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Hey, it's Latif. We've been celebrating a lot around here recently for Radiolab's 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, Abdullatif Nasser, 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 miniseries called The Other Latif. 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, Abdul Latif Nasser was shaved, hooded, shackled, diapered, 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 Latif, 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?
classified. It was easy to take a bloody bus. But for some reason, he decides to go south with bin Laden. Nasir Abdel Latif stared at 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 Latif Nasir, and this is The Other Latif.
Hi, beta. Hey. Hello? Are you both on different phones? Yeah, we are both on different lines. Why? What happened? So on Sunday, I'm going to Guantanamo. What? Yeah. Wow. 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 gotten clearance and stuff. If you say no, you still go, right? No, no, no. I 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. No, no. It's going on official business. It's not a... Radio Lab is sending you, right? Yeah, Radio Lab is sending me. But you'll be able to see that prisoner? Maybe. 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 Gitmo. We're rocking in Fidel's backyard. It's a stick... Oh.
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, Abdul Latif Nasser, and what he may or may not have done to us. I didn't tell him we wouldn't see each other face to face. 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 Lennert. Do you prefer I call you General Lennert or how should I refer to you? Mike is just fine. Mike is just fine. Okay. Retired General Mike is the guy who built the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Yeah, and it's pronounced Letif. Yeah, Letif. 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 will also assure you that all of the letters I've met, I did not lock up. Oh, okay. Okay. Well, that's also very – I'll tell you that's very comforting to hear. 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, uh, had my first command as a brigadier general, Camp Lejeune, 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. 9-11. The United States military has begun strikes. U.S. invades Afghanistan. Thunderous explosions and the rattle of anti-aircraft... We're watching what's happening in Afghanistan. We continue to gather in additional people. And, uh...
receiving reports that they're capturing a number of prisoners. Too many. Obviously, we need space at Kandahar and we need space at Bagram. 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, there'll probably be heavy snow on the ground. Does that give you just the... 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 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...
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 mangrove swamp.
The U.S. had gotten the land in a 1903 treaty with Cuba, and they'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 had 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 Seabees, 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. 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'd 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 that in context, which I think helps in order to understand just what kind of place Abdel Hadith 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 explosions right now. Hold on, people are running. There it is. There it is. The plane went right through the 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 at Fordham University. I was in the White House.
that day when the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were hit. And this is Ambassador Daniel Freed. 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, we're 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-911 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 Conventions of 1949. All members of the U.S. military are given basic instruction on the Geneva Conventions. 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 articles 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 dark side, if you will. We've got 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.
Okay, where are we going to move these people to? I think the most obvious place would have been the U.S. 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 that like
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 U.S. 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. And 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, most—
My understanding of the situation is that the minute it was mentioned, everybody was like, yes, that's obvious. Cuba, Cuba, Cuba, Cuba. That'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 U.S. territory, not on U.S. soil. And many people argue that meant U.S. law shouldn't apply there. That 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 Khari. I'm a producer on the show. I'm stopping by to say the journalism that we do here at Radiolab wouldn't be possible without your support. This episode is part of a larger series called The Other Latif.
It was some of the most ambitious, 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.
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I'm Maria Konnikova. And I'm Nate Silver. And our new podcast, Risky Business, is a show about making better decisions. We're both journalists whom we light as poker players, and that's the lens we're going to use to approach this entire show. We're going to be discussing everything from high-stakes poker to personal questions. Like whether I should call a plumber or fix my shower myself. And of course, we'll be talking about the election, too. Listen to Risky Business wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Latif Nasser. You're listening to Radiolab's special series, The Other Latif. Before the break, we asked, why Cuba? Why did the U.S. 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? Like, 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 Herald. 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 next to the tarmac. With binoculars pressed up to her eyes, staring out at Guantanamo Bay. And we watched gunboats off the water, helicopters with gunners hanging off the side. On the ground. Humvees and armor. This 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, they taxied 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... Or what had been referred to by the administration as... 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...
The plane 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, cold plain, and they'd come from winter in Afghanistan, they hit the heat and they crumpled. I just remember the hot sun coming
Feroz Ali Abbasi was on that plane. He was picked up fleeing the violence in Kandahar. And in an 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 Tamal 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 saying F this and F that, F this, F that. And detainees screaming as well. There's a face mask, you know, these surgical masks on 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 other detainees drop like flies and then they get dragged away and 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, that they were shaven at the other end. Other end, you mean Afghanistan? Yeah. Carol Rosenberg said that they were shaved like head to toe, like they were fully shaved.
