Radiolab - The Other Latif: Cuba-ish

Episode Date: April 22, 2022

Almost exactly twenty years ago, detainee 244 got transferred to Guantanamo Bay. Captured by American forces at the battle Tora Bora five months previous, Abdul Latif Nasser was shaved, hooded, shackled, diapered, and flown halfway across the world. The Radiolab special series, The Other Latif, kicked off when one of our hosts, Latif Nasser, made a bizarre and shocking discovery. He shares his name with detainee 244. A man the U.S. government paints a terrifying picture of as Al-Qaeda’s top explosives expert, and one of the most important advisors to Osama bin Laden. Nasser’s lawyer claims, on the other hand, that he was at the wrong place at the wrong time, and that he was never even in Al-Qaeda. This clash launched our Latif into a years-long investigation, picking apart evidence, attempting to separate fact from fiction, and trying to uncover what the man with whom he shares a name actually did or didn’t do. Along the way, Radiolab’s Latif reflects on American values and his own religious past, and wonders how a fellow nerdy, suburban Muslim kid, may have gone down such a strikingly different path. Episode 5: Cuba-ish  To mark the solemn occasion of the other Latif's transfer to, "the legal equivalent of outer space," we thought we'd replay Cuba-ish, the fifth episode of our special series which first aired back in 2020. In this episode, our Latif heads to Guantanamo Bay to try to speak to his namesake. Before he gets there, he dives deep, seeking the answer to what seems like a simple question: why Cuba? Why in the world did the United States pick this sleepy military base in the Caribbean to house “the worst of the worst”?  Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab today.     Radiolab is on YouTube! Catch up with new episodes and hear classics from our archive. Plus, find other cool things we did in the past — like miniseries, music videos, short films and animations, behind-the-scenes features, Radiolab live shows, and more. Take a look, explore and subscribe!  

Wait, you're listening to Radio Lab from WNYC. Hey, it's Lothiff. We've been celebrating a lot around here recently for Radio Labs 20th anniversary and we're just so eager to celebrate it because there's so much that has happened in the last two decades that we're really proud of. Today, I want to mark another 20 year anniversary. One I doubt that anyone else, anywhere else on planet earth actually wants to mark let alone celebrate, in part because I think almost nobody is proud of it, which is all the more reason it felt like we should mark it.

Almost exactly 20 years ago, a man who shares my name, Obdolikifnasa, got transferred to Guantanamo Bay. I remember his family in Morocco telling me about the first time they heard where he wound up, and they were like, Cuba? Why would he be in Cuba? Two years ago we did a six-part mini-series called the other Luthyf. It is about how he got to Cuba, as well as how that prison got there in the first place. Almost exactly 20 years ago, Abdel-Aliathiefnasser was shaved, hooded, shackled, dibered, and flown halfway across the world. To mark the occasion, we want to rerun the episode about the facility itself.

We have some updates about him, about Guantanamo. I'll save those for the end. So in the meantime, here you go. The other lot if, episode five, Cuba ish. Before we start, this episode has some graphic descriptions that may not be suitable for all listeners. Previously. Yeah, he was definitely indoctrinated.

I mean, that would be my guess. He was indoctrinated and then sponsored to go to Sudan. Did he go to Afghanistan to fight? Classwork. It was easy to take a bloody bus. But for some reason, he decides to go south. We've been logged in. I see it up there, Latif started me directly

with his pale brown eyes. We did not come here to fight Afghans. We came here to fight Americans and we will keep fighting until we destroy them totally. I'm Lothafnasser and this is the other Lothaf. Hi, beta. Hello. Are you both on different phones? Yeah, we are both on different phones? So on Sunday I'm going to Guantanamo What yeah, yeah this Sunday

You can't go is it safe there? Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it's fine like I'm going as a media person like I have I got in clearance and If you say no, you still go right? No, no, no, you should go this is a good opportunity. Oh, I don't know. If I don't like, I guess I know it's your job. In my mind, it's going on official business. It's not a, you ready on a baby sending you, right? Yeah, ready on a baby. But you'll be able to see that prisoner.

Maybe. Okay, okay. We'll pray for your safety. We'll pray for you. Thank you, Dan. Episode 5. Cuba. Ish.

Good morning, Guantanamo Bay. You're listening to Radio Gettmo. We're rocking in the Del Vaguiar. It's a stick. Hi. Hi. Hi, is the general there? The general is here.

Hey. My father is a marine as well. He was very excited that I was talking to you. So far this story has been about one man, Abdullah Diffnasser, and what he may or may not have done to us. I didn't tell him we wouldn't see each other first. Well, we'll do a virtual handshake. But this episode and the next are about the reverse.

What we ended up doing to him. And that's the story that brings us to this guy. Mike Lennart. Do you prefer I call you General Lennart? Or how should I refer to you? Mike is just fine. Mike is just fine. Okay.

Retire General Mike is the guy who built the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Yeah, and it's pronounced lethif. Yeah, lethif. That's how I pronounce it. I've had some with this long E at the end. That's why I was looking for the distinction. Right. I also assure you that all of the lethif I've met, I did not lock up. Oh, okay. Well, that's also very, I'll tell you that's very comforting to you. I think the place we should start, although we might flash backwards, is January 2002 when you get an order.

Right. Here's kind of what happened. I was head my first command as a Brigadier general, Camp Leisure in North Carolina. He's on the space in charge of lots of Marines and sailors when... That a plane has crashed into one of the towers. 9-Eleven. The United States military has begun strikes. U.S. invades Afghanistan.

