The Mauritanian

by Mohamedou Ould Slahi

  “We are going to do this with you every single day, day in, day out, unless you speak about Abdulmalek and admit to your crimes,” said SSG Mary.

  “You have to provide us a smoking gun about another friend of yours. Something like that would really help you,” SFC Shally said in a later session. “Why should you take all of this, if you can stop it?”

  I decided to remain silent during torture and to speak whenever they relieved me. I realized that even asking my interrogators politely to use the bathroom, which was a dead basic right of mine, I gave my interrogators some kind of control they don’t deserve. I knew it was not just about asking for the bathroom: it was more about humiliating me and getting me to tell them what they wanted to hear. Ultimately an interrogator is interested in gathering Intels, and typically the end justifies the means in that regard. And that was another reason why I refused both to drink and to eat: so I didn’t have to use the rest room. And it worked.

  The extravagance of the moment gave me more strength. My statement was that I was going to fight to the last drop of my blood.

  “We’re stronger than you, we have more people, we have more resources, and we’re going to defeat you. But if you start to cooperate with us, you’ll start to have some sleep and hot meals,” said SFC Shally numerous times. “You cooperate not, you eat not, you get remedy not.”

  Humiliation, sexual harassment, fear, and starvation was the order of the day until around 10 p.m. Interrogators made sure that I had no clue about the time, but nobody is perfect; their watches always revealed it. I would be using this mistake later, when they put me in dark isolation.

  “I’m gonna send you to your cell now, and tomorrow you’ll experience even worse,” said SSG Mary after consulting with her colleagues. I was happy to be relieved; I just wanted to have a break and be left alone. I was so worn out, and only God knew how I looked. But SSG Mary lied to me; she just organized a psychological trick to hurt me more. I was far from being relieved. The D.O.C., which was fully cooperating when it came to torture, sent another escort team. As soon as I reached the doorstep leading out of Brown Building I fell face down, my legs refused to carry me, and every inch in my body was conspiring against me. The guards failed to make me stand up, so they had to drag me on the tips of my toes.

  “Bring the motherfucker back!” shouted Mr. X, a celebrity among the torture squad.21 He was about my age and about six feet tall, athletically built, and had special clothes for his work. He wore dark blue coveralls, not like an Air Force pilot’s but like meat locker workers wear, and a black mask covering his face. Mr. X was aware that he was committing heavy war crimes, and so he was ordered by his bosses to cover himself. But if there is any kind of basic justice, he will get busted through his bosses; we know their names and their ranks.

  When I got to know Mr. X more and heard him speaking I wondered, How could a man as smart as he was possibly accept such a degrading job, which surely is going to haunt him the rest of his life? For the sake of fairness and honesty, I must say that Mr. X spoke convincingly to me, although he had no information and was completely misled. Maybe he had few choices, because many people in the Army come from poor families, and that’s why the Army sometimes gives them the dirtiest job. I mean theoretically Mr. X could have refused to commit crimes of war, and he might even get away with it. Later on I discussed with some of my guards why they executed the order to stop me from praying, since it’s an unlawful order. “I could have refused, but my boss would have given me a shitty job or transferred me to a bad place. I know I can go to hell for what I have done to you,” one of them told me. History repeats itself: during World War II, German soldiers were not excused when they argued that they received orders.

  “You’ve been giving the female sergeant a hard time,” continued Mr. X, dragging me into a dark room with the help of the guards. He dropped me on the dirty floor. The room was as dark as ebony. Mr. X started playing a track very loudly—I mean very loudly. The song was, “Let the bodies hit the floor.” I might never forget that song. At the same time, Mr. X turned on some colored blinkers that hurt the eyes. “If you fucking fall asleep, I’m gonna hurt you,” he said. I had to listen to the song over and over until next morning. I started praying.22

  “Stop the fuck praying,” he said loudly. I was by this time both really tired and terrified, and so I decided to pray in my heart. Every once in a while Mr. X gave me water. I drank the water because I was only scared of being hurt. I really had no real feeling for time.

  To the best of my knowledge, M. X sent me back to my cell around 5 a.m. in the morning.

  “Welcome to hell,” said the female BNCO guard when I stepped inside the block. I didn’t answer, and she wasn’t worth it.23 But I was like, “I think you deserve hell more than I do because you’re working dutifully to get there!”

  When Mr. X joined the team, they organized a 24-hour shift regime. The morning shift with SFC Shally started between 7 and 9 a.m. and ended between 3 and 4 p.m.; the dayshift with SSG Mary ran between 4:30 and 10 or 11 p.m.; and the night-shift was with Mr. X. He always took over when SSG Mary left; she would literally hand me over to him. This went on until August 24, 2003; I rarely got a break or relief from even one of the shifts.

  “Three shifts! Is it not too much for a human being to be interrogated 24 hours a day, day after day?” I asked. SSG Mary was the least of many evils, so I just tried to talk to her as a human being. You might be surprised if I tell you that she possesses good qualities as a person. As much as I hated what she was doing, I must be just, fair, and honest.

