“She was terribly afraid. He must have expected to be killed at any moment, “said Mr. X. He was part of a special team at Guantanamo Bay, but did not want to introduce himself by his real name. The authors of the current journalistic investigation know his identity, he wrote Deutsche Welle.
In the interview, the witness first spoke about “hard techniques” that are now illegal. Asked to clarify, the former special investigator admits, “Yes, it was torture.” He said other guards also tortured the prisoners. It happened that one prisoner had a broken nose, another – with a cracked lip or a swollen eye.
“Twice I was on the verge of death”
Mohamed Ould Slahi, who now lives in Mauritania, describes a similar picture. He was constantly flooded with ice water to speak. “They wanted me to confess. But even if I wanted to say something, I was no longer able to speak, I was all numb. This man almost killed me twice, “said the 51-year-old man today.
In 1988 he arrived in Germany as a fellow of the Carl Duisberg Society. During his studies in Germany, he voluntarily joined the mujahideen in Afghanistan, who at the time were fighting the Soviet occupation and receiving aid from the United States. For months, Slahi trained in one of the camps under the leadership of later al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
He says that after returning to Germany, he cut off all contact with al Qaeda, but maintained some of his ties to Islamist circles. He was later abducted by US special forces and taken to the Guantanamo Bay camp, where he spent from 2002 to 2016. The US Department of Defense accuses him of personally recruiting three of the four suicide pilots who carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks, on bin Laden’s behalf. Despite the charges, his case never made it to court. Quite the opposite: gradually the US military justice and secret services came to the conclusion that there was no evidence against Slahi and in 2016 released him.
Threatened to rape his mother
He himself has always claimed innocence. He agreed to confess only because his investigator took a cunning step. In 2003, Chicago Police Commissioner Richard Zully showed him a letter that looked like an official State Department document. It said that Slahi’s mother could be brought to Guantanamo and given to male prisoners.
Zuli described the effect of the false threat that his mother would be raped as follows: “I watched his eyes go through the first four of the five paragraphs of the letter. Then his eyes filled with tears that welled up in his face. ”From then on, Slahi began to provide all sorts of information that allegedly described what was happening in the inner circles of the terrorist organization Al Qaeda.
Investigator Zuli’s “great success” failed miserably only a few months later because a lie detector test revealed that Slahi’s “confessions” (as a result of the threat of his mother’s rape) were made up mainly from fabrications. The second polygraph test showed the same.
Former military prosecutor: “This is torture”
An analyst who checked the work of Guantanamo’s investigative team and spoke in detail with Slahi said the “special interrogation methods” in the case were personally approved by Defense Minister Donald Rumsfeld.
“What was done against Slahi is torture,” admits former U.S. Attorney General Stuart Couch. Today, he is a judge, adding that such “confessions” would be unusable in court anyway because they were obtained illegally.
People from the American interrogation team at Guantanamo today evaluate their activities differently. “Mr. X” regrets what he did to Slahi and admits that his actions were wrong. At the same time, the then team leader Zuli reiterated that the methods were adequate. “Our task was to extract hidden information in order to prevent a possible next terrorist act against the United States,” Zuli said.
The quoted analyst also justifies the described methods to this day: “At least he stayed at Guantanamo for 14 years – better than nothing. But it wasn’t enough for him. ”And what would it be, in her opinion? The former civil servant from the US administration is categorical: “Death. He had to pay with his life.
Delayed remorse
One of the supervisors at the time took a different position today: “I cannot apologize on behalf of the government. No way. Personally, however, I can ask for forgiveness.
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