This was 2002 in the sweltering heat of the Cuban sun. I had been ferried by stretcher or golf cart now turned detainee transport to the wooden bunkers for ‘exhibition’, code word for interrogation, and bolted to the floor in a cabin that looked like an oversized sauna with meeting table in between. They had walked in through the back door, like some backstage entrance and asked what would become a ritual repeated over and over again, “What’s up?” And my response, “The usual.” Unknown to me I would be seeing these guys a lot more. And they would be instrumental in my torture.

 

The conversation had progressed to what they were looking for and I the young, naive and innocent fool that I was had given it to them – to my own detriment. I had been frank from the beginning about myself. I figured that I had not done anything wrong nor been involved in anything and hence had nothing to lie about. But unfortunately they, the interrogators, weren’t satisfied with me alone. They wanted to know about who I came across. A person’s ‘story’ as they called it is not an island, and hence is incomplete without others. I knew that the people I met and was around were also not involved in anything, but made the mistake of telling the interrogators. I soon learned the game was that of connect the dots, and not any search for a crime or terrorist activity. They would continue to connect the dots until they stepped back and saw the face of Usama bin Laden.

 

Such was the plan of Corbette and Iorio as they sat with childish glee in front of me. They let me in on their plan. That I would be a ‘cooperative witness’ for them, their ‘boy’, and that I would tour the US giving witness against this or that character.

 

They had been interrogating me for two weeks solid and the detainees back in Bravo, Camp X-ray, were getting worried. Allah had first facilitated and then they had heard me make the prayer of Prophet Joseph from my Abdullaah Yusuf Ali translation of the meaning of the Holy Qur’an, which I later read in entirety at least fifteen times, “O my Lord (Allaah), Prison is dearer to me than that to which they invite me. Unless You turn away their plot from me, I will feel inclined towards them and be one of the ignorant.” Unfortunately my grasp of the Arabic language was minimal and I did not realise that the ‘they’ in the supplication referred to women. The detainees must have thought those bastards were hitting a man where it hurts, below the belt – by plying me with women in the hope of breaking me. They also heard a supplication Allaah facilitated and then I made from the Chapter of the Cave in the Qur’an, “Our Lord! Bestow on us mercy from Yourself, and facilitate for us our affair in the right way!” I remember looking out across Bravo to see almost all, if not all, the detainees asleep midday as in the Story of the Cave the chapter refers to. The detainees were seriously worried. As I could see it in the wrinkles on their faces and loss of lustre in their eyes as they looked on to see me return limp after another interrogation.

 

I began, “I want $30,000, a green card and immunity from prosecution.” I had been thinking about this in my animal cage after Corbette and Iorio brought me in on their ‘plan’. The $30,000 came from what the Afghan’s told me was the bounty on my head by the Americans; I did not know what a ‘green card’ was but I had watched enough American movies to guess, and immunity from prosecution made the demands a healthy three instead of a scanty looking two. Their faces changed into disgust. I had become greedy. Corbette spat, “You were our boy, you were going to be our slam-dunk star!”

 

For Corbette and Iorio this had been a race against the interrogators that were giving ‘Co-conspirator’ B the same treatment. The race was to see who would get their cooperative witness in first so that they could pin ‘Co-conspirator’ A. And doing the same with him, to somehow get to ‘Co-conspirator’ Emmanuel Goldstein – Usama bin Laden. For Corbette and Iorio this was their big break, they were full blooded glory seekers/hounds depending on which side of the Atlantic you come from.

 

They decided to teach me a lesson and have me languish for a month in the, “Sh*t-hole,” Corbette’s terminology for the cages, until we were transported with kicks and punches to Camp Delta. I was then to be moved around the Camp because of ‘fears’ (rather paranoia) they felt I was being ‘influenced’ by the ‘Arabs’, isolated, put up as first to be tried by Bush’s military commissions and drugged until I lost my mind – for not ‘cooperating’.

 

All praise is due to Allaah the matter was suddenly dropped by the end of 2003. I do not know whether it was because 'Co-conspirator' B got to ‘Co-conspirator’ A first as his interrogator’s ‘slam-dunk boy’; or whether the interrogators soon turned vicious on the Guantanamo Bay detainee that I suspect was going to level pressure on me through the military commissions to lubricate my lack of compliance; or the tide may have turned on GTMO, and with it the steam to press ahead with the connect the dots game.

 

I was in Guantanamo three years and it has taken me six years to this day to feel that I can come to terms and start to fully recover and rebuild my life. My wonder is how are the ones that were taken on the same flight as me, all approximately twenty four of us, some of which are still there after nine years, going to recover if they were released today? It would take eighteen years to just come to a point where the progress was positive, not a climb out of the darkness.