Under-risk explosions in the rattle of anti-war. We're watching what's happening in Afghanistan. We continue to gather in additional people. And receiving reports that they're capturing a number of prisoners too many. Obviously we need space at Condahar and we need space at Vogrum and the different places. Reports start to come back that the forces don't have enough places to keep all the prisoners. At the same time, within a month or so the problem we have a heavy snow on the ground

is that give you justice? We have a situation where the weather is getting bad. Winter is coming to Afghanistan. So it became pretty obvious that the administration was looking for places to send them. So on the 4th of January, 2002, and that was a Friday, the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sent us a deployment order. Now, we always watched Fridays because the Secretary Rumsfeld generally signed deployment orders on Friday. It was just what he did. So ours came on Friday afternoon. And essentially, it said that I was to form a joint task force, deploy to Guantanamo and build the first 100 cells and do all of that within

the first 96 hours. Oh my God. Yeah. He was told, you have four days to build an entire prison. Yes. I mean, that seems impossible. Well, it was tough, but it was pretty clear from the guidance that our job was to tell the administration how we were going to do it, not whether or not it was a good idea.

So we left the following day. He and a team of people flew the two and a half hours to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. We landed. And what's the first thing you do when you get there? Well, the first thing you do is you take a look at the facilities that are there, which were definitely not ideal. Personally, I didn't feel it was a particularly good place to send them. Guantanamo Bay at that point was 45 square miles of mostly swamp. Think of it as a horseshoe with the center of the horseshoe being the water. And Mangro Swamp.

The US had gotten the land in a 1903 treaty with Cuba. And he'd put a small naval base at one end, the Cuban government hated the fact that this base was there, that their hands were bound by this treaty that Teddy Roosevelt basically forced on them. And so in 1964, the Castro government basically cut the base off from all the island's utilities. So what Mike found when he landed was a naval base that could barely make enough water and electricity to support itself.

It's a real tough position to be in Latif. Yeah. The real challenge, of course, was finding the materials to build a facility to incarcerate these detainees. This was, after all, an island, not a home depot in sight. So we essentially took down every fence that wasn't absolutely needed on the naval base. And he pulled in help from wherever he could get it. Marine engineers, Navy C-Bs, some Jamaican steel workers that just happened to be down there doing a project.

We were given 96 hours to build this. We did it in 87. Right, but at that time we were still calling them prisoners of war. Enemy prisoners of war. But that was about to change. In fact, everything in Mike's experience about how he knew something like this should be handled was about to change. In fact, everything in Mike's experience about how he knew something like this should be handled was about to change. You know, with a 37 year career, you have to assume that most of the things I did I succeeded at. Okay? This is the one thing I wished I'd failed at. You know, and maybe if I

screwed it up a little bit, we'd bought a little bit more time for those that make the policy to think about the policy. To put all of that in context, which I think helps in order to understand just what kind of place, Ubbola Death, ended up being dragged into, you got to go back. You know, 9-11, it's almost hard to remember 18 years later, but it's worth it. And there's more of a difference right now. People are like, there it is. Oh, there it is, the plane.

Another passenger plane, other tower of the World Trade Center. That is a very hard thing to watch. 9-11 was crushing to the United States. And I mean that in a very psychological way. This is Karen Greenberg. Director of the Center on National Security, Fordham University. I was in the White House that day when the twin towers and the Pentagon were hit.

And this is Ambassador Daniel Fried. We were genuinely and legitimately worried about Al-Qaeda and follow-on attacks. Yeah. That's not a joke. The Bush administration didn't make that up. They didn't exaggerate it. That's what they felt. Remember, the bin Laden al-Qaeda playbook was consecutive attacks, simultaneous attacks.

The idea that there would be more attacks was front and center in terms of U.S. policy. Under those circumstances, the Bush administration was operating according to a theory that the old rules don't apply were in a new world. There was a before 9-11 and there was an after 9-11. And I cannot tell you how many times I heard that phrase. After 9-11, the gloves come off. Now in a pre-9-11 world, when the gloves were supposedly still on, here's how things were supposed to work.

The laws of war, as I think almost every American understands, don't require you to put a captive enemy soldier in a civilian court on trial when you've picked up said soldier on the battlefield. They become a POW, a prisoner of war. That is a recognized legal legitimate procedure. Enemy soldiers captured under the laws of war have rights. This film is an introduction to the Geneva Convention of 1949. All members of the U.S. military are given a basic construction on the Geneva Convention. It's the international law that we live by.

The third convention is the Geneva Convention relative to the treatment of prisoners of war. It basically instructs us how to behave and how to treat those that we bring under our control. Reading from the Red Cross website here. Prisoners of war must not be subjected to torture or medical experimentation. POWs must be housed in clean adequate shelter and receive the clothing and medical care necessary to maintain good health. The article's guarantee, humane treatment, safety, healthful conditions, and personal dignity. When the conflict ends, all POWs shall be released, and if they request, be sent home without delay. Well, the Bush administration decided that the old rules in particular the laws of war

and the Geneva Conventions no longer necessarily applied to terrorists. The terrorists were not covered by the Geneva Convention. They were unlawful combatants. Vice President Dick Cheney argued at the time that the Geneva Conventions are only there to protect people who follow the laws of war. One of the most important laws of war is keeping civilians safe. Terrorists intentionally attack civilians.

So they're putting themselves outside the Geneva Conventions. And if they're not going to follow the rules, why should we? The first and only priority for a number of people was, we're not going to have this happen to us again. And we don't care what it takes. We have to work the sort of dark side, if you will. We're going to spend time in the shadows. So as the prisoners in Afghanistan were piling up, obviously we need space.

Winter is coming. And there's this question of where we're going to put them, Cheney and the administration went searching for the shadows. OK, where are we going to move these people to? I think the most obvious place would have been the US base in Germany, because it was often a place of transport and transit to the Middle East, to Afghanistan.