Yeah, they were. Do you remember anything else about those first few moments? Well, first off, what did the detainees 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 want it to go professionally. I want it to be done with security. And I want it 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 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 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 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 5 hearings be held. On both occasions, I was told no. General Mike Leonard left Guantanamo Bay in April of 2002.
One month later, another plane load of detainees arrived. Among them, Abdul Latif Nasser. He arrived in the same way as the other prisoners. Sensory deprivation, diapers, overheating, 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 Abdul-Ladif and the other people detained in Guantanamo
weren't allowed lawyers. That was one of the consequences of not being in the U.S. But, of course, lawyers sued almost immediately after Guantanamo was opened. We sued to just establish basic legal rights for people. 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 Stafford-Smith. I'm a human rights lawyer and the founder of Reprieve.
And notwithstanding my patent British accent, I'm American. Do you know if Abdul Latif Nasser was tortured? Oh, yes, of course he was. Abdul Latif was in Bagram for a long time, and then he was in Kandahar, and then he was in Guantanamo. 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 "strapado", 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... Barney the Purple Dinosaur played at you at loud volume for two weeks?
What do you reckon? Yeah, I would choose Barney. Barney the purple dinosaur. Well, you're wrong. Physical torture is one thing. You know it's going to start, you know it's going to 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, Abdul Latif, 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 like be in my dorm room and I would like blast super loud was I would listen to the Red Hot Chili Peppers all the time. I really like the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And and then I found out that they used some Red Hot Chili Peppers songs for.
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 Peppers 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, that's just so strange. Getting back to Abdul Latif, after five years in this sort of darkness where we know virtually nothing about his life, we get a tiny pinprick of light. Sorry, got a bit of a cold. Uh-huh.
I remind me how did Shelby suggest you get in touch with me? No, no. So I 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 Katznelson. I'm an attorney and I represented Abdul Latif Nasser.
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 the right to have a lawyer.
And eventually, the Supreme Court weighed in and agreed. At that point, almost everybody wanted representation. And so Abdul Latif was one of the people that asked for a lawyer. And so in late 2006, early 2007, Zachary flew down to Guantanamo Bay. Took 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. Okay. Which was primarily an interrogation facility that they let lawyers come into. Huh. And then I was ushered into this windowless 10 by 10, 12 by 12.
Wooden shack. Inside, he saw a tall, thin man sitting at a table. Shackled 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. 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, you know, I remember shaking hands and
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. Oh, no. Posing as lawyers during the interrogation sessions. And so you can imagine he was wary. Yeah. Understandably.
I felt like Abdul Latif 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 U.S. justice system, in the U.S. courts. And so, you know, I didn't know what to expect when I went into it.
Sitting across from Abdul Latif, 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 he 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. Yeah. I practice my faith. I believe in God, and it's important to why I do the work that I do. And for Abdul Latif, 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 Abdul Latif's lawyer. Over that period of time, he...
he may have been the only person not stationed at Guantanamo who saw him. I would see him every month or two during that time. Wow. For at least several hours, sometimes for full days. 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 one of the goals was to try and 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, try and give him some kind of connection to them. And so he could know what was happening. Unfortunately, there were a number of people who had deaths that I had to deliver the news. I mean, 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. Yeah.
Sometimes there were funny stories of things that happened in Guantanamo. One of the guys, Muhammad Al-Gharani, who was a young guy, he was 14 when he was picked up, he was like a comedian. And they were housed next to each other for a while. And so he would tell me jokes that Muhammad Al-Gharani had made up, the way he had kind of made up some story to tease the guards or something like that that Muhammad had and whatnot.
You know, it's not always easy, right? He's not got some, like, positive life experience he's been having there he can share with me. And so, you know, 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 he wanted 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 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.
and I had just gotten married, and my wife and I decided we were going to move 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 Latif 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 going to have a new adventure, and
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. 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 signing...
By the authority vested in me as president by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America. Because as Zachary was moving on... It was the first year of the Obama administration. This is me following through on not just a commitment I made during the campaign, but I think an understanding that dates back to our founding father. And Obama had pledged to close Guantanamo within a year. There we go. Thank you.
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 Latif. This guy seemed like he'd be a really great lawyer for him, and he agreed.
