Guantánamo Diary. Mohamedou Ould Slahi

two projectors and adjusted them on my face. I couldn’t see, but the heat overwhelmed me and I started to sweat.

      “You’re gonna be sent to a U.S. facility, where you’ll spend the rest of your life,” he threatened. “You’ll never see your family again. Your family will be f**cked by another man. In American jails, terrorists like you get raped by multiple men at the same time. The guards in my country do their job very well, but being raped is inevitable. But if you tell me the truth, you’re gonna be released immediately.”

      I was old enough to know that he was a rotten liar and a man with no honor, but he was in charge, so I had to listen to his bullshit again and again. I just wished that the agencies would start to hire smart people. Did he really think that anybody would believe his nonsense? Somebody would have to be stupid: was he stupid, or did he think I was stupid? I would have respected him more had he told me, “Look, if you don’t tell me what I want to hear, I’m gonna torture you.”

      Anyway, I said, “Of course I will be truthful!”

      “What terrorist organizations are you part of?”

      “None!” I replied. He put back the bag on my head and started a long discourse of humiliation, cursing, lies, and threats. I don’t really remember it all, nor am I ready to sift in my memory for such bullshit. I was so tired and hurt, and tried to sit but he forced me back. I cried from the pain. Yes, a man my age cried silently. I just couldn’t bear the agony.

      After a couple of hours William sent me back to my cell, promising me more torture. “This was only the start,” as he put it. I was returned to my cell, terrorized and worn out. I prayed to Allah to save me from him. I lived the days to follow in horror: whenever William went past our cell I looked away, avoiding seeing him so he wouldn’t “see” me, exactly like an ostrich. He was checking on everybody, day and night, and giving the guards the recipe for every detainee. I saw him torturing this other detainee. I don’t want to recount what I heard about him; I just want to tell what I saw with my eyes. It was an Afghani teenager, I would say 16 or 17. William made him stand for about three days, sleepless. I felt so bad for him. Whenever he fell down the guards came to him, shouting “no sleep for terrorists,” and made him stand again. I remember sleeping and waking up, and he stood there like a tree.

      Whenever I saw William around, my heart started to pound, and he was often around. One day he sent the female interpreter to me to pass me a message.

      “William is gonna kick your ass.”

      I didn’t respond, but inside me I said, May Allah stop you! But in fact William didn’t kick my rear end; instead Michael pulled me for interrogation. He was a nice guy; maybe he felt he could relate to me because of the language. And why not? Even some of the guards used to come to me and practice their German when they learned that I spoke it.

      Anyway, he recounted a long story to me. “I’m not like William. He’s young and hot-tempered. I don’t use inhumane methods; I have my own methods. I want to tell something about American history, and the whole war against terrorism.”

      Michael was straightforward and enlightening. He started with American history and the Puritans, who punished even the innocents by drowning them, and ended with the war against terrorism. “There is no innocent detainee in this campaign: either you cooperate with us and I am going to get you the best deal, or we are going to send you to Cuba.”

      “What? Cuba?” I exclaimed. “I don’t even speak Spanish, and you guys hate Cuba.”

      “Yes, but we have an American territory in Guantánamo,” he said, and told me about Teddy Roosevelt and things like that. I knew that I was going to be sent further from home, which I hated.

      “Why would you send me to Cuba?”

      “We have other options, like Egypt and Algeria, but we only send them the very bad people. I hate sending people over there, because they’ll experience painful torture.”

      “Just send me to Egypt.”

      “You sure do not want that. In Cuba they treat detainees humanely, and they have two Imams. The camp is run by the DOJ, not the military.”⁶

      “But I’ve done no crimes against your country.”

      “I’m sorry if you haven’t. Just think of it as if you had cancer!”

      “Am I going to be sent to court?”

      “Not in the near future. Maybe in three years or so, when my people forget about September 11.” Michael went on to tell me about his private life, but I don’t want to put it down here.

      I had a couple more sessions with Michael after that. He asked me some questions and tried to trick me, saying things like, “He said he knows you!” for people I had never heard of. He took my email addresses and passwords. He also asked the German intelligence agents who were present in Bagram to interrogate me, but they refused, saying that German law forbids them from interrogating aliens outside the country.⁷ He was trying the whole time to convince me to cooperate so he could save me from the trip to Cuba. To be honest, I preferred to go to Cuba than to stay in Bagram.

      “Let it be,” I told him. “I don’t think I can change anything.”

      Somehow I liked Michael. Don’t get me wrong, he was a sneaky interrogator, but at least he spoke to me according to the level of my intellect. I asked Michael to put me inside the cell with the rest of the population, and showed him the injuries I had suffered from the barbed wire. He approved: in Bagram, interrogators could do anything with you; they had overall control, and the MPs were at their service. Sometimes Michael gave me a drink, which I appreciated, especially with the kind of diet I received, cold MREs and dry bread in every meal. I secretly passed my meals to other detainees.

      One night Michael introduced two military interrogators who asked me about the Millennium Plot. They spoke broken Arabic and were very hostile to me; they didn’t allow me to sit and threatened me with all kind of things. But Michael hated them, and told me in German, “If you want to cooperate, do so with me. These MI guys are nothing.” I felt myself under auction to whichever agency bids more.

      In the population we always broke the rules and spoke to our neighbors. I had three direct neighbors. One was an Afghani teenager who was kidnapped on his way to Emirates; he used to work there, which was why he spoke Arabic with a Gulf accent. He was very funny, and he made me laugh; over the past nine months I had almost forgotten how. He was spending holidays with his family in Afghanistan and went to Iran; from there he headed to the Emirates in a boat, but the boat was hijacked by the U.S. and the passengers were arrested.

      My second neighbor was a twenty-year-old Mauritanian guy who was born in Nigeria and moved to Saudi Arabia. He’d never been in Mauritania, nor did he speak the Mauritanian dialect; if he didn’t introduce himself, you would say he was a Saudi.

      My third neighbor was a Palestinian from Jordan named Ibrahim. He was captured and tortured by an Afghani tribal leader for about seven months. His kidnapper wanted money from Ibrahim’s family or else he would turn him over to the Americans, though the latter option was the least promising because the U.S. was only paying $5,000 per head, unless it was a big head. The bandit arranged everything with the family regarding the ransom, but Ibrahim managed to flee from captivity in Kabul. He made it to Jalalabad, where he easily stuck out as an Arab mujahid and was captured and sold to the Americans. I told Ibrahim that I’d been in Jordan, and he seemed to be knowledgeable about their intelligence services. He knew all the interrogators who dealt with me, as he himself spent 50 days in the same prison where I had been.

      When we spoke, we covered our heads so guards thought we were asleep, and talked until we got tired. My neighbors told me that we were in Bagram, in Afghanistan, and I informed them that we were going to be transferred to Cuba. But they didn’t believe me.

      Around 10 a.m. on August 4, 2002 a Military unit, some armed with guns, appeared from nowhere. The armed MPs were pointing their guns at us from upstairs, and the others were shouting at the same time, “Stan’ up, Stan’ up . . .” I was so scared.