  “We could put on more personnel and make four shifts. We have more people,” SSG Mary answered. And that’s exactly what happened. The team was reinforced with another young male army sergeant, and instead of a three-shift team I had to deal with four fresh people during a 24-hour period.

  “You fucked up!” said an escorting guard who by accident had to escort me twice in one day from one building to another. “What are you doing here? You’ve been in reservation already!”

  “I get interrogated for 24 hours.”

  The guard laughed loudly and evilly repeated, “You fucked up!” I just looked at him and smiled.

  On day three of the shifts the escorting team showed up at my door in the early morning, as soon as I fell asleep after a rough, 20-hour interrogation. You know, when you just fall asleep and the saliva starts to come out of your mouth?

  “Reservation!” shouted one of the guards. My feet barely carried me. “Hurry up!” I quickly washed my face and my mouth. I tried to use every opportunity to keep myself clean, although I was deprived from the right to take a shower like other detainees. The team wanted to humiliate me.

  “What a smell!” SFC Shally used to say when he entered the room where he interrogated me.

  “Man, you smell like shit!” said one of the guards more than once. I only got the opportunity to shower and change my clothes when his lowness SFC Shally couldn’t bear my smell anymore; “Take the guy, give him a shower, he smells like shit,” he would say. Only then would I get a shower, for months to come.

  “Hurry up!” the guards kept saying. I was taken out of India Block, a block I hated less only than the interrogation room. I had a headache, nausea, and heartburn from the sleeplessness of the last several days. My eyes were playing games on me. I hated the place where I was going.

  The guards dropped me in Brown Building. Nobody was in the room. I kept dozing off while waiting on SFC Shally. Oh, my neck really hurt. I badly wanted him to show up, because I hated to sleep like that: at least he would enjoy depriving me of sleeping. SFC Shally is one of the laziest people I ever knew. He didn’t take time to read reports, and so he always mistook me for other suspects. Most of the time he came late, but he reserved me early anyway, so I couldn’t sleep.

  There really was not a lot of news: SFC Shally and I facing each other with the same topics, like the movie Groundhog Day. But I had grown very nervous now that they were depri
ving me of the sweetness of sleep.

  The order of the day always went as follows. SFC Shally started to read some paper crap he brought with him and asked me questions.

  “Why the fuck did you go to Canada?”

  “I wanted to find a job and have a nice life.”

  “Fuck you! Stand up!”

  “I’d rather stand up like this until death than talk to your ugly face!” When SFC Shally made me stand up, he made sure that the guards maintained his orders while he was stuffing his big stomach during lunch; whenever I tried to change my inconvenient position, the guards surged from nowhere and forced me to stay as straight as I could. Every interrogator I knew missed a meal sometimes, for whatever reason. SFC Shally never missed his meal no matter what.

  “If you stop denying what you’ve done, we’ll start to give you hot meals and some sleep. We are stronger than you.”

  “I don’t need what I don’t have.”

  “We’re gonna put you in a hole the rest of your life. You’re already convicted. You will never see your family.”

  “It’s not in your hands, but if it is, just do it, the sooner the better!”

  Sometimes SFC Shally went through the propaganda posters of detainees who were supposedly released. “Look at this guy, he’s a criminal but he admitted to everything, and now he’s able to lead a normal life.” I mean, all interrogators lie, but SFC Shally’s lies were more than obvious. Though if another interrogator lies, his appearance changes, but SFC Shally recounts a lie as well as the truth: his face always had the same hateful look.

  When the pain became unbearable, I became smooth for negotiation, and he agreed to let me sit on the uncomfortable chair. But he soon got shocked when I didn’t give him the answers he wanted to hear.

  “I am going to do everything I am allowed to to break you!” SFC Shally said angrily. He threatened me with all kind of horrible scenarios. “You’re gonna spend the rest of your life in jail.” “We will wipe you out of the database and put you in a hole where nobody knows about you.” “You will never see your family again.” My answer was always, “Do what you got to do! I have done nothing!” and as soon as I spit my words SFC Shally went wildly crazy, as if he wanted to devour me alive. So I avoided answering him and let him for the most part do the talking. As I say, SFC Shally likes to talk and hates to listen. I sometimes doubted that his ears functioned. He spoke as if he were reading some Gospels.

  I was just wondering how he was so sure I was a criminal. “Sergeant, what if you are wrong in what you’re suspecting me of?” I asked him.

  “I would be wasting my time,” he answered.

  “Fair enough.”

  “If you provide incriminating information about somebody, say about Karim Mehdi or Ahmed Laabidi, that leads to his conviction, your life would change to a better one.” I didn’t answer him, because I didn’t have what he was looking for. SFC Shally’s view of justice was very rough: even if I provided him everything he wanted, he would reduce my sentence from the electric chair to life, and then maybe thirty years in prison. I honestly was not interested in his offer.

