From Mark Danners review, a passage of the book: “ ‘What have you done?’ “ ‘I’ve done nothing!’ “Both burst out in laughter. ‘Oh, very convenient! You have done nothing, but you are here!’ I thought, What crime should I say in order to satisfy them?” What crime indeed? If guilt is assumed, how to prove innocence? And as with Kafka’s Joseph K., the third great literary spirit looming over these pages, the signs of Slahi’s guilt are everywhere: He fought in Afghanistan in the early 1990s with Al Qaeda (then indirectly supported by the United States); his distant cousin and sometime brother-in-law became a key bin Laden spiritual adviser; he had studied in Germany, like the 9/11 conspirators; had prayed at the same Montreal mosque as the “millennium” plotter; had known the 9/11 planner Ramzi bin al-Shibh. These signs and others meant he fit the profile, Slahi says, of “a high-level, smart-beyond-belief terrorist.” That will be the American interrogators’ premise, and nothing the Mauritanians and Jordanians will tell them, let alone what Slahi will say in the months of increasingly brutal interrogation, can alter their view. Slahi’s memoirs are filled with numbingly absurd exchanges that could have been lifted whole cloth from “The Trial”: “ ‘The rules have changed. What was no crime is now considered a crime.’ “ ‘But I’ve done no crimes, and no matter how harsh you guys’ laws are, I have done nothing.’ “ ‘But what if I show you the evidence?” The interrogator shows him a list of the 15 “worst people” in Guantánamo, on which he is counted “No. 1.” “ ‘You gotta be kidding me,’ I said. “ ‘No, I’m not. Don’t you understand the seriousness of your case?’ “ ‘So, you kidnapped me from my house, in my country, and sent me to Jordan for torture, and then took me from Jordan to Bagram, and I’m still worse than the people you captured with guns in their hands?’ “ ‘Yes, you are. You’re very smart! To me, you meet all the criteria of a top terrorist. When I check the terrorist checklist, you pass with a very high score.’ “I was so scared, but I always tried to suppress my fear. ‘And what is your [redacted] checklist?’ “ ‘You’re Arab, you’re young, you went to jihad, you speak foreign languages, you’ve been in many countries, you’re a graduate in a technical discipline.’ “ ‘And what crime is that?’ I said. “ ‘Look at the hijackers: They were the same way.’ ”
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 22:07:34 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015