 2003 because he was at the “reservation.” The June 9, 2010, Brief for Appellee is available at https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/brief_for_appellee_-_july_8_2010.pdf.

  20 Christopher Paul is an American who received al Qaeda training in Afghanistan in the early 1990s. He was indicted in 2007 on terrorism-related charges and pled guilty in a plea agreement that resulted in a fifteen-year sentence.

  21 “Mr. X” appears in the Schmidt-Furlow, DOJ IG, and Senate Armed Services Committee reports. At his 2005 Administrative Review Board hearing, with characteristic wit, MOS said this interrogator was always covered “like in Saudi Arabia, how the women are covered,” with “openings for his eyes” and “O.J. Simpson gloves on his hands.” ARB transcript, 25–26.

  22 The Senate Armed Services Committee, which reviewed JTF-GTMO interrogation records, dates what appears to be this interrogation session as July 8, 2003. On that day, the committee found, “Slahi was interrogated by Mr. X and was ‘exposed to variable lighting patterns and rock music, to the tune of Drowning Pool’ s ‘Let the Bodies Hit [the] Floor.’” SASC, 139.

  23 The BNCO is the Block Non-Commissioned Officer, the senior member of the guard unit.

  24 As these July 2003 sessions were happening, General Miller was submitting Slahi’s “Special Interrogation Plan” to SOUTHCOM commander General James Hill for approval. On July 18, 2003, Hill forwarded the plan to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The plan was approved by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz on July 28, 2003, and signed by Rumsfeld on August 13, 2003. In July 2003, Richard Zuley, a retired Chicago police officer and navy reserve lieutenant, was appointed chief of MOS’s “special projects” interrogation team. Zuley’s identity was first revealed in an unredacted footnote of the Senate Armed Services Committee report, and has been corroborated by court documents in MOS’s habeas corpus case and in numerous press reports. See, e.g., https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/18/american-police-brutality-chicago-guantanamo. In his book The Terror Courts: Rough Justice at Guantanamo Bay (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), Wall Street Journal reporter Jess Bravin writes that Zuley took over MOS’s interrogation on July 1, 2003, the same day General Miller approved his “Special Interrogation Plan” (Bravin, The Terror Courts, 105). Zuley publicly acknowledged his role as a lead interrogator in Guantánamo in an episode of the Blog Talk Radio Dave and Chris Show in January 2009. Audio of that podcast is available at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/perfectly-harmless/2009/01/31/the-dave-and-chris-show. For a detailed account of the development and authorization of MOS’s “Special Interrogation Plan,” see SASC, 135–41.

  25 When Defense Secretary Rumsfeld issued his original authorization to use interrogation techniques beyond those included in the Army Field Manual, including forced standing, he famously appended the note “I stand for 8–10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to four hours?” But as Albert Biderman found in his study of coercive interrogation techniques employed by North Korean interrogators during the Korean War, “Returnees who underwent long periods of standing and sitting . . . report no other experience could be more excruciating.” Biderman explained, “Where the individual is told to stand at attention for long periods an intervening factor is introduced. The immediate source of pain is not the interrogator but the victim himself. The contest becomes, in a way, one of the individual against himself. The motivational strength of the individual is likely to exhaust itself in this internal encounter. Bringing the subject to act ‘against himself’ in this manner has additional advantages for the interrogator. It leads the prisoner to exaggerate the power of the interrogator. As long as the subject remains standing, he is attributing to his captor the power to do something worse to him, but there is actually no showdown of the ability of the interrogator to do so.” See http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/torturingdemocracy/documents/19570900.pdf.

  26 Like MOS and Mohammed al-Qahtani, Abdullah Tabarak was held in isolation and inaccessible to the International Committee of the Red Cross. In 2006, the Washington Post reported, “Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller told Red Cross inspectors on Oct. 9, 2003, that they could not visit Tabarak or three other detainees ‘because of military necessity,’ according to the memos. On a follow-up visit Feb. 2, 2004, Miller informed Red Cross officials that they could see anyone at the base, except Tabarak. Miller once again cited ‘military necessity.’ A Defense Department spokesman declined to comment on the memos.

  “Tabarak has told his attorney and other detainees that he was kept in an isolation cell during most of
his stay at Guantanamo. For about one year, he said, he was interrogated only while blindfolded, so he could not see his captors or even know for certain if he was in Cuba or another country.”