But there was a very early recognition that to keep detainees in custody in the way they were thinking about keeping them would have too many eyes from not just Germany, but the European Union and invoke the European Court of Human Rights. And so there was a decision very early on that that was not going to be the answer. Am I remembering this right from your book that there was like a thought and however seriously I'm not sure but like it's like what if we put them on a boat in the middle of the ocean? Yes. There was another very serious candidate.

Guam was a possibility. It was in US control. It was far away. And not within the United States. Why not the United States? Yeah. It's a very good question why not the United States? So you know what?

It's one that very few people ask. One of the reasons was that there would be an ability to challenge the detention for one thing. See, as soon as prisoners stepped foot on American soil, they'd fall under criminal law, which meant they'd have habeas rights, i.e. the ability to challenge their detention, they'd have the right to a lawyer,

a fair and speedy trial, and the administration didn't want them to have those rights. Finally, somebody in the room said, what about Cuba? What about Guantanamo Bay? We have a naval facility there. Once Cuba is mentioned, my understanding of the situation is

that the minute it was mentioned, everybody was like, yes, that's obvious. Cuba's just going to work. I remember people saying at the very beginning that it was designed to be outside the reach of law because the legal status of Guantanamo was unusual. Guantanamo had the weird distinction of being a US territory not on US soil. And many people argue that meant US law shouldn't apply there. The technically Cuban law should govern Guantanamo. But since the Cuban government wanted nothing to do with Guantanamo and were sort of absentee landlords, that left Guantanamo Bay sort of outside any set of laws.

And it was felt that this would give us more flexibility. In the minds of the administration, they looked at this at Guantanamo as a convenient place because it essentially is a legal limbo. Coming up, the first detainees arrive at Gitmo. Hey everybody, this is Sara Cari. I'm a producer on the show. Detainees arrive at Gitmo. complicated, grueling investigative reporting that we've ever done. Along the way, we poured through thousands of declassified and leaked documents. We filed countless freedom of information act requests trying to get the government to release information to us. We conducted more than 60 taped interviews, so probably around 200 hours worth of conversations.

We worked with a small army of fact-checkers, researchers, and translators, and we traveled the world, from Morocco to Guantanamo Bay, to the Pentagon, to military bases, trying to get to the bottom of this story. All of this took three years, which, you know, is a long time. But that's the joy of reporting and telling stories at Radio Lab. Your help allows us to go deep into our reporting to bring you the best stories possible. So I just wanted to mention our membership program, the lab. When you sign up as a member of the lab, your support lasts. It allows us to push our stories further to take the space and time to make them the best that they can be. It makes this work

sustainable. And the good news is, you get perks, like bonus audio that we loved, but ended up leaving on the cutting room floor, or sometimes brand new stuff that we produce especially for lab members. We also make time to hang out with you during live events and ask me anything sessions. But most importantly, you allow us to go out into the world and make really, really good stories. For you, for what we hope will be a long time. You can join the lab at radialab.org slash join. We can't wait to see you there. Hey, I'm Lative Nasr. You're listening to Radio Lab Special Series, the other Lative.

Before the break, we asked, why Cuba? Why did the US government choose to house the quote worst of the worst at a sleepy backwater military base in the Caribbean? The answer was that they wanted a legal limbo, a place outside both American law and international law. When we left off, the first group of detainees was about to arrive. Can you set the scene a little bit more for me? What was the day of the week? Where were you exactly?

Well, it was the 11th of January. January 11th, 2002. This is Carol Rosenberg. She's a reporter for the New York Times now. But on the day of the landing, she was there reporting for the Miami-Karrel. So what had happened was there was a pool of reporters there. She found herself sitting. We sat on like a little rise, a little mound of dirt on next to the tarmac.

With binoculars pressed up to her eyes, staring out at Guantanamo Bay. And we watched gunboats off the water, the helicopters with gunners hanging off the side. On the ground, the flurry of military vehicles. And we waited and waited and waited until this flight came. We were on the strip. Mike was standing about 50 feet away. When the C-17 came in, it actually up to the location that we'd identified. And as it stopped, it was surrounded by people.

There was this tremendous sort of ring of security. It was four months to the day after September 11th. And supposedly coming off that plane was like, for what would have been referred to by the administration of the worst, the worst of the worst of the worst. The worst of the worst. The worst of the worst of the terrorists of al-Qaeda, the compatriots are something of the 9-11 hijackers.

I mean, these are people that would not through hydraulic lines in the back of a C-17. The base of Gitmo was like on high alert. These are very, very dangerous people, and that's how they're being treated. People were told not to leave their homes or go out, and I think there was a lot of fear of them. I know there was a lot of fear of them.

The plane taxied, then it came to a stop. A door in the back of the plane opened. A ramp descended. taxied, then it came to a stop. A door in the back of the plane opened, a ramp descended, and then men in jumpsuits were escorted out. They had the goggles on, they had gloves on, the intent on their trip across, and I'm not entirely certain who made that decision, was to provide sensory deprivation. When they walked down the ramp from this air conditioned hold plane,

and they'd come from winter and Afghanistan, they hit the heat, and they crumpled. I just remember the hot sun. Foro's Ali Abasi was on that plane. He was picked up, fleeing the violence in Kandahar. And in the oral history, he described what it was like stepping off that plane. Blindfolded, no idea where he was. I didn't know he was going to time them in the bay.

And then hitting that wall of heat. Obviously, this is by sound. There's no images to these memories. You can hear people screaming, both, you know, I'm saying F-thirst and F-thirst, F-thirst that, and the titanium screaming as well. There's a face mask, you know, the surgical mask in your face. The sweat is going to the surgical mask, you can't breathe. There's the dog barking, there's the soldier barking orders, and then the bad translation of Arabic.

And I'm just hearing how the ducene, he's dropped like flies, and then they get dragged away, and then you can hear the chains. Most of them were severely dehydrated. They had not been allowed to use the bathroom. They were wearing diapers. They were all clean shaven. I suspect that that was not voluntary, they were shaving at the other end.

