500 Days (47 page)

He never returned.

•  •  •  

The immigration officials escorted the two to a security office at the airport. Almalki felt certain that he knew what this was about. All Syrian men are obligated to serve time in the military, and Almalki never had. But that wouldn’t be a problem; after his family had departed for Canada, his father had faithfully filed the necessary documents to keep Almalki’s deferral valid.

The group arrived in an office, where a security official was sitting behind a desk. “I need your Syrian identification card,” he said.

“I don’t have one,” Almalki replied. “Does this have anything to do with my military service? I’ve been in Canada for fifteen years and have been filing for a deferral every five years.”

“No,” the official replied. “This has nothing to do with military service.”

Almalki’s cousin grew angry. “What is going on?” he demanded.

One of the officials told him to leave. He hesitated, then walked out of the room.

The man behind the desk told Almalki that his name had come up on a computer search as someone who was wanted, although the security officials didn’t know why. One of them brought out a book and started flipping the pages. He found Almalki’s name.

“Oh, sir, this is recent,” he said. “It’s a report received from the embassy on April twenty-second.”

Embassy? What embassy?
Maybe it had something to do with the Pakistanis, since his biggest customer was headquartered there.

Before Almalki could ask more questions, the official stood up from his desk and led him into another room. There, two other men bombarded him with questions about his family and the reasons for his long absence from Syria.

One of the officials looked at the other. “He is wanted for Branch 235,” he said.

“Branch 235?” Almalki asked. “What’s that?”

“Far’ Falastin.” The Palestine Branch.

Almalki didn’t know what that was, but one of the officials assured him that the visit there wouldn’t take long. They brought him outside, where a minibus was waiting. As he rode through Damascus, Almalki chatted with his escorts, who seemed friendly enough.

After thirty minutes, the driver pulled up to a gate at a large compound. Almalki stepped off the bus and was shepherded through. He looked around the compound and saw men carrying machine guns. No one explained what was happening as they led Almalki into an old, two-story building. Inside, he saw a blindfolded man. He started to worry; this was a bad place to be.

All of this was a mistake, he thought, and he could straighten it out if he could just speak to someone. He had yet to realize that he was in a prison. Far’ Falastin was the most notorious torture site in all of Syria.

•  •  •  

Almalki was blindfolded and moved to another room, where he was left alone for a short time. Suddenly he heard the noise of people coming through the door. A man approached him.

“You are in Syria, not in Canada,” the man said. “You have to speak. You don’t get a lawyer.”

Almalki listened, his fear rising.

“Which treatment would you like?” the man asked. “The friendly one or the other one?”

Not a difficult question. “I choose what you would choose,” Almalki said.

“Bring him a chair!” the man barked at someone else in the room.

The chair arrived and was placed next to Almalki.

“Sit,” the man said. “Give me ten, fifteen minutes. I’ll clear up any misunderstandings.”

Almalki heard paper rustling. His inquisitor apparently had some report in his hands.

“Why are the Americans, the Canadians, the British, the whole world so interested in you?” the man asked.

Almalki opened his mouth but was cut off by the next question.

“Do you know Ibrahym Adam?”

The Canadians.
This was the exact question he had been asked months before by a Canadian intelligence agent, the one who had lied to him about being
unable to find Adam. And now the Syrians were asking about him. Somehow, Canada’s information had been delivered to the Syrian government. But why?

“I know Ibrahym,” Almalki responded. “I was asked about him in Canada. I think that the investigator was interested in him because he is a Muslim and a pilot.”

“Who is Ahmad El-Maati?”

El-Maati.
The man with the map. But Almalki didn’t recognize the name. He knew him as Ahmad Badr; like many Egyptians, El-Maati used his father’s name, Badr, as a sign of respect. Almalki had no reason to be aware of that. He had barely ever spoken to El-Maati.

“I don’t know who that is,” Almalki said.

A third question, another name. Again, Almalki had never heard it before.

There was a moment of silence, as if a storm was about to arrive. “You must prefer the nonfriendly treatment!” the man yelled.

He slapped Almalki hard in the face.

