To the Death

Never mind that most of them had been caught trying to kill, maim, or murder U.S. servicemen or civilians and were meeting a far less onerous fate than prisoners of the jihadists so often do. It might have been tough or even humiliating, but no one had their head cut off. Or worse.

Within a couple of years, there were six separate detention camps at Guantánamo (named 1, 2, 3, 4, Echo, and Iguana), three of them maximum security, capable of holding eight hundred prisoners between them, all living in solitary confinement.

Inside these camps, there were numerous detention blocks, each holding twenty-four units. These oppressive cells are eight feet long by six feet eight inches wide, and eight feet high, constructed of metallic wire mesh on a solid steel frame. A couple of hundred prisoners were released to other governments in 2005, but over five hundred were left.

Ramon Salman landed in Guantánamo after a direct flight from the U.S. Naval Air Station at Boca Chica, near Key West, fifty miles off Florida’s south coast. He was immediately manacled and walked to a reception area, where he was issued the usual prisoner’s gear: two orange boiler-suits, a foam sleeping mat, one blanket, two buckets, a pair of flip-flops, wash-cloth, soap, shampoo, and a copy of the Koran, in case he thought Allah might have abandoned him.

Salman was then walked slowly to a detention block, a separate one from either of his two cohorts, neither of whom did he realize was in captivity less than two hundred yards from where he stood.

And from there he was, for a while, left to his own thoughts. And these were private. Salman had not uttered one word since the New York cops had grabbed him in the Houston Street apartment the previous day. He must clearly have been stunned by the experience, seeing his two colleagues bound and gagged in the presence of Officers Carman and Pallizi.

But he had offered nothing, refused to give even his name, and was identified one hour later only by the police photographs which had been taken outside his apartment on Commonwealth Avenue. Since his arrest: nothing. Not a word on the military aircraft. Not a word to anyone since the flight. His entry card to Guantánamo read simply:

Ramon Salman, last known permanent address 2, Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts. Arrested in known terrorist HQ at 75 West Houston Street, New York City, on suspicion of terrorism against the United States. Believed involved in Logan airport bombing, 01/15/12, and other plots to murder and maim involving aircraft. This prisoner is designated ILLEGAL COMBATANT. NON-COOPERATIVE. Possibly Syrian. No passport located.

At 1900, they brought him an evening meal with the rest of the prisoners. It consisted of white rice, red beans, a banana, bread, and a bottle of water. The guards stared at him for a while, noting his unshaven, dark, swarthy Middle Eastern appearance, the pure hatred in his eyes, and the defiant curl to his upper lip.

This was the man, they knew, who had made the phone call from his apartment to Syria, the call that had betrayed so much. This was a critical figure in the al Qaeda system. He was, as yet, undetected as a disciple of bin Laden, and nothing was known about him. But he had been coldly planning to blow apart hundreds of innocent American citizens in the airport. But for the sharpness of the Boston financier Donald Martin in spotting the briefcase, he would have succeeded.

Salman’s current plight may have incensed, or at least drawn sympathy from, the human rights groups. But it did not impress the U.S. guards, one of whom muttered, as they walked away, “For two bits, I’d kick the little fucker’s nuts into his lungs.”

Happily for Salman, there would be the kind of legal restraint common in the United States military, but there would be little mercy when the interrogation began at 0100. Still, they probably would not behead him.

The lights in his holding pen went out at 2100. It would be a long time before he was allowed out of the darkness, since the principal objective of interrogation, in its initial stages, is total disorientation, the prisoner not knowing whether it’s day or night.

They came for him on time at 0100, and immediately placed a hood over his head. He was then manacled, placed in a chair, and the senior interrogator said quietly, “Okay, Ramon. We know you speak English, and we also have in custody your colleagues, Reza Aghani and the Palm Beach baggage man Mohammed Rahman.