Guantánamo Diary (47 page)

*
This may be the NYPD interrogator who the DOJ IG report indicates was part of the interrogation team in January 2003. The report describes an NYPD detective MOS identified as “Tom,” who “told Slahi that if he did not explain certain phone calls he would be sent to a ‘very bad place.’ ” DOJ IG, 299.

*
MOS’s 2004 Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) and 2005 Administrative Review Board hearing transcripts make clear the date is January 21, 2000. The CSRT transcript is available at http://online.wsj.com//files/01/19/41/f011941/public/resources/documents/couch-slahihearing-03312007.pdf. CSRT transcript, 6; ARB transcript, 16.

*
Context and the events that follow make clear that this is the Senegalese businessman he spent time with in the Brussels airport.

*
The language is likely Wolof; it is named again without redaction a few pages later. MOS manuscript, 436.

*
The cast seems to consist of two men and two women: the Senegalese interrogator and his recorder, both male; and the Senegalese police chief and an American, who the redacted pronouns suggest are both female.

*
The question, given the pre-9/11 date of this interview and the reference to the Canadians, might refer to Ahmed Ressam. See footnote
here
.

*
Redacted pronouns suggest this, too, may be a woman.

*
This character is described in the subsequent paragraphs, without redactions, as “the white driver,” “the white guy,” and “the American man.”

*
The Directeur de la Sûrete de l’État, which MOS abbreviates as DSE throughout the manuscript, is the director of the Mauritanian intelligence service.

*
Ressam appears here unredacted. The wanted man, it is clear from context here and unredacted references elsewhere in the manuscript, is MOS’s cousin and former brother-in-law Abu Hafs. Abu Hafs was wanted in connection with al-Qaeda attacks in the 1990s, with a $5 million reward under the FBI’s Rewards for Justice Program. The reward for senior al-Qaeda figures increased to $25 million after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. See, e.g., U.S. State Department, “Patterns of Global Terrorism,” appendix D, May 21, 2002, http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/20121.pdf.

*
Again, the reference appears to be to Ahmed Ressam.

*
Throughout the manuscript, MOS refers several times to the political climate and events in Mauritania—in particular, to the close cooperation of President Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya with the United States in the so-called War on Terror. Ould Taya came to power in a military coup in 1984 and became president in 1992. During his long tenure as head of state, Ould Taya carried out several waves of arrests of political opponents and Islamists like the one described here, in which more than ninety people, including a former government minister and ten religious leaders, were arrested and then amnestied after publicly confessing to membership in illegal organizations. A crackdown on Islamists in the army and education system led to a failed coup attempt in 2003, and Ould Taya was ultimately deposed in a successful coup in 2005. By that time, in part because of his support for U.S. antiterrorism polices, which included allowing the rendition of MOS, and his aggressive campaign against Islamists in Mauritania, Ould Taya had lost much of his public support. See http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/international/africa/08mauritania.html?fta=y&_r=0; http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0809/p07s02-woaf.html; and http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/23ab7cfc-0e0f-11da-aa67-00000e2511c8.html#axzz2vwtOwdNb.

*
Judging from MOS’s 2005 ARB testimony, the date is around February 15, 2000, and these interrogators are likely Americans. MOS told the Administrative Review Board panel in 2005 that an American team consisting of two FBI agents and a third man from the Justice Department interrogated him over a two-day period near the end of his detention in Mauritania. His detention for questioning at the behest of the United States was widely reported in the local and international press; in a BBC report, Mauritanian officials confirmed that he was questioned by the FBI. ARB transcript, 17; http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1876&dat=20000129&id=gzofAAAAIBAJ&sjid=5s8EAAAAIBAJ&pg=6848,4968256; http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/649672.stm.

†
This might be the Presidential Palace. Elsewhere in the manuscript, MOS’s American interrogators tout the United States’ close relations with then-president Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya, implying that they were hosted by the president and stayed at the Presidential Palace when they were carrying out investigations in the country. MOS manuscript, 130.

*
Because MOS’s ARB testimony suggests this interrogation was led by the FBI, he may be referring here to the FBI in general and to one agent in particular. ARB transcript, 17. The FBI does list body language among possible deception clues in material posted on its website, and former FBI agents have written and spoken publicly on the subject. See, e.g., http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/law-enforcement-bulletin/june_2011/school_violence; and http://cjonline.com/news/local/2010-11-26/no_lie_ex_fbi_agent_spots_fibbers.

†
The reference is to a pre-Islamic proverb about a cursed woman who is expelled from her tribe; the sense is of an unwanted person who goes away and is not seen again.

*
The
New York Times
reported that MOS was released from Mauritanian custody on February 19, 2000. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/21/world/terrorist-suspect-is-released-by-mauritania.html.

*
MOS appears to be quoting a conversation with a particular journalist after his release.

†
MOS left Mauritania in 1988 to study in Germany. He testified at his 2004 CSRT hearing that he visited his family in Mauritania for two or three weeks in 1993. CSRT transcript, 5.

*
The date, according to MOS’s 2005 ARB testimony, is Saturday, September 29, 2001. ARB transcript, 18.

†
Trarza is the region of southern Mauritania that extends from the Senegalese border north to the capital. It was also the name of a precolonial emirate in the same region. The Cadres of Trarza appears to be a community organization.