Almalki’s thoughts raced. In barely an hour, his world had turned upside down. His university degrees, his business contacts—none of that mattered here. He had entered into a nightmare.

“You know Ahmad El-Maati!” the man barked.

“I don’t know anyone by that name!”

“You know him!”

Desperate, Almalki asked for someone to describe this person. He was big and an Egyptian, the man responded. A few more details, and Almalki realized who it was.

“Yes, now I know who you mean,” he said, his voice quivering. “But I know him by the name Ahmad Badr, not Ahmad El-Maati.”

Another moment passed. His interrogator spoke, his voice calm.

“Take off your shoes, your socks, and your jacket,” he said. “Then lie down on the floor on your stomach.”

•  •  •  

Almalki screamed as two or three men whipped the bottom of his feet with electric cables. He had never experienced pain remotely like this. It was as if his feet were on fire.

Others in the room gathered around and kicked him—in the head, in the shoulders, everywhere. He instinctively rolled onto his back.

“Lie on your stomach!” someone yelled.

He turned over. One man stood on Almalki’s head, and another on his back, ensuring that he would remain facedown. The whippings and kicking resumed.

“How do you know Ahmed Khadr?” someone shouted. Years before, he had worked with Khadr in Afghanistan for a few months but had left out of his dislike for the man.

Before Almalki could answer, the questions kept coming.

“Have you dealt with bin Laden and al-Qaeda?”

“Did you sell equipment to al-Qaeda and the Taliban?”

“What kind of computers did you sell to them?”

“I don’t sell computers!” Almalki shouted.

For a moment the beatings stopped and his tormentors poured cold water on his legs and told him to stand. It was a Syrian torture technique, designed to keep the circulation going so that, no matter how long they whipped him, the pain wouldn’t subside.

The torture resumed.

“What is your role with al-Qaeda?”

“Admit that you are bin Laden’s right-hand man!”

“That makes no sense!” Almalki screamed. “Everyone knows that Zawahiri is bin Laden’s right-hand man!”

“Fine,” one of the torturers responded. “Then you are his left-hand man.”

•  •  •  

Almalki couldn’t bear up under the pain. Telling the truth wouldn’t stop these men. Neither would logic. There was only one option remaining. He would lie.

“Yes!” he screamed. “I know bin Laden!”

“From where?”

“From years ago, when I worked with United Nations development projects in Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

The beating stopped, and the Syrians spoke among themselves. Then they left the room.

Minutes later, they returned. “You’re lying!” one of them screamed. “Bin Laden was in Sudan when you were in Pakistan and Afghanistan!”

Almalki felt as if he was going crazy. Even lies didn’t work with his tormentors.

“I never met bin Laden!” he cried. “I only said that to stop the torture!”

The beatings resumed. They promised that they would shock him with
electricity, tear off his nails, stuff him into a tire, whatever it took to force out the truth.

After more than an hour, Almalki couldn’t speak anymore. He passed out and was dragged from the room. The torture was over for the day.

The men took him downstairs and threw him into a small, filthy cell. It was number three, two cells down from where Ahmad El-Maati had been held months before.

The cells around him were occupied by men who had been interrogated by the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies before being delivered to Syria. Two—one a teenager—had been with Abu Zubaydah the night of the raid in Pakistan. Another had been arrested in Pakistan and delivered to Syria on a CIA plane. The Americans had interrogated a third, a computer designer, before they transferred him to Damascus. And all of them had been tortured into confessing their membership in al-Qaeda.

•  •  •  

The Syrians abused Almalki in increasingly cruel and painful ways. On one day, an interrogator merely asked him questions about twenty different Muslims living in Canada. Some Almalki knew, some he didn’t.

The interrogator mentioned a man from Ottawa.

At first, Almalki didn’t understand; his questioner’s pronunciation was all but unintelligible. But when he repeated himself, Almalki recognized the name. It was someone he had dined with at Mango’s Café a few months previously, followed by a trip to Future Shop to purchase printer ink.

Yes, Almalki said. He knew that man.

He knew Maher Arar.

•  •  •  

Abu Zubaydah, the recently captured al-Qaeda operative, was still struggling to recover from his wounds. His infection had spread to one eye; soon, a doctor would have to remove it surgically. Zubaydah would be left wearing a patch.

