The Mauritanian

by Mohamedou Ould Slahi

  “You are going to cooperate, whether you choose to or not. You can choose between the civilized way, which I personally prefer, or the other way,” said Captain Collins when the guards dragged me out of my cell to him. In the background the Egyptian guy was barking and threatening me with all kinds of painful revenge.

  “I am cooperating,” I said in a weak voice. It had been a while since I had talked the last time, and my mouth was not used to talking anymore. My muscles were very sore. I was scared beyond belief. The Halloween-masked guard, Big Boss, was literally stuck on me, moving around and ready to strike at an eye’s wink.

  “No, quit denying. We are not interested in your denials. Don’t fuck with me,” Captain Collins said.

  “I’m not.”

  “I am going to appoint some interrogators to question you. You know some of them, and some you don’t.”

  “OK!” I said. The conversation was closed. Captain Collins ordered the guards to put me back in my cell, and he disappeared.

  Then nothing short of a “miracle” happened: SFC Shally made it to the “far faraway secret place.”

  “You’ve been causing me so much trouble—nah, well, in Paris it wasn’t that bad but in Mauritania the weather was terrible. I sat at the table across from Karim Mehdi, and when I asked him, ‘Who recruited you for al Qaeda?’ his answer was you. And the same with Christian Ganczarski. Both of them are working with us now. You know, you are a part of an organization which the free world wants to wipe out of the face of the earth,” said SFC Shally.

  I was listening carefully, and wondering, Free world? I was saying to myself, Do I really have to listen to this crap? SFC Shally was accompanied by the same female sergeant that SSG Mary had brought about two months ago to molest me sexually.

  “You know, in jail the one who talks first wins. You lost and Karim Mehdi won. He said everything about you,” said the female sergeant. “The good thing is, we don’t have to dirty our hands with you; we have Israelis and Egyptians doing the job for us,” she continued, while taunting me sexually by touching me everywhere. I neither talked nor showed any resistance. I was sitting there like a stone.3

  “Why is he shaking so much?” asked the female sergeant.

  “I don’t know,” SFC Shally answered.

  “But his hands are sweating like crazy!”

  “If I were him, the same would be happening to me,” said SFC Shally. “You think this place is like Camp Delta, where you survived every attempt to break you, but you won’t survive here if you keep playing games with us,” he said.

  “Like what?” I wondered.

  “Like your trip to Slovenia. You only told me about it because you knew I knew about it. Now: are you going to cooperate with us?” he asked.

  “I was cooperating,” I said.

  “No, you weren’t, and guess what? I am going to write in my report that you’re full of shit, and other people are going to take care of you. The Egyptian is very interested in you!”

  Meanwhile the female sergeant stopped molesting me since I showed no resistance. “What’s wrong with him?” she wondered once more.

  “I don’t know. But maybe he is too relaxed in this place. We should maybe take away some of his sleep,” said SFC Shally. He took the sergeant of the guards aside and whispered something that I figured was the recipe I would be receiving next. Whenever he took a guard aside to talk, I knew it wasn’t going to work out to my benefit. I’ve never seen a human being as emotionless as he was. He spoke about keeping me from sleeping without a single change in his voice, face, or composure. I mean, regardless of our religion or the race, we human beings always feel more or less bad for somebody who is suffering. I personally can never help breaking into tears when I read a sad story or watch a sad movie. I have no problem admitting this. Some people may say that I am a weak person; well, then, let me be!

  “You should ask Captain Collins to forgive you the lies, and start everything over,” said the female sergeant. I didn’t say anything. “Start small. Give us a piece of information you never said before!” she continued. I had no response to that malicious, nonsense suggestion either.