Other end, do you mean Afghanistan? Yeah. Carol Rosemarick said that they were shaved like head to toe, like they were, they were fully shaved. Yeah, they were. Do you remember anything else about those first few moments? Well, first off, what did the tannies look like? They looked tired and scared.

Yeah. In terms of what I was feeling, you know, I think that the one thing I was feeling is I want this to go right. I wanted to go professionally. Yeah. I wanted to be done with security, and I wanted to be done humanely. When you say that, are you thinking about the Geneva conventions? Definitely. Definitely. Mike had planned to implement the Geneva conventions more

or less across the board. And I would have, yeah, young Marines and soldiers say, you know, general, why are we treating them so well? You know, that they wouldn't treat us this way. And I'd have to answer them honestly. I said, you know, it's very likely they wouldn't treat us this way. But if'd have to answer them honestly. I said, you know, it's very likely they wouldn't treat us this way. But if we treat them as they would treat us, we become them. Yeah. Right around the time that first flight landed. We got a direction from the Pentagon that

said they're there now called detainees. He was told he was no longer supposed to call the prisoners of war prisoners of war. I'm not an attorney. I'm certain that this was part of the effort, though, to distance them from the protections that would be afforded in the Geneva conventions. How did that ring to you? It was disconcerting to be quite candid, Latif. The simple fact was that we had built up a body of law over the years based upon other conflicts, and we essentially walked away from them. The one thing that made me extraordinarily uncomfortable was the absence of Article 5 hearings. An Article 5 hearing is essentially a hearing that is supposed to take place as close to the

point of capture as possible to determine whether there are sufficient grounds to hold the person. I went back a couple of times, twice as a matter of fact, recommending that Article V hearings be held, and both occasions I was told no. General Mike Leonard left Guantanamo Bay in April of 2002. One month later, another plain load of detainees arrived. Among them, Abdul-Lithief Nasr. He arrived in the same way as the other prisoners,

sensory deprivation, diapers over heating, dehydration. He basically steps into the legal equivalent of outer space. This is the part of the story where it's really hard to know what happens next. It's like reading a book where whole chapters have just been razor-bladed out. Chapters that cover years of his life, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006.

One of the reasons we're so in the dark is that Abdullah-Dif and the other people detaining Guantanamo, weren't allowed lawyers. That was one of the consequences of not being in the US. But of course, lawyers sued almost immediately after Guantanamo was opened. We sued to just establish basic legal rights for people. But it wasn't until 2006, you know, four years later, that we finally got a list of the prisoners who were in Guantanamo.

This is Clive. Clive, Steph, it's myth. I'm a human rights lawyer and the founder of Reprieve, and notwithstanding my patent British accent I'm American. Do you, do you know if Abdel-Ateef Nasser was tortured? Oh, yes, of course he was. Abdel-Ateef was in Daegram for a long time and then he was in Kandahar and then he was

in Grontanamo and in each of those places, we as America, did what we refer to as enhanced interrogation techniques but in any reasonable world is defined as torture. We beat him. We hung him up by his wrists in something called Strapardo, something the Spanish inquisition used to do, where you gradually dislocate your shoulders in a way that is excruciatingly painful. We subjected him to noise, lights and sleep deprivation.

What would you say if I asked you, would you rather have a razor blade taken to your genitals or would you rather have? I love you, you love me. We're a happy family with a party. The purple dinosaur played at you at Loud Volume for two weeks. What do you reckon? Yeah, I would choose Barney the purple dinosaur played at you at Loud Volume for two weeks What do you reckon? Yeah, I would I would choose I would choose Barney Barney the purple Yeah, well you're wrong Physical torture is one thing, you know, you know, it's gonna start you know, it's gonna end

It's horrible, but that's what it is the problem with psychological torture is you feel your sanity slipping away. We heard reports of how interrogators would play noise machines for the detainees at ear-splitting volumes, and the noise was so loud and would go on for so long that the detainees would begin to hear voices in the noise, voices that were talking to them. According to Shelby, Uptilative for one suffered permanent hearing loss from this kind of thing. And I kept thinking of that. When I was in high school, one of the bands that I loved, and especially when I first moved away from home, I would be in my dorm room and I would blast super loud,

was, I would listen to the Red Hot Chili Peppers all the time. I really liked the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And then I found out that they used some Red Hot Chili Peppers pepper songs to torture detainees at Guantanamo. They would play them super, super loud. So it's like conceivable that there might have been a moment in the early 2000s when I was in my dorm room blasting a red hot chili pepper song, annoying my roommates and stuff,

but that he was in Guantanamo and that was being blasted at him, that same song. And that's just like spooky to me. It's just spooky. It's like, what are these, like the world is connected in these subtle ways that it's like, oh, that's just so strange. Getting back to Abdel Adif.

After five years in this sort of darkness where we know virtually nothing about his life, we get a tiny pinprick of light. Sorry, I got a bit of a cold. Uh, remind me how did Shelby suggest to get in touch with me? No, so no. So the person who actually weirdly told us to get in touch with you was Carol Rosenberg. She was like, this is the guy you got to talk to.

Because he has a good memory and he's a nice guy. This is Zachary Katz Nelson. I'm an attorney and I represented Abdullah Tiffinosser for about four and a half years in Guantanamo Bay. I was the first lawyer to sit down and meet with him. It was 2006. At the time, Zachary was working at reprieve, same law firm as Shelby. For years, lawyers at reprieve and human rights lawyers in general had been arguing that detainees should be granted basic legal rights, like, uh, right to have a lawyer. And eventually, the Supreme Court weighed in and agreed. At that point, almost everybody wanted a representation.