*
MOS testified at his 2004 CSRT and 2005 ARB hearings that when he returned to Mauritania in 2000 he worked as an electronics and computer specialist, first for a medical equipment supply company and then, starting in July 2001, for a company named Aman Pêche in Nouakchott. “This is a French word for fish,” he explained at his CSRT hearing. “This company was a company of people from my tribe, and they gave me more money to join them. They wanted to develop the business and to use me; I was just setting up at my office, because they didn’t know what to do with me at first. They had many electronic devices they wanted me to take care of. I had just set up my office and installed the AC, and September 11th happened. Then America went crazy looking for leads; and I was the cousin of the right hand of Osama bin Laden, and oh, get him.” CSRT transcript, 8; ARB transcript, 18.

*
The conversation appears to center on Abu Hafs, who in the wake of the 9/11 attacks was now the subject of a $25 million bounty (see footnote
here
).

*
In his 2005 ARB testimony, MOS dates this interrogation as October 13, 2001, and speculates that these two interrogators are FBI, though “they are American, they may be anything.” Accompanying the lead interrogator is an interrogator who “spoke German adequately but not very good,” and “with a bad accent,” who interprets during the interview. ARB transcript, 18.

*
The “Noumane” in the interrogator’s question may refer to Noumane Ould Ahmed Ould Boullahy, whose name appears in a footnote to Judge James Robertson’s opinion granting MOS’s habeas corpus petition. The footnote reads, “The government asserts that Salahi swore the oath to Osama bin Laden, and did so at the same time as Noumane Ould Ahmed Ould Boullahy, who went on to become one of bin Laden’s bodyguards. There is no evidence that Salahi maintained, or that he ever had, any relationship with Boullahy.” The opinion is available at https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/2010-4-9-Slahi-Order.pdf.

*
This name is written “Houari” in the manuscript. The interrogator may be referring to convicted Millennium Plot co-conspirator Mokhtar Hauoari.

*
Directeur Général de la Direction Générale de la Sûreté Nationale is abbreviated here and a few pages later in the manuscript as DG and spelled out in a footnote the second time. The Sûreté Nationale is the Mauritanian national police force; its director general is the country’s top law enforcement official.

†
In the manuscript, this is abbreviated PDG, short for the French title
président-directeur général
, the equivalent of president and CEO.

*
Ramadan 4th was Tuesday, November 20, in 2001.

*
It becomes clear in a few paragraphs that the first family member mentioned here is an aunt.

*
That is, it appears that one of the officers who has been dispatched to bring MOS in for questioning was in MOS’s home to help him install the satellite antenna the previous evening.

*
This person could be the “Inspector” referred to several times elsewhere in this scene.

*
Mauritania’s Directeur Général de la Sûreté Nationale in 2001 was Ely Ould Mohamed Vall. Vall, who served as director of the national police under President Maaouya Sid’Ahmed Ould Taya, seized power himself in a bloodless coup when Ould Taya was out of the country on August 3, 2005.

*
MOS’s nickname for the leader of the Jordanian rendition team, who greets him here, seems to be “Satan,” which appears unredacted twice later in the scene. Context suggests the thing “that keeps drowning” might be a mustache.

*
It appears from the context that MOS is referring to the honorific “Hajji.”

*
“Satan” appears here unredacted in the manuscript.

*
MOS indicated that the flight left Amman on the evening of November 28, so it would now be early in the morning of November 29, 2001.

*
Again, “Satan” appears here in the manuscript unredacted.

*
It is still the morning of November 29, 2001 (see footnote
here
).

*
At his 2005 ARB hearing, MOS indicated that throughout his time in the Jordanian prison, everyone on the prison staff wore military uniforms. ARB transcript, 22.

*
“Hajji” appears here unredacted.

†
The Arabic phrase itself appears to be a transliteration of the phrase “house of arrest and detention.” In its 2008 report “Double Jeopardy: CIA Renditions to Jordan,” Human Rights Watch recorded that “from 2001 until at least 2004, Jordan’s General Intelligence Department (GID) served as a proxy jailer for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), holding prisoners that the CIA apparently wanted kept out of circulation, and later handing some of them back to the CIA.” Human Rights Watch reported that MOS and at least thirteen others were sent to Jordan during this period, where they were “held at the GID’s main headquarters in Amman, located in the Jandawil district in Wadi Sir. The headquarters, which appear to cover nearly an acre of land, contain a large four-story detention facility that Human Rights Watch visited in August 2007.”

Researchers who carried out that visit recorded that “the administrative offices and interrogation rooms are on the second floor of the building, while visiting rooms are on the ground floor. During the period that Human Rights Watch inspected the facility, all of the detainees in custody were held on the second floor. There are also many cells on the ground floor and third floor, however, as well as a small number of cells on the fourth floor, which includes a few collective cells and what the director called the “women’s section” of the facility. In addition, the facility has a basement where many prisoners have claimed that they were brought for the most violent treatment. Prisoners in GID detention at Wadi Sir are kept in single-person cells and are prohibited from speaking with one another, but some have managed to communicate via the back window of their cells. (Each cell faces onto the central courtyard, and has a window looking out on the yard.).” Double Jeopardy, 1, 10–11. The Human Rights Watch report is available at http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/jordan0408webwcover.pdf.

*
This behavior may be the basis for the nickname “I’m-Watching-You,” which appears unredacted later in this chapter.

*
In fact, it would be almost a year before MOS’s family learned where he was—and only because a brother in Germany saw an article in
Der Spiegel
in October 2002 that reported that MOS was in Guantánamo. See “From Germany to Guantanamo: The Career of Prisoner No. 760,”
Der Spiegel
, October 29, 2008.