And did a lot of work from the United States. He worked on the KC. He tried to do as best he could, but he was wasn't able to go visit and just never made it down to the base. So I last saw him in 2009. And I know that at least between then and 2016, he wasn't visited by anybody. So long ago, but like so little has changed, it feels like. Yeah. He wanted to get married. He wanted to have kids.
I now have three kids. Oh, wow. And my oldest is seven. About to turn eight. Life keeps going, but it's kind of frozen in time when you're in Guantanamo. It staggers me that he's still there. After Obama's initial pledge to close Gitmo, Congress balked, priorities changed, Gitmo fell out of the news, and Abdel-Eddif 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 120s to nearly 160. And I'd find out later that
He was on hunger strike. What went into that decision? This is Mansour Adefi. He took English classes at Guantanamo with Abdul Latif.
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 60%.
He says the guards would have to force-feed them with tubes through their nose. Do you know if Abdul Latif was ever force-fed? Yes, yes.
This is Abdul Malik al-Rahabi. He was on the same cell block as Abdul Latif during one particular hunger strike in 2013 that lasted for at least six months and made national and international news. Look at the current situation. Where we are force-feeding detainees who are being held on a hunger strike.
And after that, the PRB is working. Before that, there is no PRB. I once again call on Congress to lift the restrictions on detaining 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 Abdulladif Nasser and dozens of others for transfer out of Gitmo. Imagine a future 10 years from now or 20 years from now
Even though you and Abdeladif and the others were on hunger strike, did it feel good to see that happen? When we come back, finally we see him.
Maybe. Hi, this is Mylène Belrose calling from Gatineau, Quebec, Canada. As a member of Radiolab's exclusive membership program, The Lab, I provide a steady source of funding so Radiolab can continue to bring us stories, not to mention exclusive perks. Join at radiolab.org slash join. WNYC Studios is supported by Rocket Money.
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Like, it's literally every single Muslim American's worst nightmare. This is the other Latif. I'm Latif Nasser. Here we are. All right, everybody, welcome to Guantanamo Bay. If I could get everybody to remain in their seats, we'll do a stop. Whether myself or Lieutenant Torres will get out. Welcome to Guantanamo Bay.
Okay, so I had written a few months before to the Joint Task Force Guantanamo Bay to request an interview with Abdel Latif Nasser. And they'd sent me a boilerplate letter back saying no, which makes sense. No journalist has ever interviewed a Guantanamo detainee 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...
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 surprised me is like a Caribbean resort paradise. And we went as part of one of these regularly scheduled media tours.
So we weren't alone. I'm Maren. Hi, I'm Maren. Nice to meet you. Like there were six of us journalists. Sylvie. Sylvie, nice to meet you. Three European reporters, Susie and I, and... First thing we're doing is going to lunch, right? We are. Yes.
Carol Rosenberg. So you gotta get out $5.85 or $0.65. You might recognize her voice from earlier in the episode. Sergeant, I gotta 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. I assumed we'd know their names. But very fast, there were ground rules.
In early 2002, pictures emerged of detainees in orange jumpsuits, masks covering their faces, kneeling inside what looked like metal cages. These pictures of shackled and hooded men shocked 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 Force. You 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 a 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 brief. ...was circle up in this kind of gazebo and go through all the ground rules. I'm Commander Ann Lianos. I'm the chief spokesperson for the Joint Task Force. So our goal and 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. Fuel 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 going to 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 12th, 1949. The very thing that this place was designed to avoid was now being used as a shield.
So our first stop, our handlers were like, okay, the first thing we're going to show you is this super rec area where detainees like Abdul-Adif can get some fresh air, hang out. It's like basically just like a dirt area.
soccer field. You see the goals. With two goal posts, right? Right. And when I asked how they use the field. They get to have games. That's an operational question that's really going to come down to the camp leadership to say how many at one time and when. He's like, I can't tell you. I couldn't say that. 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 this super rec area, there was a little garden. Everything we do here is consistent with Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, and part of that is that intellectual stimulation. What kinds of plants do they grow? We have a bunch of different plants. I can't tell you what's in there right now, but it's what they do.
Again, here's a garden, here's some plants, but the names of those plants, off limits. Please keep your voices down. 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. Okay, I'm 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 paces, three paces, four paces, five paces. From side to side. One paces, two paces, three paces. 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, not, not my favorite one. Is anybody ready for our
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 beloved, if not sir, a detainee 244? So I have not met any of them. You've not met any of them? Nope. So I do that on purpose. You know, I care about and I read about every...