And so Abdel-Ateef was one of the people that asked for a lawyer. And so, in late 2006 or early 2007, Zachary flew down to Guantanamo Bay, take a ferry across to the main side of the base. It was quite beautiful. And then we were picked up by kind of our military handlers who took us to the prison itself.

This compound, a place called Camp Echo, which was primarily an interrogation facility that they let lawyers come into. And then I was ushered into this window... Windalus, 10 by 10, 12 by 12, wooden shack. Inside he saw a tall, thin man sitting at a table. Shackle to the floor, waiting. He was pretty much bald, had a, you know, a reasonably long beard that was just starting to get salt and peppery.

long beard that was just starting to get salt and peppery. I remember there was a camera watching us on the wall that you could hear moving. If you moved around, you could hear it swivel to follow you. And so, remember shaking hands and then we sat down and started talking together. So in the beginning, he was incredibly skeptical of me just because I was coming in, you know, saying I was a lawyer, knowing I was American,

and that's all he knew about me. And when lawyers first started going in, interrogators started pretending to be lawyers. Now posing as lawyers during the interrogation sessions. And so you can imagine he was wary. Yeah, understandably. I felt like Abdel-Ateef was deciding whether or not who I was, was I someone who could be trusted, was I somebody that he wanted to work with.

And, you know, he'd indicated that he wanted a lawyer, but that had been a while ago. And there were a couple people we'd met who had changed their minds, that they kind of lost faith in the US justice system and the US courts. And so, you know, I didn't know what to expect when I went into it. Sitting across from Abdul-Alih, Zachary decided just to be totally honest. So I told him, first of all, I'm Jewish. And I always... I imagine that's probably like the last thing in the world you would have expected you to say at that moment.

You know, there were people that reacted in lots of different ways to my being there initially, at least. But I wanted him to know that very early on in our relationship because I didn't want for him to think I was holding something back. And also because it's really important to who I am. I practice my faith, I believe in God, and it's important to why I do the work that I do. And for Abdel-Athif. That meant something.

I was another person of the book, a person of faith. He felt like they were in a godless place. That if the American soldiers who were torturing and abusing them really believed in God, they wouldn't do what they were doing. And so for me, it was actually really powerful, personally, and also it happened to bond us. And so he decided it was worth trying, that he wanted to give it a shot. And so over the next three years, Zachary worked as Uptilative lawyer. Over that period of time, he may have been the only person not stationed

at Guantanamo who saw him. Now would see him every month or two during that time for at least several hours, sometimes for a full day. And the thing is, at the time, there wasn't any legal work that could be done. He hadn't been charged with anything. There was no brief they could even file. And so definitely, like one of the goals was to try and just just have some time where we could just be, right?

Just two people talking. Like what kinds of things would you talk about that were not the case? Well, I would try and bring news from home from Morocco about his family, about his loved ones, trying to give him some kind of connection to them and so you could know what was happening. Unfortunately, there were a number of people who had deaths that I had to deliver the news. I'm part of it was about family. Part of it was about growing up, part of it was about just different experiences we'd had in life. Sometimes there were funny stories of things happening in Guantanamo. One of the guys, Mohamed El Garani, who was a young guy, was 14 when he was picked up.

He was like a comedian, and they were housed next to each other for a while. So he would tell me jokes that Muhammad Al-Gharani had made up, the way he had made up some story to tease the guards or something like that, that Muhammad had. It's not always easy, right? He's not got some positive life experience. He's been having there. He can share with me. So when he would laugh or smile, it felt almost like it was precious because it was really

rare that that happened in Guantanamo. And he always said, you want to go home? He wanted to get married. You want to have kids. You just want to go home? He wanted to get married, he wanted to have kids. He just wanted to go home. You know, he was somebody that, he's somebody I enjoyed, I look forward to seeing every time I met him.

But then after three years of this, Zachary decided he needed to move on. You know, I moved back to New York. So I left London, I left England, I moved back to New York, so I left London, I left England, I moved back to New York, and I just got married, and my wife and I decided we were gonna be good moved to the United States.

Zachary says he decided he wouldn't be able to make those trips to Gitmo anymore, and that it would be better for Abdul-Athief if he handed off his case to another lawyer. And so I explained to him what was happening. And he was excited for me, I was getting married, excited for me, I was gonna have another venture, some disappointment that I was leaving,

but he also trusted reprieve and he trusted us. And also at that moment, things were looking more hopeful. And you know, at that time, it didn't look like there would be another seven years or now, 10 years. This first executive order that we are cited by the authority vested in me as president by the Constitution, the laws of the United States of America. Because, as Zachary was moving on, was the first year of the Obama administration.

This is me following through on not just the commitment I made during the campaign, but I think another standing that dates back to our founding father. And Obama had pledged to close Guantanamo within a year. And we go. You had George W. Bush agreeing, John McCain agreeing. It looked like it was going to close for real. As we know, that didn't happen. As I was leaving, we're trying to find lawyers to take on all the cases and we asked one of

them to take on Abdel-a-Teefe. This guy seemed like he'd be a really great lawyer for him. And he agreed. And he did a lot of work from the United States. He worked on the KC. He tried to do this best he could, but he was, uh, wasn't able to go visit. And just never made it down to the base. So I, I, I last saw him in 2009.

