Guantánamo Diary (19 page)

“Salahi, the Director General wants to see you!”

“Why?”

“We don’t know,” said one of the guys.

“OK. I’m going to take a shower and change my clothes.”

“OK!” said the guy, stepping out. “We’re gonna wait on you outside.” The secret police respected me highly since I turned myself in a couple of weeks ago; they knew I am not a person who flees. I had basically been under house arrest since 2000 but I could have fled the country anytime; I didn’t, and didn’t have any reason to. I took my shower and changed. In the meantime my aunt woke up because of the noise. My sister didn’t wake up, as far as I remember, and that was good, because I was only worried about her and the extreme depression she had been suffering.

“I think the police called you because you bought a new TV, and they don’t want you to watch TV. Don’t you think?” said my mom innocently.

I smiled and said, “I don’t think so, but everything is going to be alright.” My mom was referring to the new satellite antenna I installed the night before to have better TV reception. The irony is that the
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was the one who helped me install the antenna.
^*
When I was in prison the month before, he had asked me to find a job for him because the police paid him miserably. I promised him I would, and in the meantime, I wanted to offer him an opportunity to do some work for me, so I called him to help fix my antenna, and paid him adequately. That was the only way for a man like him to survive. I helped him get some work, and we were sipping tea and joking in my house.

“I didn’t bring you to my house to arrest me,” I said jokingly.

“I hope you will never be arrested,”
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said.

My mom’s house is next to my brother’s, with a short wall that separates them. I could simply have jumped to my brother’s house, and escaped through his door that opens to a completely other street, and guess what? There would be no finding me, not only because so many people would shelter me, but also because the police agents would not have been interested in finding me. I even believe that the government would have been much happier saying to the U.S., “He fled, we couldn’t find him.”

You should know, Dear Reader, that a country turning over its own citizens is not an easy deal. The President wished he hadn’t had to turn me over. I wonder why? After all it cost him his office afterward. I understand that if the U.S. captures me in Afghanistan and takes me to GTMO for whatever reason, my government cannot be blamed because I chose to go to Afghanistan. But kidnapping me from my house in my country and giving me to the U.S., breaking the constitution of Mauritania and the customary International Laws and treaties, that is not OK. Mauritania should have asked the U.S. to provide evidence that incriminates me, which they couldn’t, because they had none. But even if the U.S. did so, Mauritania should try me according to the criminal code in Mauritania, exactly as Germany does with its citizens who are suspected of being involved in 9/11. On the other hand, if the U.S. says “We have no evidence,” then the Mauritanian response should be something like, “Fu*k you!” But no, things don’t work this way. Don’t get me wrong, though: I don’t blame the U.S. as much as I do my own government.

The secret police agents obviously wanted me to flee, especially
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. But I wanted to keep it real—not to
mention that the government itself assured my family that I had done nothing, and so my family always wanted me to go to the police whenever they asked to see me. The funny thing about “Secret Police” in Arab countries is that they are more known to the commoners than the regular police forces. I think the authorities in Arabic countries should think about a new nomenclature, something like “The Most Obvious Police.”

There were four of them when I stepped outside the door with my mom and my aunt. My mom kept her composure, and started to pray using her fingers. As to my aunt, that was her first time seeing somebody taken by the police, and so she got crippled and couldn’t say a word. She started to sweat heavily and mumbled some prayers. Both kept their eyes staring at me. It is the taste of helplessness, when you see your beloved fading away like a dream and you cannot help him. And same for me: I would watch both my mom and my aunt praying in my rearview mirror until we took the first turn and I saw my beloved ones disappear.

“Take your car, we hope you can come back home today,” one of the guys had instructed me. “The DG might just ask you some questions.”
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occupied my passenger seat, as sad as he could be.

“Salahi, I wish I were not part of this shit,” he said. I didn’t respond. I kept following the police car that was heading toward the secret, well-known jail. I had been incarcerated a couple times in the same illegal prison, and knowing it didn’t make me like it. I hated the compound, I hated the dark, dirty room, I hated the filthy bathroom, and I hated everything about it, especially the constant state of terror and fear.

