Guantánamo Diary (26 page)

“I don’t have to be honest to you. And here’s a news flash for you: I’m not going to talk to you unless you tell me why I am here,” I said.

“That’s your problem,”
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said. You could tell that
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was used to humbled detainees who probably had to cooperate due to torture. He was by then interrogating
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.
^*
He spoke very arrogantly; he as much as told me, “You’re gonna cooperate, even against your will, ha! ha!” I admit I was rude with him, but I was so angry since he had wrongly accused me of having been part of the Millennium Plot and now was dodging my requests to him to come clean and say he and his government were wrong.

■■■■■■■■■■■■
looked worn out from his trip; he was very tired that day. “I don’t see why you don’t cooperate,” he said. “They share food with you, and speak to you in a civilized way,” he said.

“Why should I cooperate with any of you? You’re hurting me, locking me up for no reason.”

“We didn’t arrest you.”

“Send me the guy who arrested me, I’d like to talk to him.”
After that tense discussion, the interrogators left and sent me back to my cell.

“For these next sessions, I have asked for
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to help me in laying out your case. I want you to be polite to him,”
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said at our next session.

I turned to his colleague. “Now you’re convinced that I am not a part of Millennium. What’s the next shit you’re gonna pull on me?”

“You know, sometimes we arrest people for the wrong thing, but it turns out they are involved in something else!”
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said.

“And when are you going to stop playing this game on me? Every time there is a new suspicion, and when that turns out to be incorrect, I get a new one, and so on and so forth. Is there a possibility in the world that I am involved in nothing?”

“Of course; therefore you have to cooperate and defend yourself. All I am asking is for you to explain some shit to me,” said
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. When
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arrived he had a bunch of small papers with notes, and he started to read them to me. “You called
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and asked him to bring you some sugar. When you told him about
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in Germany, he said, ‘Don’t say this over the phone.’ I wouldn’t say something like that to anybody I called.”

“I don’t care what
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says over the phone. I am not here on behalf of
■■■■■■■■■■
; go and ask him. Remember, I’m asking you what
I
have done.”

“I just want you to explain these conversations to me—and there’s much more,” said
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.

“No, I am not answering anything before you answer my question. What have I done?”

“I don’t say you’ve done anything, but there are a lot of things that need to be clarified.”

“I’ve answered those questions a thousand and one times; I told you I mean what I am saying and I’m not using any code. You’re just so unjust and so paranoid. You’re taking advantage of me being from a country with a dictatorship. If I were German or Canadian, you wouldn’t even have the opportunity to talk to me, nor would you arrest me.”

“In asking you to cooperate, we’re giving you an opportunity. After we share the cause of your arrest with you, it will be too late for you!”
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said.

“I don’t need any opportunities. Just tell me why you arrested me, and let it be too late.”
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knew me better than
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did; thus, he tried to calm both of us down.
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was trying to scare me, but the more he scared me, the sharper and less cooperative I got.

The camp was locked down the whole day. Around 10 p.m. I was pulled out of my cell and taken to
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building. The room was extremely cold. I hate to be woken up for interrogation, and my heart was pounding: Why would they take me so late?

I don’t know how long I’d been in the room, maybe two hours. I was just shaking. I made my mind up not to argue anymore with the interrogators. I’m just gonna sit there like a stone, and let them do the talking, I said to myself. Many detainees decided to do so. They were taken day after day to interrogation in order to break them. I am sure some got broken because nobody can bear agony the rest of his life.

After letting me sweat, or let’s say “shake,” for a couple hours, I was taken to another room
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, where
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sat. This room was
acceptably cold. The military people were watching and listening from another room as usual.

“We couldn’t take you during the day because the camp was locked down,” said
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. “We had to take you now, because
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is leaving tomorrow.”

I didn’t open my mouth.
■■■■■■■■■
sent his friends out. “What’s wrong with you?” he said. “Are you OK? Did anything happen to you?” But no matter how he tried, there was no making me talk.

The team decided to take me back to the cold room. Maybe it wasn’t so cold for somebody wearing regular shoes, underwear, and a jacket like the interrogators, but it was definitely cold for a detainee with flip-flops and no underwear whatsoever.

“Talk to us!”
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said. “Since you refuse to talk,
■■■■■■■■■■■■
is going to talk to you anyway.”

■■■■■■■■■■■■
started his lecture, “We have been giving you an opportunity, but you don’t seem to want to take advantage of it. Now it’s too late, because I am going to share some information with you.”

■■■■■■■■■■■■
put down three big pictures of four individuals who are believed to be involved in the September 11 attack. “This guy is
■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
. He was captured
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and since then I’ve been interrogating him.
^*
I know more about him than
he knows about himself. He was forthcoming and truthful with me. What he told me goes along with what we know about him. He said that he came to your house on advice of a guy named
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, whom he met on a train.
■■■■■■■■■■■
wanted somebody to help him getting to Chechnya.”