  During his shift, SFC Shally would be reporting to his boss during the breaks. I was not sure who his boss was at that point, probably Richard Zuley. But I’m sure that the highest authority in his chain of command in GTMO was General Geoffrey Miller, and that he was briefed regularly about my case and always gave the orders for what to do next with “that bastard.” According to Mary, President Bush was regularly briefed about my case, and so was Donald Rumsfeld. Donald Rumsfeld even sent his secretary, a large dark gentleman the guards told me was named Butler, to check on me in summer 2004. He asked me some Intel questions. By that time, though, the tension was already relieved.24

  I spent the afternoon shift with SSG Mary. Like I mentioned before, she was the least evil of all. Her order of day went as follows. When she pulled me to interrogation, she informed the D.O.C. not to give me a chair, so I had to settle for the dirty floor—but I didn’t even get that, because the D.O.C. always asked the guards to make me stand up until SSG Mary arrived. Then she decided whether to allow me to sit or make me stand up during her whole shift, and after that Mr. X made me stand up for the rest of the 24 hours.25

  I started to recite the Koran quietly, for prayer was forbidden. Once, back in Gold Building, she said, “Why don’t you pray? go ahead and pray!” I was like, How friendly! But as soon as I started to pray, she started to make fun of my religion, and so I settled for praying in my heart so I didn’t give her the opportunity to commit blasphemy. Making fun of somebody else’s religion is one of the most barbaric acts. President Bush described his holy war against the so-called terrorism as a war between the civilized and barbaric world. But his government committed more barbaric acts than the terrorists themselves. I can name tons of war crimes that Bush’s government is involved in.

  This particular day was one of the roughest days in my interrogation before the day around end of August that was my “Birthday Party” as SSG Mary called it. She brought someone who was apparently a Marine; he wore a woodland camouflage combat uniform. He was small and very loud for his size, and even brought his own boom box into the room.

  SSG Mary offered me a metal chair. “I told you, I’m gonna bring some people to help me interrogate you,” she said, sitting inches away in front of me. The guest sat almost sticking on my knee. The Marine started to ask me some questions I don’t remember,

  “Yes or no?” the guest shouted, loud beyond belief, in a show to scare me, and maybe to impress SSG Mary, who knows? I found his method very childish and silly.

  I looked at him, smiled, and said, “Neither!” The guest threw the chair from beneath me violently. I fell on the chains. Oh, it hurt.

  “Stand up, motherfucker,” they both shouted, almost synchronous. Then a session of torture and humiliation started. They started to ask me the questions again after they made me stand up, but it was too late, because I told them a million times, “Whenever you start to torture me, I’m not gonna say a single word.” And that was always accurate; for the rest of the day, they exclusively talked.

  The Marine turned the air conditioner all the way down to bring me to freezing. This method had been practiced in the camp at least since August 2002. I had seen people who were exposed to the frozen room day after day; by then, the list was long. The consequences of the cold room are devastating, such as rheumatism, but they show up only at a later age because it takes time until they work their way through the bones. The torture squad was so well trained that they were performing almost perfect crimes, avoiding leaving any obvious evidence. Nothing was left to chance. They hit in predefined places. They practiced horrible methods, the aftermath of which would only manifest later. The interrogators turned the A/C all the way down trying to reach 0°, but obviously air conditioners are not designed to kill, so in the well insulated room the A/C fought its way to 49°F, which, if you are interested in math like me, is 9.4° C—in other words, very, very cold, especially for somebody who had to stay in it more than twelve hours, had no underwear and just a very thin uniform, and who comes from a hot country. Somebody from Saudi Arabia cannot take as much cold as somebody from Sweden; and vice versa, when it comes to hot weather. Interrogators took these factors in consideration and used them effectively.

  You may ask, Where were the interrogators after installing the detainee in the frozen room? Actually, it’s a good question. First, the interrogators didn’t stay in the room; they would just come for the humiliation, degradation, discouragement, or other factor of torture, and after that they left the room and went to the monitoring room next door. Second, interrogators were adequately dressed; for instance Mr. X was dressed like somebody entering a meat locker. In spite of that, they didn’t stay long with the detainee. Third, there’s a big psychological difference when you are exposed to a cold place for purpose of torture, and when you just go there for fun and challenge. And lastly, the interrogators kept moving in the roo
m, which meant blood circulation, which meant keeping themselves warm while the detainee was shackled the whole time to the floor, standing for the most part. All I could do was move my feet and rub my hands. But the Marine guy stopped me from rubbing my hands by ordering a special chain that shackled my hands on my opposite hips. When I get nervous I always start to rub my hands together and write on my body, and that drove my interrogators crazy.

  “What are you writing?” the Marine shouted. “Either you tell me or you stop the fuck doing that.” But I couldn’t stop; it was unintentional. The Marine guy started to throw chairs around, hit me with his forehead, and describe me with all kind of adjectives I didn’t deserve, for no reason.

  “You joined the wrong team, boy. You fought for a lost cause,” he said, alongside a bunch of trash talk degrading my family, my religion, and myself, not to mention all kinds of threats against my family to pay for “my crimes,” which goes against any common sense. I knew that he had no power, but I knew that he was speaking on behalf of the most powerful country in the world, and obviously enjoyed the full support of his government. However, I would rather save you, Dear Reader, from quoting his garbage. The guy was nuts. He asked me about things I have no clue about, and names I never heard.