And I know that at least between then in 2016, he wasn't visited by anybody. So long ago, but like, so little, I changed it feels like, yeah, you want to get married, you want to get married you want to have kids I know have three kids. Oh wow and my oldest is seven. That's turn eight Life keeps going, but it's kind of frozen in time when you're in Guantanamo it's Stagger's me that he's still there

After Obama's initial pledge to close Gitmo, Congress bulked, priorities changed, Gitmo fell out of the news, and Abdel Adiv fell back again into that dark void, where again, can't tell you much about his life. Literally one of the few things I can tell you is his weight at different points, while he was at Guantanamo Bay. So for example, on November 28th, 2006, he weighed 159 pounds. We know this from a leaked document

that lists his weight over time. We also know that over time his weight fluctuated 30 to 40 pounds from the 120's to nearly 160. And I'd find out later, he was on hunger strike. We all of us went to mass hunger strike. What went into that decision? You have no choice, that's it. That's what is. This is Munsur Adafi. He took English classes at Guantanamo with Abdullah-Dif. He says they went on hunger strikes together to protest all kinds of things.

The way the guards treated them, the way the interrogators tortured them, to protest the fact that no detainees were being released. I spent 57 days only on water. Some detainees reached 62, 65 days and it's like the prank of them. He says the guards would have to force feed them with tubes through their nose. And the feeling is that it was worse than torture. Do you know if Abdul Latif was ever force fed? Do you know if Abdul Latif was ever forced fed? This is Abdul Malik al-Rahabi. He was on the same salblock as Abdul Latif during one particular hunger strike in 2013 six months and made national and international news. After that, Obama... Look at the current situation. Talk about our case.

Where we are force-feeding detainees who are being held on a hunger strike. And after that, the PRB's working before that, it is not PRP. I once again call on Congress to left the restrictions on detainee transfers from Gitmo. It was that hunger strike that led President Obama to recommit to the PRB hearings, the ones that we described in episode one, that would ultimately clear Abdul-Divnozor and dozens of others for transfer out of Gitmo. Imagine a future, ten years from now, or twenty years from now. When the United States of America is still holding people who have been charged with no crime on a piece of land that is not

part of our country, is this who we are? Is that the America we want to leave our children? Even though you and Abdel-Deaf and the others were on hunger strike, did it feel good to see that happen? Yes, yes, yes, that's give us something hope and power to demand for our rights. When we come back, finally we see him. Maybe. Hi, this is Milen Bellrose calling from Getz'No Quebec, Canada. As a member of Radio Labs' exclusive membership program, The Lab, I provide a study source of funding so Radio Lab can continue to bring us stories. Not to mention exclusive perks. Join at radielab.org slash join.

Like, I really think that this place we're going, like, you'd, it's literally every single Muslim Americans worst nightmare. This is the other lothif. I'm Lutthif Nasser. Here we are. Okay, so I had written a few months before to the joint task force Guantanamo Bay to request an interview with Abdel Adiv Nas, and they had sent me a boilerplate letter back saying, no. Which makes sense. No journalist has ever interviewed a Guantanamo detaining before, but what they seemed not to be taking into consideration here was that this guy had been cleared. The government had already decided he didn't belong there anymore. I figured the only solution

he didn't belong there anymore. I figured the only solution was for Susie and I to go to Guantanamo ourselves and see if there was some way we could make the case that they should let us talk to him. And so we landed at this tiny airport in what surprise me is like a Caribbean resort paradise. Do you mind carrying the back? Yeah, no, I'm just a piece of truck. And we went as part of one of these regularly scheduled media tours. So we weren't alone. Like there were six of us journalists, three European reporters, Susie and I, and Carol Rosenberg. So you

got to get out of five dollars and $85 or $60 per set. Oh. You might recognize her voice from earlier in the episode. Sergeant, I got to change at some point into my... She's been covering Guantanamo longer than anyone. Since the day it opened, she was right there on the ground with General Mike Leonard when that first plane of detainees arrived.

And she told us back in those early days. General Leonard was willing to take the questions unscripted. And coverage was welcome in ways that it's hard to even imagine. So at one point I remember talking to the Lieutenant Colonel who was in charge. And he said, like, what else should we be showing people? I said, can we talk to the medical staff about the kind of injuries that are coming in? Can we talk to them about the kind of treatment they're getting? And they set it up.

So I think that there was a real interest by a number of people that they wanted coverage. They didn't want to be left responsible for this policy. That remember was the policy of politicians. And so in those first few months, it was easy to get people to talk. I mean, I assumed at some point, we might be able to talk to prisoners.

Yeah. I assumed we'd know their names, but very fast there were ground rules. In early 2002, pictures emerged of detainees in orange jump suits, masks covering their faces, kneeling inside what looked like metal cages. These pictures of shackled and hooded men shacked the world. These photos caused a public uproar. Soon thereafter, the detainees were moved indoors

to a different, more opaque facility. And then, Carol says, You didn't get to talk to as many people. You didn't get to talk to the head of the guard for she didn't talk to as many soldiers. You couldn't know their names. And if you found out their names, you couldn't report it because of privacy slash, Geneva Convention slash, it was

the secret operation slash who knows. And this tension between showing and hiding welcome Carol. It was present from the very first moment we stepped off that plane. One of the first things they had us do. All right, if you all want to join us at the table, we can get started with the three. Was circle up in this kind of gazebo and go through all the ground rules. I'm Commander Anne Liannos, I'm the fewest spokesperson for the Joint Task Force. So our goal in the tone that we want to set is that we're as transparent as possible. So what not to photograph would be locks, the guards, power, water, desalination plans, surveillance cameras, satellite

dishes, panoramic views. The list went on for like 20 minutes. The old generation equipment. And it was not enough to tell us like don't take pictures of that. It was like okay. At the end of every day we'll do a review of your imagery. We're going to go through your camera, through the pictures one by one, and the things that have those things that we told you not to take photos of, we're gonna delete them.