Issue these guys have but I don't have time sit and try to solve them all individually That's what we that's why we have the chain of command. So even if you haven't met him though Do you do you know anything about him? So I saw I'm knowing that you were coming I looked him up a little bit, but he's uh, he's been Completely off my radar. He's he's uh, 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. Yep, I
and I wasn't allowed to talk to him. Right. Can you just tell me why? So the Geneva Convention is pretty clear on that. The detainee should not be made 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 II 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 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 it would be the precedent. So I totally understand why you want to talk to him. I totally get the human interest out of 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." Kixly Muhammad, you know, 9/11 fame. I just, 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 his privacy rights. So I can, I respect the fact that it's logical to think that folks have been cleared to go, maybe we get some additional stuff. Sure.
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 from the Secretary of Defense. And until I get that order, my hands are sort of tied as to what I can do. It's been about 10 minutes, sir, and I think there are some other people that want to talk. You're welcome. Thank you very much. Needless to say, this was maddening. The Department of Defense was one of the agencies that voted to clear this guy, to send him home, and now they're 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 going to follow this 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. Our force is going to look into your bags to show them your badge.
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 going to be allowed to look through one-way glass at the detainees, almost like an interrogation scene on Law and 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, we do have tape to cover that? What they asked us to do was put tape over our recorders, over the little red lights on our recorders. Sure.
And the reason they gave for that, again, Geneva Convention. And I'm like, okay, years of reporting have come to this. This is my only chance. Like, I'm going to 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. I don't see him. There's a guy. He's just drinking something. And he's sitting drinking. Yeah, that's... Didn't appear to be Abdul Latif. In about 60 seconds. Okay. So then we would move to the next one. Ah, it's so frustrating. Mm-hmm.
Another guy, I think he was reading a magazine, but again, not my guy. Next window was E block. And I still, I still didn't see him. And then we went to F block, the final block with detainees inside. There was a guy, there was a guy standing in the middle and I looked at him. He's not here.
Black beard. And that was not the guy. And I could tell because Abdullah Thief's beard by this point is totally gray. Yeah, that's not our guy. That's not our guy. Hold on. Let me go to this side. But then? Is that him? Is that him? No. Is that him? I don't know. I can't see.
At the back of the block, there's like this tiny like 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. He has a big gray beard. He's wearing like baggy pants. He's sitting on a couch. So I was like, oh my God, that's, 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 like slicing across him. So I couldn't, like I couldn't see his face. Like if he had moved like just a hair to the side, like I would have been able to see his face.
But he didn't move. And then they just were like, shoo, shoo, shoo, and then they shoot us out. And as we were walking out, Carol Rosenberg told us, 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, Abdul Latif 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? Shelby had 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 Habte and Simon Adler with Sara Khari, Susie Lechtenberg, and me, Latif Nasser. We had help from W. Harry Fortuna and Neil Dinesha.
So about a year after we produced that episode, Abdel-Ladif actually got out of Guantanamo Bay.
He had been there for 19 years, five of which he was technically cleared 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 Casablanca, lives in a 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, Abdel Latif Nasser was the first detainee to get out of Guantanamo under the Biden administration. Two others have gotten out in the last year, including one, Sofiane Baroumi from Algeria, who is in a really similar position, Abdel 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 the series. 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, 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 U.S. government acknowledged they may not even do a trial. They started negotiating plea deals with the defendants, which, again, is actually that's more than Abdul Latif got. As for our story, it's kind of a weird thing. After spending years reporting about his life, I've still actually never talked to Abdul Latif. 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 talked 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 Casablanca, interviewing him face to face.
But it 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. Abdullah Dufnasr 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 $1,000.
$13 million per detainee per year. Money, time, justice, due process, all of these have disappeared in the black hole that is Guantanamo Bay.
Radiolab was created by Chad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Susie Lechtenberg is our executive producer. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Rachel Cusick, W. Harry Fortuna,
David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhu Nyanasambindam, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neeson, Sara Khari, Anna Roskwet-Paz, Ariane Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. With help from Carolyn McCusker and Sarah Sonbach. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Adam Shibbo.
Hi, I'm Ram from India. Leadership support for Radiolab science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simon Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