  “Your mom is an old lady. I don’t know how long she can withstand the conditions in the detention facility,” SFC Shally said. I knew that he was talking out of his tail. But I also knew that the government was ready to take any measures to pry information out of me, even if it would take injury to my family members, especially when you know that the Mauritanian government is cooperating blindly with the U.S. I mean the U.S. government has more power over Mauritanians than over U.S. nationals, that’s how far the cooperation goes. A U.S. citizen cannot be arrested without due process of law, but Mauritanian citizens can—and by the U.S. government! I always said to my interrogators, “Let’s say I am criminal. Is an American criminal holier than a non-American?” And most of them had no answer. But I am sure that Americans are not much luckier. I’ve heard of many of them getting persecuted and wrongly arrested, especially Muslims and Arabs, in the name of the War Against Terror. Americans, non-Americans: it is as the German proverb puts it, Heute die! Morgen du! Today Them, Tomorrow You!

  It was very hard to start a conversation with SFC Shally; even the guards hated him. Today I couldn’t get anywhere with him; I just couldn’t find a handrail in the train of his speech. And as to the other female sergeant, she was only sent to harass me sexually, but I was at a stage where I had no feeling toward any female at all that way. Thus, her mission was dead before it was born.

  “You know how it looks when you feel our wrath,” SFC Shally said, and left me with many other threats including sleep deprivation and starvation, which I believed to be true and serious. The guards put me roughly back in my cell.

  Over the next several days, I almost lost my mind. Their recipe for me went like this: I must be kidnapped from Camp Delta and put in a secret place. I must be made to believe I was on a far, faraway island. I must be informed by Captain Collins that my mom was captured and put in a special facility.

  In the secret place, the physical and psychological suffering must be at their highest extremes. I must not know the difference between day and night. I couldn’t tell a thing about days going by or time passing; my time consisted of a crazy darkness all the time. My diet times were deliberately messed up. I was starved for long periods and then given food but not given time to eat.

  “You have three minutes: Eat!” a guard would yell at me, and then after about half a minute he would grab the plate. “You’re done!” And then it was the opposite extreme: I was given too much food and a guard came into my cell and forced me to eat all of it. When I said “I need water” because the food got stuck in my throat, he punished me by making me drink two 25-ounce water bottles.

  “I can’t drink,” I said when my abdomen felt as if it was going to explode. But Sergeant Big Boss screamed and threatened me, pushing me against the wall and raising his hand to hit me. I figured drinking would be better, and drank until I vomited.

  All the guards were masked with Halloween-like masks, and so were the Medics, and the guards were briefed that I was a high-level, smart-beyond-belief terrorist. They made me call them by the names of Star Wars characters, with the lead guard called Master Yoda.

  “You know who you are?” said Yoda’s friend. “You’re a terrorist who helped killed 3,000 people!”

  “Indeed I am!” I answered. I realized it was futile to discuss my case with a guard, especially when he knew nothing about me. The guards were all very hostile. They cursed, shouted, and constantly put me through rough Military-like basic training. “Get up,” “Walk to the bin hole.” “Stop!” “Grab the shit!” “Eat.” “You got two minutes!” “You’re done!” “Give the shit back!” “Drink!” “You better drink the whole water bottle!” “Hurry up!” “Sit down!” “Don’t sit down unless I say it!” “Search the piece of shit!” Most of the guards rarely attacked me physically, but Sergeant Big Boss hit me once until I fell face-down on
the floor, and whenever he and his associate grabbed me they held me very tight and made me run in the heavy chains: “Move!”

  No sleep was allowed. In order to enforce this, I was given 25-ounce water bottles in intervals of one to two hours, depending on the mood of the guards, 24 hours a day. The consequences were devastating. I couldn’t close my eyes for ten minutes because I was sitting most of the time on the bathroom. Later on, after the tension was relieved, I asked one of the guards, “Why the water diet? Why don’t you just make me stay awake by standing up, like in Camp Delta?”

  “Psychologically it’s devastating to make somebody stay awake on his own, without ordering him,” said Master Yoda. “Believe me, you haven’t seen anything. We have put detainees naked under the shower for days, eating, pissing, and shitting in the shower!” he continued. Other guards told me about other torture methods that I wasn’t really eager to know about.