  Tabarak was transferred to Morocco in August 2004, held for four months in the custody of Moroccan police, and then released. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/29/AR2006012901044_pf.html.

  27 Military, Department of Justice, and Senate investigators have described in more detail several of these threats. According to a footnote in the Schmidt-Furlow report, “On 17 Jul 03 the masked interrogator told that he had a dream about the subject of the second interrogation dying. Specifically he told the subject of the second special interrogation that in the dream he ‘saw four detainees that were chained together at the feet. They dug a hole that was six-feet long, six-feet deep, and four-feet wide. Then he observed the detainees throw a plain, pine casket with the detainee’s identification number painted in orange lowered into the ground.’ The masked interrogator told the detainee that his dream meant that he was never going to leave GTMO unless he started to talk, that he would indeed die here from old age and be buried on ‘Christian . . . sovereign American soil.’ On 20 Jul 03 the masked interrogator, ‘Mr. X,’ told the subject of the second Special Interrogation Plan that his family was ‘incarcerated.’”

  The report continues, “The MFR dated 02 Aug 03 indicates that the subject of the second special interrogation had a messenger that day there to ‘deliver a message to him.’ The MFR goes on to state: ‘That message was simple: Interrogator’s colleagues are sick of hearing the same lies over and over and over and are seriously considering washing their hands of him. Once they do so, he will disappear and never be heard from again. Interrogator assured detainee again to use his imagination to think of the worst possible scenario he could end up in. He told Detainee that beatings and physical pain are not the worst thing in the world. After all, after being beaten for a while, humans tend to disconnect the mind from the body and make it through. However, there are worse things than physical pain. Interrogator assured Detainee that, eventually, he will talk, because everyone does. But until then, he will very soon disappear down a very dark hole. His very existence will become erased. His electronic files will be deleted from the computer, his paper files will be packed up and filed away, and his existence will be forgotten by all. No one will know what happened to him, and eventually, no one will care.’” Schmidt-Furlow, 24–25.

  28 An incident in which MOS was “deprived of clothing by a female interrogator” is recorded in the DOJ IG report; the report suggests the date of that session was July 17, 2003. DOJ IG, 124.

  29 The date, according to the DOJ Inspector General, is now August 2, 2003. The IG reported, “On August 2, 2003, a different military interrogator posing as a Navy Captain from the White House” appeared to MOS. Both the Senate Armed Services Committee report and the DOJ IG report describe the letter he delivered. According to the Senate Armed Services Committee, the letter stated “that his mother had been detained, would be interrogated, and if she were uncooperative she might be transferred to GTMO.” The DOJ IG reported that “the letter referred to ‘the administrative and logistical difficulties her presence would present in this previously all-male environment,’” and “The interrogator told Slahi that his family was ‘in danger if he (760) did not cooperate.’” The DOJ IG and SASC reports and the army’s Schmidt-Furlow report all make clear that this interrogator was in fact the chief of MOS’s “Special Projects Team,” and the Schmidt-Furlow report indicates he presented himself to MOS as “Captain Collins.” DOJ IG, 123; SASC, 140; Schmidt-Furlow, 25.

  30 Guantánamo’s Camp IV opened in February 2003. Globalsecurity.org describes Camp Four as a “medium security facility built inside the limits of Camp Delta.” “With dormitories able to hold up to 20 detainees in each unit, Camp 4 is aimed at enabling a limited number of captives the opportunity to interact with one another. There, detainees are able to eat, sleep and pray together,” the site reports. It was the first time Guantánamo’s prisoners were allowed to live communally, and photographs of prisoners in Camp Four were displayed in other blocks and in interrogations rooms as an incentive to encourage cooperation. The Camp was emptied when Camp V and Camp VI were opened. See http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/guantanamo-bay_delta.htm.

  31 The Senate Armed Services Committee found that the military’s “Special Interrogation Plan” for MOS included a staged scene in which “military in full riot gear take him from his cell, place him on a watercraft, and drive him around to make him think he had been taken off the island.” Afterward, the committee reported, “Slahi would be taken to Camp Echo,” where his cell and interrogation room—self-contained in a single trailerlike isolation hut—had been “modified in such a way as to reduce as much outside stimuli as possible.” The plan directed that “the doors will be sealed to a point that allows no light to enter the room. The walls may be covered with white paint or paper to further eliminate objects the detainee may concentrate on. The room will contain an eyebolt in the floor and speakers for sound.” The SASC also recorded that an August 21, 2003, mail from a JTF-GTMO intelligence specialist to Lt. Richard Zuley reported on the final preparations to the Camp Echo hut: “The email described sealing Slahi’s cell at Camp Echo to ‘prevent light from shining’ in and covering the entire exterior of his cell with [a] tarp to ‘prevent him from making visual contact with guards.’”

