Free Guantánamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Larry Siems Page A

and they have two Imams. The camp is run by the DOJ, not the military.” *
    “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.” ■■■■■■■■■ 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 ■■■■■■■■■ 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 ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ who were present in Bagram to interrogate me, but they refused, saying the ■■■■■■■■ law forbids them from interrogating aliens outside the country. * 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 ■■■■■■■■■ . 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 ■■■■■■■■■ to put me inside the cell with the rest of the population, and showed him the injuries I had suffered from the barbed wire. ■■■■■■■■■ approved: in Bagram, interrogators could do anything with you; they had overall control, and the MPs were at their service. Sometimes ■■■■■■■■■ 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 ■■■■■■■■■ 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 ■■■■■■■■■ hated them, and told me in ■■■■■■■ , “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 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 ■■■■■■■■■■ . He was captured and tortured by an Afghani tribal leader for about seven months. His kidnapper wanted money from ■■■■■■■■■■ 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 ■■■■■■■■■■ family regarding the ransom, but ■■■■■■■■■ 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 ■■■■■■■■■■■■ 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,