And strangely, one of the justifications for these rules was, and it's important to remember that our current mission of safe humane and legal care and custody of detainees that's consistent with common article three of the Geneva Convention. The Geneva Convention, relative to the treatment of prisoners of war of August 12, 1949. The very thing that this place was designed to avoid was now being used as a shield. So, our first stop are handlers were like Got everybody? Get up, noon. Gonna start this off for you. We're out here at the Super Rackyard. So our first stop, our handlers were like,

okay, the first thing we're gonna show you is this Super Rack area, where detainees like Abdel Adif can get some fresh air, hang out. The first of the Super Rackers then have a larger outer area where they could spend time. It's like basically just like a dirt soccer field. You see the goals and just... With two goal posts, right? Right.

And when I ask how they use the field... They get to have games. That's an operational question. It's really gonna come down to the camp leadership to say how many at one time and when... Okay. He's like, I can't tell you. I couldn't say that.

The whole six OIC is gonna bring us... Okay, okay, great. And I'm like, what? You can show me the soccer field, but not tell me what they do on it. Right after that, right at the edge of the super wreck area. Part of the quarter culture program. There was a little garden.

Everything we do here is consistent with Article 3. The Geneva conventions. And part of that is that intellectual stimulation. What kind of, what kinds of plans do they grow? We have a bunch of different plants. I can't tell you what's in there right now but that's what they do. Again, here's a garden, here's some plants, but the names of those plants off limits. Please keep the voices down and it is an active facility. All right, follow me.

Please keep your voices down and it is an active facility. All right, follow me. After the plants, they took us inside the detention facility and showed us an unoccupied cell. OK, inside one of the things I cannot spread my arms. It was about the size of a big-ish closet. Okay, I'm going lengthwise. One pace, two pace, three pace, four pace, those five pace, from side to side.

One pace, two pace, three pace, four. Yellow walls, garish, fluorescent light. And then there's a sink, two mirrors. There's a toilet with no seat. Yeah, this is definitely not an advert. I would want to live in. Is there anybody ready for a one-on-one gig ever? Show me.

Ultimately, we had our chance to plead our case directly to the rear admiral who ran the place at the time a guy by the name of John Ring. Have you ever met a bullet that not served the DJ in 244? So I'm not met any of them. You've not met any of them. Nope, so I do that on purpose. I care about and I read about every issue these guys have, but I don't have time sitting and trying to solve them all individually. That's what we have, the chain of command.

So even if you haven't met him, do you know anything about him? So I'm knowing that you were coming, I looked him up a little bit, but he's been completely off my radar. He's as far as I can tell, a very compliant guy and the file I had wasn't that thick, which is a good thing. So we, I put in a petition to try to talk to him, and I wasn't allowed to talk to him. Can you just tell me why or? So, so, the GM convention is pretty clear on that, you know, the detainees should not be made

on objects of public, I think what the word is. Curiosity. Side note, so that rule about public curiosity came about because of cases like this one about a German field marshal in World War 2 who took a bunch of British and American soldiers shackled them and then paraded them through the streets of Rome to boost the morale of the Italian citizenry who showed up and threw stones at the prisoners.

So Geneva was like, no, no, don't do that. But now that same rule about public curiosity is being used to deny detainee interviews. The detainee should not be made on objects of public curiosity. So, and then our ground rules state that we can't let you interview a detainee. So, and then the biggest thing for me though

is that it would be the precedent. So, I totally understand why you want to talk to them and I totally get the human interest out of the story. It would be a precedent. So I totally understand why you want to talk to him, and I totally get the human interest to have the story, it would be a good story. But as soon as I let you do that, then someone else at the table is going to say, oh, I want to talk to KSM, Keeksley-Maham, and 9-11 fame.

That's a precedent that I can't afford to set. But the fact that he has been cleared, it felt like maybe that could be a privilege that he could have that and also given that he himself signed it in his privacy red. So I can I respect the fact that it's logical to think the folks have been cleared to go maybe would get some additional stuff. But remember where the process stopped he wasn't at the point of getting different privileges.

He was sent down here on an order from the Secretary of Defense and he'll leave here on an order for the Secretary of Defense. And until I get that order, my hands are sort of tied as to what I can do. And it's been about 10 minutes or night, there are some other things left. Thank you very much. Needless to say, this was Madden.

The Department of Defense was one of the agencies that voted to clear this guy to send him home and nail their acting like that doesn't even matter. And now, even though I was all the way out here, I felt like the only hope I had at learning something more about him was I couldn't talk to him, but maybe I could just see him, get a glimpse of him. So we're gonna follow the army captain. The final part of the tour, they took us to a building called Camp 6. Camp 6 is actually where these guys live.

And after walking through security checkpoints and ring after ring of razor wire, we were ushered into this, like rotunda. The whole thing is modeled on a federal medium security prison and the rotunda is in the middle and it was super dark. And they told us we were gonna be allowed to look through one way glass at the detainees, almost like an interrogation scene on lawn order or something. And they told us that the detainees, like they're not supposed to know that we're there.

Do we need to cover red lights at this time? Yes. Okay, so if anybody has a red light on, they're equipment, we do have T.E. to cover that. What they asked us to do was put tape over our recorders over the little red lights on our recorders. And the reason they gave for that, again, Geneva conventions.

If you go into the dark and shooting, and I'm like, okay, years of reporting have come to this. This is my only chance. Like I'm gonna have like a few minutes in front of this plate glass window. And then if he, like he might be in one of those cells right now, so they ushered us down this hallway, which sort of went around the edge of this rotunda.

And... Every once in a while, there would be a window and each of these windows opened up onto a different cell block. I mean it was very zoo-like. There's a guy he's just drinking something. He's sitting drinking. Yeah, that's another guy. Didn't appear to be up the little thief. I'm working to move over in about 60 seconds. Okay.

So then we would move to the next one. Ah, it's a press driving. Oh. Oh man. He's just reigning through a bunch of stuff. Another guy, I think he was reading a magazine, but again not my guy. Next window was E-block, and I still didn't see him. And then we went to F-block, the final block with D-Chainees inside. Oh, maybe he's here.