  I was allowed to say three sentences: “Yes, sir!” “Need my interrogator!” and “Need the medics.” Every once in a while the whole guard team stormed my cell, dragged me out, put me facing the wall, and threw out whatever was in my cell, shouting and cursing in order to humiliate me. It wasn’t much: I was deprived from all comfort items that a detainee needs except for a mattress and a small, thin, worn-out blanket. For the first weeks I also had no shower, no laundry, no brushing. I almost developed bugs. I hated my smell.

  No sleep. Water diet. Every move behind my door made me stand up in a military-like position with my heart pounding like boiling water. My appetite was non-existent. I was waiting every minute on the next session of torture. I hoped I would die and go to heaven; no matter how sinful I am, these people can never be more merciful than God. Ultimately we all are going to face the Lord and beg for his mercy, admitting our weaknesses and our sinfulness. I could hardly remember any prayers, all I could say was, “Please, God, relieve my pain . . .”

  I started to hallucinate and hear voices as clear as crystal. I heard my family in a casual familial conversation that I couldn’t join. I heard Koran readings in a heavenly voice.4 I heard music from my country. Later on the guards used these hallucinations and started talking with funny voices through the plumbing, encouraging me to hurt the guards and plot an escape. But I wasn’t misled by them, even though I played along.

  “We heard somebody—maybe a genie!” they used to say.

  “Yeah, but I ain’t listening to him,” I responded. I just realized I was on the edge of losing my mind. I started to talk to myself. Although I tried as hard as I could to convince myself that I was not in Mauritania, I was not near my family, so I could not possibly hear them speaking, I kept hearing the voices constantly, day and night. Psychological assistance was out of the question, or really any medical assistance, besides the asshole I didn’t want to see.

  I couldn’t find a way on my own. At that moment I didn’t know if it was day or night, but I assumed it was night because the toilet drain was rather dark. I gathered my strength, guessed the Kibla, kneeled, and started to pray to God. “Please guide me. I know not what to do. I am surrounded by merciless wolves, who fear not thee.” When I was praying I burst into tears, though I suppressed my voice lest the guards hear me. You know there are always serious prayers and lazy prayers. My experience has taught me that God always responds to your serious prayers.

  “Sir,” I said, when I finished my prayers. One of the guards showed up in his Halloween mask.

  “What?” asked the guard with a dry, cold emotion.

  “I want to see Captain Collins. Not the sergeant; I want the guy in charge,” I said.

  “You mean Mr. Zuley?” Oops, the guard just made a big mistake by revealing the real name of Captain Collins. In fact I was already familiar with the name, because I saw it a long time before on a file SFC Shally carried, and if you can put two and two together the puzzle is solved.5

  “Yes, I mean the one who decides things, not the sergeant.” I really wanted to speak to somebody who was likely to understand me, rather than SFC Shally, who hardly had an understanding for anything. But Mr. Zuley didn’t show up, SFC Shally did.

  “You asked for Captain Collins?”

  “I did.”

  “And you asked not to see me?”

  “I did.”

  “Well, I work for Captain Collins, and he sent me!” said SFC Shally dryly.

  “OK, I have no problem with cooperating with you just as I would with Captain Collins. However, I would also like the female Staff Sergeant to take part in the interviews,” I said.

  “I am not the one who decides about that, but I guess it would be no problem,” he said.

  “I am starving, I want you to tell the guards to give me some food.”

  “If you start to cooperate, you’ll get more food. I am going to come later today to interview you. I just want to tell you that you made the right decision.”

  Confessions are like the beads of a necklace: if the first bead falls, the rest follow.

  To be honest and truthful, I am telling many things here that I had been holding back merely because of fear. I just couldn’t find any common ground to discuss my case comfortably in a relaxed environment. I had no crimes to confess to, and that is exactly where I got stuck with my interrogators, who were not looking for innocent undertakings. They were looking for evil enterprises. But through my conversations with the FBI and the DoD, I had a good idea as to what wild theories the government had about me.

  “We know you came to Canada to plot to harm the U.S.,” said SFC Shally.

  “And what was my evil plan?”