“That was around Oct 1999,” he continued. “He showed up at your house with these two guys,” he said, pointing at
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and
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. “The other guy,” he said, pointing at Atta, “was not able to see you because he had a test. You advised them to travel through Afghanistan instead of Georgia, because their Arab faces would give them away and they probably would have been turned back. Furthermore, you gave them a phone contact in Quetta of a guy named
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. These guys traveled shortly after that meeting with you to Afghanistan, met Usama Bin Laden, and swore a pledge to him. Bin Laden assigned them to the attack of September 11, and sent them back to Germany.”

He went on. “When I asked
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what he thinks about you, he replied that he believes you to be a senior recruiter for Usama Bin Laden. That’s his personal opinion. However, he said that without you, he would never have joined al Qaeda. In fact, I’d say without you September 11 would never have happened. These guys would have gone to Chechnya and died.”

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excused himself and left. I was kept the rest of the night with
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. I was so scared. The guy made me believe I was the one behind September 11. How could that possibly have happened? I was like, Maybe he’s right. And yet anybody who knew the basics about the attack, which were
published and updated through time, can easily see what a swiss cheese
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was trying to sell me. The guys he mentioned were reportedly trained in 1998, and joined al Qaeda and were assigned to the attack then. How could I possibly have sent them in October 1999 to join al Qaeda, when they not only already were al Qaeda, but had already been assigned to the attack for more than a year?

I was kept up the rest of the night and forced to see pictures of dead body parts which were taken at the site of the Pentagon after the attack. It was a nasty sight. I almost broke down, but I managed to keep myself silent and together.

“See the result of the attack?”
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asked.

“I don’t think he foresaw what these were going to do,” said
■■■■■■■■■■
. They were talking to each other, asking and answering each other. I kept myself as the present-absent. They kept sliding those nasty pictures in front of me the whole night. At the break of dawn, they sent me back to a cell in a new block,
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. I prayed and tried to sleep, but I was kidding myself. I could not get the human body parts out of my head. My new neighbors, especially
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tried to help me.

“Don’t worry! Just talk to them and everything is gonna be alright,” he encouraged me. Maybe his advice was prudent, and anyway I felt that things were going to get nastier. So I decided to cooperate.

■■■■■■■■■
pulled me to interrogation the next day. I was so worn out. I had no sleep last night, nor during the day.
^*

“I am ready to cooperate unconditionally,” I told him. “I don’t need any proof whatsoever. You just ask me questions and I’m gonna answer you.” And so our relationship seemed to enter a new era.

During his time with me,
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made a couple of trips, one to
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and one to
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, in order to investigate my case and gather evidence against me. In February 2003, while he was on his trip to
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an
agent from the
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pulled me to interrogation.

“My name is
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, from
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. I came here to ask you some questions about your time in
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,” said
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while flashing his badge. He was accompanied with one female and one male who were just taking notes.
^*

“Welcome! I’m glad that you have come because I want to clarify some reports you produced about me which are very inaccurate.” I continued, “Especially since my case with the U.S. is spinning around my time in
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, and every time I argue with the Americans they refer to you. Now I want you guys to sit with the Americans and answer one question: Why are you arresting me? What crime have I done?”

“You have done nothing,”
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said.

“So I don’t belong here, do I?”

“We didn’t arrest you, the U.S. did.”

“That’s correct, but the U.S. claims that you pitted them on me.”

“We just have some questions about some bad people, and we need your help.”

“I’m not helping you unless you tell the Americans in front of me that one or the other of you lied.”

The agents went out and brought
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in, who was probably watching the session through the
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.

“You are not honest, since you refuse to answer the
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questions. This is your opportunity to get help from them,”
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said.

“
■■■■■■■■■■
, I know this game better than you do. Stop trying to talk nonsense to me,” I said. “Look, you keep telling me the
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say such and such. Now it’s you guys’ opportunity to face me with my charges,” I said.

“We don’t accuse you of any crime,” said
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.

“Then release me!”

“That’s not in my hands.”
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tried to convince me but there was no convincing me. I was sent back to my cell and taken again the next day, but I just sat there like a stone. I didn’t waste a word because I had told them clearly the conditions of my cooperation. The
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also interrogated a teenager
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called
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and made the Army take all his belongings. We detainees felt bad for him: he was just too young for this whole campaign.
^*

When
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came back, he was pissed off because the
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had ignored him and were exposing me to whomever they wanted. Now I knew the
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had no control over my
fate; they didn’t have the ability to deal with me, and henceforth I could not really trust them. I don’t like to deal with somebody who cannot keep his word. I knew then for a fact that the
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was nothing but a step, and the real interrogation was going to be led by
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. If you look at the situation, it makes sense: most of the detainees were captured by
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in a military operation, and they wanted to maintain the upper hand.
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are only guests in GTMO, no more, no less; the facility is run by
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.

It happened again. When
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went to
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in May 2003, the
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reserved me for interrogation, and they were no luckier than their fellow citizens from
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;
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was completely overawed by his colleagues from the
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command.

■■■■■■■■■
came back from
■■■■■■■■■■■■
. “I was ordered to quit your case and go back to the U.S. My boss believes that I’m only wasting my time. The MI will take your case,”
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told me. I wasn’t happy that
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was leaving, but I wasn’t really that upset.
■■■■■■■■■
was the guy who understood the most about my case, but he had neither power nor people who backed him up.