The two FBI agents, Soufan and Gaudin, exploited Zubaydah’s ordeal to their advantage. They maneuvered between an almost intimate attentiveness for his damaged condition to a show of seeming omniscience as they recounted information about al-Qaeda and Zubaydah himself.

Over several days, Zubaydah spun out his worldview, infused with an ardor for socialism and hostility to the corporations spawned by capitalism. At one point he lost steam and glanced at Soufan.

“Could you get me a Coca-Cola?” he asked.

He was requesting a soft drink manufactured by one of the world’s largest corporations. Soufan flashed a smile. Zubaydah suddenly recognized the humor of his request. They broke out laughing.

For the FBI agents, each new scrap of information they pulled from Zubaydah was proof that their approach was working. To the uninformed, Zubaydah would seem to have no reason to say
anything.
No one was hurting him or even threatening him. He could clam up or spin lies with no prospect of unpleasant consequences. Yet he was talking and telling the truth. That didn’t surprise the agents—not only were these interrogation techniques found in study after study to be the most effective, but they had perfected them in the course of interviewing more al-Qaeda members than anyone else in government. They were the professionals.

Then the amateurs arrived.

•  •  •  

A team of CIA officers, psychologists, and support staff arrived in Thailand on an agency plane. Zubaydah was still in the hospital recovering from his injuries, which would delay the implementation of the new arrivals’ aggressive interrogation plan.

Soufan and Gaudin met with senior members of the group at a nearby hotel and briefed them on their progress. Soufan took an instant dislike to one member of the CIA team—Jim Mitchell, the retired SERE instructor who was now a consultant to the CIA on interrogation issues. Mitchell was never one to listen and learn; instead, he spoke frequently in a tone of absolute arrogance that Soufan found grating.

There wasn’t much he could do about it, though. At the beginning, their boss had told Soufan and Gaudin that the CIA was in charge. The two agents had no choice but to relinquish responsibility for the interrogation.

•  •  •  

The cell had no bunk and no blankets. Zubaydah, still weak from his wounds, had been stripped naked. The air-conditioning had been turned up; he shivered and at times turned a bluish hue. He was alone; no one spoke to him.

The cell door opened and a CIA officer stepped inside. He stood motionless for a few seconds, staring at Zubaydah.

“Tell me what I want to know,” the interrogator said. He turned and left the cell without saying another word.

Rather than opening up, Zubaydah shut down. The harsh tactics were
backfiring. For days, the FBI agents had been sending cables to Washington chock-full of revelations. Now nothing.

So the CIA stepped up its offensive. Mitchell, in consultation with the Counterterrorist Center at the CIA, added sleep deprivation, bombarding Zubaydah’s cell with loud hard rock and funk music, including songs by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. As planned, the noise kept Zubaydah awake for twenty-four to forty-eight hours at a time. Yet he remained silent.

Hoping to break the logjam, Mitchell spoke directly to Zubaydah. But unlike the CIA officers, he never showed his face, instead hiding behind a mask. Still, Zubaydah refused to speak. After days of failure, the CIA team invited the FBI agents back in hopes that they could overcome Zubaydah’s resistance.

Soufan was horrified at what he saw. Why was Zubaydah naked and freezing? The agent turned the heat back up and covered Zubaydah with a towel. Out of Zubaydah’s earshot, Mitchell fumed, saying that Soufan was undermining his efforts.

“Have you ever interrogated anyone?” Soufan snapped.

“No, but it doesn’t matter,” Mitchell shot back. “Science is science. This is a behavioral issue.”

That’s absurd, Soufan replied. The FBI techniques had been proved effective over and over again.

Mitchell rolled his eyes. “Look, I’m a psychologist,” he said dismissively. “I know how the human mind works.”

Amazing.
Somehow, this contractor had convinced himself that, even with no real knowledge or experience, he was more qualified to conduct interrogations than anyone else there. He almost seemed to be saying that the professionals were working at a disadvantage by having actual knowledge. No matter—the CIA team had invited Soufan and Gaudin back in, and they were going to conduct their interviews the way that worked.