  “Maybe not exactly to harm the U.S., but to attack the CN Tower in Toronto?” he said. I was thinking, Is the guy crazy? I’ve never heard of such a tower.

  “You realize if I admit to such a thing I have to involve other people! What if it turns out I was lying?” I said.

  “So what? We know your friends are bad, so if they get arrested, even if you lie about Ahmed Laabidi it doesn’t matter, because they’re bad.” I thought, “What an asshole! he wants to lock up innocent people just because they’re Muslim Arabs! That’s Nuts!” So SFC Shally very much told me a precise crime I could admit to which would comply with the Intel theory.

  “Back in the states, if I recommend somebody to a good school and he ended up shooting and killing people, is that my fault?” Shally asked me once.

  “No!”

  “So, if you have recruited people for al Qaeda, it’s not your fault if they become terrorists!” he said.

  “The only problem is that I haven’t, regardless of the consequences.”

  SFC Shally made it clearer. “We don’t give a shit if you helped bin al-Shibh and two other hijackers go to Chechnya. We only give a shit if you sent them to your brother-in-law Abu Hafs.” So, according to SFC Shally, I could stop the torture if I said I recruited bin al-Shibh and two hijackers. To be honest with you, they made me believe I recruited Ramzi bin-al-Shibh; I thought, God, I might have recruited the guy before I was born!

  “Looks like a dog, walks like a dog, smells like a dog, barks like a dog, must be a dog,” Agent Robert used to say repeatedly during his sessions with me. It sounded awful, I know I am not a dog, and yet I must be one. The whole police theory of doing every trick to keep people in jail by pinning things on them doesn’t make sense to me. I believe simply that an innocent suspect should be released. As the just, legendary Arabic King Omar put it, “I would rather release a criminal than imprison an innocent man.”

  Agent Michael explained the recruitment scenario the most: “Bin al-Shibh said that you helped him go to Chechnya by suggesting that he and his friends transit through Afghanistan, because Georgia was sending Mujahideen back. Furthermore, when I asked bin al-Shibh what he thinks you do for al Qaeda, he said that you’re an al Qaeda recruiter.”

  “I believe that without you September 11 would never have happened,” Michael concluded. According to his theory I was the guy; all I needed to do was to admit it. Many in
terrogators asked me, “What do you know about al Qaeda cells in Germany and Canada?” To be honest with you, I’d never heard of such a thing; I know al Qaeda organizations, but I don’t know about al Qaeda cells in other countries, though that doesn’t necessarily mean there aren’t.

  Robert pushed the issue even more into the light. “You are a leader, people like you, respect you, and follow you,” he said to me multiple times. As you can see, my recipe was already cooked for me. I am not only a part of an al Qaeda cell in both Germany and Canada, but I am the leader.

  I argued the case of bin al-Shibh with Robert many times. “According to you, I recruited Ramzi and his two friends for al Qaeda,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, but that allegation requires many other things and coincidences.”

  “Like what?” he said.

  First, I explained, I supposedly knew bin al-Shibh, and Ramzi himself said he has seen me only once, and that is not enough for knowing somebody, let alone recruiting him. Second, I must have recruited bin al-Shibh without his knowledge, because all he claims is that I told him how to get to Chechnya. “According to you,” I told him, “And maybe to him, too, I told him to travel through Afghanistan, so what guaranteed that he was going to stay in Afghanistan? And if he miraculously stayed in Afghanistan, what guaranteed that he was going to train? And if he decided to train, what guaranteed that he was going to meet al Qaeda’s criteria? And if by chance he met al Qaeda’s criteria, what told me that he was ready to be suicide bomber, and was ready to learn how to fly? This is just ridiculous!”

  “But you are very smart,” Agent Robert said.

  “Under these circumstances, I agree with you that I’m beyond smart: I am a psychic! But what makes you guys think that I’m so evil?”

  “We just don’t know, but smart people don’t leave any traces. For instance, we had an FBI Agent who had been working for Russia for 20 years without being noticed,” said Robert.6