There was a guy standing in the middle and I looked at him. And now it's not the guy. And I could tell because Abdul-Athief's beard by this point is totally gray. Yeah, that's not our guy. That's not our guy. Oh, that's coming out of his side. Oh, wait. But then? Is that him?

Is that him? No, thank you. Is that him? I don't know. I can't see. I don't get it. At the back of the block, there's like this tiny corner, like underneath the stairs. There's like a TV there, and there's like a little couch there.

And there was somebody there. There was somebody sitting in the corner. Oh, come on, he has a big grip. He has a big grip here. He has a big grip. He's wearing like back your pants, he's sitting on a couch. And he has a... So I was like, oh my god, that's, I think that's the guy. I think that has a secret. He's wearing like back your pants, he's sitting on a couch. So I was like, oh my god, I think that's the guy.

I think that's our guy. Oh my god, he's like sitting in the shadow. But his face was in shadow. The shadow was like diagonally slicing across him. So I couldn't see his face. Oh, come on, come on, come on, come on. Just stand there. There's something there.

Come on. What on, come on, come on, come on, just stand there. There's something there. Come on. What are you doing? You see eating something, he's watching something, he's watching TV, and he's eating something, and watching. Yeah, he has tons of, he's watching TV. And he's like a little cubby, and I'm like, some, on a couch.

I think that's him. Like if he had moved like just a hair to the side, like I would have been able to see a space. I just wanna scream, I'm gonna scream out my name, and his name. But I feel like there are like 13 people in the camera who are just gonna like, show me if I do. But he didn't, he didn't move. So he's the camera were just like, show me if I did. But he didn't he didn't move.

And then they just like, we're like, shush, shush, and then they shoot us out. And as we were walking out, Carol Rosenberg told us, Carol Rosenberg told us. Is that a visit? You'll never see it again. Let's go hold my hand. That was it. We'll never see it again. And she was right.

In the last year, there have been no more media visits to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. So, Abdel-A-D for remains stuck in that black hole. Even though he had been cleared to leave almost four years ago. And a question I hadn't been able to answer was, why hadn't he been allowed to leave after he was cleared? She'll be told us in the first episode that there was some kind of paperwork mix up, or something, she wasn't quite sure. Next episode, I uncover the answer.

And spoiler, it goes all the way to the top. This episode was produced by Bethel Hobtay and Simon Adler with Sarah Carrey, Susie Lektonberg, and me, Luttifnossert. We had helped from W. Harry Fortuna and Neil Dineshia, fact checking by Diane Kelly and Margot Williams, editing by Chad Abumrod and Soren Wheeler, original music by Chad Abumrod, Simon Adler, Alex Overington, and Amino Beliani. Archival tape in this episode was used with permission from the Columbia Center for Oral History's Rule of Law Oral History Project.

So about a year after we produced that episode, Abdel Adif actually got out of Guantanamo Bay. He had been there for 19 years, five of which he was technically clear to go home. And then one day in 2021, he went home. A weird coincidence, he actually got out the day before my birthday. And he said in a statement that he was born again that day

and now he considers that his birthday. Anyway, he's now in Costa Blanca, lives in the house. He grew up in nearby his brothers and sisters and their families. Apparently, he spent a lot of time on the beach with his nephews and nieces. He's also trying to go back to school, to zoom out a bit. Abdeleteev Nasr was the first detainee to get out of Guantanamo under the Biden administration. Two others have gotten out in the last year, including one, Sofia and Barumi from Algeria, who is in a really similar position of the Latif,

actually, nearly 20 years at the facility, five of which he was cleared. He got out earlier this month. I asked Ian Moss, whom we interviewed a number of times for this area. He is now the deputy coordinator for terrorist detention at the State Department. He said, quote, we are optimistic that we will meet the administration's goal of responsibly closing the detention facility. And, quote, we are optimistic that we will meet the administration's goal of responsibly closing the detention facility. And quote, you may also have seen recent news about the 9-11 trial at Guantanamo, 9-11's 20-year anniversary came and went. And the trial still hasn't even started, if you can believe that.

Last month, the US government acknowledged they may not even do a trial. They started negotiating pleading with the defendants, which again, that's more than the Obleotief got. As for our stories, it's kind of a weird thing. After spending years reporting about his life, I've still never talked to Obleotief. I've never heard his voice. According to his lawyers, he heard the series and he liked it. Actually, his one criticism of the entire series was in the episode you just heard. When we talk to the officials at Guantanamo about the horticulture program, the gardening, he said that he and his fellow detainees did not get any intellectual stimulation

there, that that was just untrue. We've been talking with his lawyers about potentially going over to Casa Blanca, interviewing him face to face, but sounds like it still feels too soon. So we're trying to give him and his family the space they need, but we will keep asking. You know, 20 years is a long time. Although Dave Nasser got out, but there are still 37 guys left there.

25 of whom have never been charged with anything. 18 of whom are cleared for transfer, but are just stuck anyway. Confining these men costs American taxpayers $13 million per detainee per year. Money, time, justice, due process, all of these have disappeared in the black hole that is Guantanamo Bay. Radio Lab was created by Chad Abumrod and is edited by Sorn Wheeler. Lulumiller and Lutdiff Nasser are co-hosts. Susie Lektinberg is our executive producer. Dilling Keath is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Rachel Kusik, W.A.A.

Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz-Kutiertis, Snduniana Sambandum, Matt Kielty, Anna McEwan, Alex Niesen, Sara Carrey, Anna Rosquit Paz, Arian Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. With help from Carolyn McCusker and Sarah Sonbach. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Adam Ishibow. Hi, I'm Ram from India. Leadership Support for Radio Lab Science Programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Science Sandbox, a Simon Foundation initiative and the John Templeton Foundation.

Foundation support for Radio Lab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.