  According to the DOJ Inspector General, the original Special Interrogation Plan that General Miller signed on July 1, 2003, “stated that Slahi would be hooded and flown around Guantanamo Bay for one or two hours in a helicopter to persuade him that he had been moved out of GTMO to a location where ‘the rules have changed.’” However, the IG reported, military interrogators told investigators that in the end “they did not use a helicopter because General Miller decided that it was too difficult logistically to pull off, and that too many people on the base would have to know about it to get this done.” Instead, “on August 25, 2003, Slahi was removed from his cell in Camp Delta, fitted with blackout goggles, and taken on a disorienting boat ride during which he was permitted to hear pre-planned deceptive conversations among other passengers.” SASC, 137–38, 140; DOJ IG 122–123, 127.

  32 MOS is referring here to detainees who were captured along with Ramzi bin al-Shibh on September 11, 2002, and also held for a time in CIA custody before being transferred to Guantánamo. See footnote on page 54.

  33 Mamdouh Habib, held as ISN 661 in Guantánamo, was released and transferred to Australia on January 28, 2005.

  34 MOS’s habeas appeal brief refers to medical records from what could be this exam, describing a corpsman “who treated his injuries while cursing him” and citing “medical records confirming the trauma to Salahi’s chest and face, as ‘1) Fracture ?? 7–8 ribs, 2) Edema of the lower lip.’” Brief for Appellee, 26.

  SIX

  GTMO

  September 2003–December 2003

  First Visit in the Secret Place . . . My Conversation with My Interrogators, and How I Found a Way to Quench Their Thirst . . . Chain Reaction of Confessions . . . Goodness Comes Gradually . . . The Big Confession . . . A Big Milestone

  Back in Camp Delta the Kibla was indicated with an arrow in every cell. Even the call to prayer could be heard five times a day in Camp Delta.1 The U.S. has always repeated that the war is not against the Islamic religion—which is very prudent because it is strategically impossible to fight against a religion as big as Islam—and back there the U.S. was showing the rest of the world how religious freedom ought to be maintained.

  But in the secret camps, the war against the Islamic religion was more than obvious. Not only was there no sign to Mecca, but the ritual prayers were also forbidden. Reciting the Koran was forbidden. Possessing the Koran was forbidden. Fasting was forbidden. Practically any Islamic-related ritual was strictly forbidden. I am not talking here about hearsay; I am tal
king about something I experienced myself. I don’t believe that the average American is paying taxes to wage war against Islam, but I do believe that there are people in the government who have a big problem with the Islamic religion.

  For the first couple of weeks after my “Birthday Party” I had no clue about time, whether it was day or night, let alone the time of day. I could only pray in my heart lying down, because I could not stand straight or bend. When I woke up from my semi-coma, I tried to make out the difference between day and night. In fact it was a relatively easy job: I used to look down the toilet, and when the drain was very bright to lightish dark, that was the daytime in my life. I succeeded in illegally stealing some prayers, but Sergeant Big Boss busted me.

  “He’s praying!” Big Boss yelled, and called his colleague. “Come on!” They put on their masks. “Stop praying.” I don’t recall whether I finished my prayer sitting, or if I finished at all. As a punishment Sergeant Big Boss forbade me to use the bathroom for some time.

  As soon as the assessing doctor reported that I was relieved from my pain, it was time to hit again before the injuries healed, following the motto “Strike While the Iron’s Hot.” When I heard the melee behind the door, and recognized the voices of both Captain Collins and his Egyptian colleague, I drowned in sweat, got dizzy, and my feet failed to carry me.2 My heart pounded so hard that I thought it was going to choke me and fly off through my mouth. Indistinct conversations involving Captain Collins and the guards took place.

  “Meester Cooleens, let mee geet him,” said the Egyptian guy in his stretched-out out English to Captain Collins. “I wish Meester Cooleens let me in to have a little conversation with you,” said the Egyptian in Arabic, addressing me.

  “Stand back now; let me see him alone,” Captain Collins said. I was shaking, listening to the bargaining between the Americans and the Egyptians about who was going to get me. I looked like somebody who was going through an autopsy while still alive and helpless.