“Earlier today the Inspector was looking for you. You know the DSE is on a trip in Spain. The Inspector asked us who has your phone number. But I didn’t say anything, even though I
have it,”
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, trying to make himself feel better. The only other guy who had my phone number was the DSE, and obviously he didn’t give it to anybody.

So here we are, at the gate of the resented prison. The
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was in his office, looking at me with his dishonest smile, which he quickly changed into a frown.
^*

“We didn’t have your phone number. The director is on a trip. He’s coming in three days, and meanwhile we are going to hold you in contempt.”

“Why? I’m really growing tired of being arrested for no reason. What do you want from me now? You’ve just released me,” I said, frustrated and angry, especially since the guy who knows my case was not in the country.

“Why are you so scared? I never knew you like that,” the
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said.

“Look, you arrested me after 9/11, and the U.S. interrogators came here and interrogated me. After that you, when you realized that I’m innocent, you released me. I sort of understand the mass arrest after 9/11, but this arrest right now is not OK.”

“Everything is gonna be alright. Give me your cell phone,” the Inspector lied, smiling his usual forced smile.
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had about as much clue as I did about the goal of my arrest because the government wouldn’t have shared anything with him. I don’t think that the Mauritanian government had reached a resolution on my case; the main guy
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was on a trip, and without him a decision could hardly be made. What the
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and I both knew back then was that the U.S. asked Mauritania’s then-president
to hold me; the Mauritanian president asked his Directeur Général de la Sûreté Nationale—who is now the president—to arrest me; and he in his turn ordered his people, led by the Inspector, to hold me in contempt.
^*

However, I think that the U.S. wasn’t making a secret of its wish, namely to have me in Jordan, and so at the point of my arrest
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two people knew the plan: the Mauritanian president and his DG. But since the U.S. was asking so much from its ally, the Mauritanian government needed some time to digest and confer. Turning me over to Jordan involved some serious things. The Mauritanian constitution would have to be broken. The Mauritanian President was hanging onto his office by a spider’s thread, and any trouble would shake him heavily. The U.S. hadn’t asked the Mauritanians to turn me over to them, which would make more sense; no, they wanted me in Jordan, and that was a big disrespect to the sovereignty of Mauritania. The Mauritanian government had been asking for evidence, any evidence, and the U.S. has failed to provide anything, and so arresting me in itself was burdensome for the government, let alone sending me to Jordan. The Mauritanian government sought incriminating evidences from the countries I had been in, Germany and Canada, and both countries provided only good conduct reports. For these and other reasons, the Mauritanian President needed his trusted guy, the DSE, before he took such a dangerous step.

I handed my cell phone to the Inspector, and he ordered the
guards to take care of me and left. So I had to party with the guards instead of
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and the rest of my cousins.

In Mauritania, the guards of secret detainees are part of the Secret Police, and as much as they might sympathize with you, they would do anything they were ordered to, even if it involved taking your life. Such people are resented in the society because they are the arms of the dictatorship; without them the dictator is crippled. They must not be trusted. And yet I didn’t feel any hatred toward them, just bad for them; they had the right to be as miserable as the majority of Mauritanians. Most of them knew me from previous arrests.

“I divorced my wife!” a young guard told me.

“Why, man? You have a daughter.”

“I know but I don’t have enough money to rent a place for my wife and me, and my wife got fed up with living in my mom’s house. They just couldn’t get along.”

“But divorce? Come on!”

“What would you have done in my shoes?” I couldn’t find any answer, because the simple Math was against me. They guy’s salary was about 40 or 50 dollars a month, and in order to have a somewhat decent life he needed at least $1,000. All my guards had something in common: they all lived way below the poverty line, and without a supplementary job none of them could make it to the end of the month. In Mauritania, the gap between leading officers and enlisted agents is just too big.

“We have seen many people who have been here and ended up occupying very high level jobs in the government. We’re sure you will, too,” they always teased me. I’m sure they aspired to better jobs in the government, but I personally don’t believe in working with a government that’s not righteous; to me, the need for the miserable wages is not an excuse for the mischief
they were doing under the color and authority of an unjust regime. In my eyes, they were as guilty as anybody else, no matter what excuses they may come up with.

Nonetheless, the Mauritanian guards, without exception, all expressed their solidarity with me and wished they didn’t have to be the ones who had to do the job. They showed me all kinds of sympathy and respect, and they always tried to calm me down because I was worried about being turned over to the States and sent to a Military Tribunal. By then, the U.S. President was barking about putting terrorist suspects before military tribunals, and all kinds of other threats. I knew I would have no chance to be tried justly in a foreign military tribunal. We ate, prayed, and socialized together. We shared everything, food, tea, and we had a radio receiver to hear the news. We all slept in a big room with no furniture and an oodle of mosquitoes. Since it was Ramadan, we ate nights and stayed awake for the most part, and slept during the day. They were obviously directed to treat me that way; the
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sometimes joined us to check on things.

As scheduled, the DSE came back from his trip. “Hi,” he greeted me.

“Hi.”

“How are you doing?”

“Fine! Why are you arresting me?”

“Be patient! It’s not a fire!” he said. Why did he speak about fire? I wondered. He didn’t look happy at all, and I knew it wasn’t me who was causing his unhappiness. I was completely depressed and terrorized, and so I fell sick. I lost my appetite and couldn’t eat anything, and my blood pressure dropped gravely. The DSE called a doctor to check on me.

“You cannot fast. You have to eat,” he said, prescribing some medicine. Since I couldn’t stand up I had to urinate in a water
bottle, and as to anything else, I didn’t need to because I hadn’t eaten anything. I really got very sick, and the Mauritanian government was completely worried that the Merchandise was going to vanish before the U.S. client took it. Sometimes I tried to sit up in order to eat a little bit, but as soon as I sat straight, I started to get dizzy and fell down. All that time I drank and ate what I could while lying on a thin mattress.

I spent seven days in Mauritanian custody. I didn’t get any visits from my family; as I later learned, my family was not allowed to see me, and they were denied the knowledge of my whereabouts. On the eighth day, November 28, 2001, I was informed that I was going to be shipped to Jordan.

November 28th is Mauritanian Independence Day; it marks the event when the Islamic Republic of Mauritania supposedly received its independence from the French colonists in 1960. The irony is that on this very same day in 2001, the independent and sovereign Republic of Mauritania turned over one of its own citizens on a premise. To its everlasting shame, the Mauritanian government not only broke the constitution, which forbids the extradition of Mauritanian criminals to other countries, but also extradited an innocent citizen and exposed him to the random American Justice.

The night before the multilateral deal was closed between Mauritania, the U.S., and Jordan, the prison guards allowed me to watch the parade that was coming from downtown toward the Presidential Palace, the bands escorted by schoolboys carrying lighted candles. The sight awoke childhood memories of when I took part in the same parade myself, as a schoolboy, nineteen years before. Back then I looked with innocence at the event that marked the birth of the nation I happened to be part of; I didn’t know that a country is not considered sovereign if it cannot handle its issues on its own.

The Secret Service is the most important government corps in the third world, and in some countries in the so-called free world as well, and so the DSE was invited to the ceremonial colors at the Presidential Palace in the morning. It was between 10 and 11 o’clock when he finally came in, accompanied by his assistant and his recorder. He invited me to his office, where he usually interrogates people. I was surprised to see him at all because it was a holiday. Although I was sick, my blood pressure rose so much from the unexpected visit that I was able to stand and go with them to the interrogation room. But as soon as I entered the office I collapsed on the big leather black sofa. It was obvious that my hyperactivity was fake.