Guantánamo Diary

This is testimony taken from Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Guantanamo Diary. Little, Brown, 2015.

p. 38: The three men left the room and sent the escort team to me, which lead me to my cell. It was in [REDACTED] block, a block designed for isolation. I was the only detainee who had been picked for interrogation from out entire group of thirty-four detainees. There was no sign of life inside the block, which made me think that I was the only one around. When the guard dropped me in the frozen-cold box I almost panicked behind the heavy metal door. I tried to convince myself, it’s only a temporary place. In the morning they’re going to transfer me to the community. This place cannot be for more than the rest of the night! In fact, I spend one whole month in [REDACTED].

p. 45: Later that night the guards brought me back to my cell. I was so sick I couldn't climb on my bed; I slept on the floor for the rest of the month. The doctor prescribed Ensure and some hypertension medicine, and every time I got my sciatic nerve crisis the corpsmen gave me Motrin. Although I was physically very weak, the interrogation didn’t stop.    

p. 48: I had a good time in [REDACTED] at the beginning, but things started to get ugly when some interrogators started to practice torture methods on some detainees, though shyly. As far as I heard and saw, the only method practiced at first was the cold room, all night.

p. 60: Endless interrogation. Disrespect of the holy Koran by some of the guards. Torturing detainees by making them spend the night in a cold room (though this method was not practiced nearly as much as it would be in [REDACTED] time). So we decided to go on a hunger strike; many detainees took part, including me. But I could only strike for four days, after which I was a ghost.

p. 143: It was silly, but if you get scared you are not you anymore. You very much become a child again.

p. 205: I was kept up the rest of the night and forced to see pictures of dead body parts which were taken at the sight of the Pentagon after the attack. It was a nasty sight. I almost broke down, but I managed to keep myself silent and together […] They kept sliding those nasty pictures in front of me the whole night. At the break of dawn, they sent me back to a cell in a new block, [REDACTED]. I prayed and tried to sleep, but I was kidding myself. I could not get the human body parts out of my head.

p. 208: The [REDACTED] also interrogated a teenager [REDACTED] called [REDACTED] and made the Army take all his belongings. We detainees felt bad for him: he was just too young for this whole campaign.

pp. 215-261: I had been witnessing for the last months how detainees were consistently being tortured under the orders of [REDACTED]. [REDACTED] was taken to interrogation every single night, exposed to loud music and scary pictures, and molested sexually. I would see [REDACTED] when the guards took him in the evening and brought him back in the morning. He was forbidden to pray during his interrogation. […] [REDACTED] suffered the same; moreover his interrogator smashed the Koran against the floor to break him, and had the guards push his face down against the rough floor. [REDACTED] also suffered sexual molestation. I saw him taken back and forth almost every night as well. Not to speak of the poor young Yemenis and Saudis who were grossly tortured the same way.

p. 217: I really must have acted like a child all day long before the guards pried me from the cellblock later that day. You don't know how terrorizing it is for a human being to be threatened with torture. One literally becomes a child.

p. 218: In the block the recipe started. I was deprived of my comfort items, except for a thin iso-mat and a very thin, small worn-out blanket. I was deprived of my books, which I owned, I was deprived of my Koran, I was deprived of my soap. I was deprived of my toothpaste and of the roll of toilet paper I had. The cell —better, the box— was cooled down to the point that I was shaking most of the time. I was forbidden from seeing the light of the day; every once in a while they gave me a rec-time at night to keep me from seeing or interacting with any detainees. I was living literally in terror. For the next seventy days I wouldn't know the sweetness of sleeping: interrogation 24 hours a day, three and sometimes four shifts a day. I rarely got a day off. I don't remember sleeping one night quietly. “If you start to cooperate you’ll have some sleep and hot meals”, [REDACTED] used to tell me repeatedly.

p. 219: After that visit I wouldn't see the ICRC for more than a year. They tried to see me, but in vain.

pp.220-221: “Fuck you!” [REDACTED] said. I figured I wouldn’t degrade myself and lower myself to his level, so I didn’t answer him. When I failed to give him the answer he wanted to hear, he made me stand up, with my back bent because my hands were shackled to my feet and waist and locked to the floor. [REDACTED] turned the temperature control all the way down and made sure that the guards maintained me in that situation until he decided otherwise. He used to start a fuss before going to lunch, so he could keep me hurt during his lunch, which took at least two or three hours.

pp. 224-226: “Stand up! Guards! If you don't stand up, it’ll be ugly,” [REDACTED] said. And before the torture squad entered the room I stood up, with my back bent because [REDACTED] didn’t allow me to stand up straight. I had to suffer every-inch-of-my-body pain the rest of the day. I delt with the pain silently; I kept praying until my assailants got tired and sent me back to my cell at the end of the day, after exhausting their resources of humiliations for that day. I didn't say a single word, as if I had not been there […] Before lunch [REDACTED] dedicated the time to speaking ill about my family, and describing my wife with the worst adjective you can imagine. For the sake of my family, I dismiss their degrading quotations […] That afternoon was dedicated to sexual molestation. [REDACTED] blouse and was whispering in my ear, “you know how good I am in bed,” and “American men like me to whisper in their ears,” [REDACTED] “I have a great body.” Every once in a while [REDACTED] offered me the other side of the coin. “If you start to cooperate, I’m going to stop harassing you. Otherwise I'll be doing the same with you and the worse every day” […] “At least [REDACTED] cooperate,” said [REDACTED] wryly. [REDACTED] didn't undress me, but [REDACTED] was touching my private parts with [REDACTED] body […] In the late afternoon, another torture squad started with another poor detainee. I could hear loud music playing. “Do you want me to send you to that team, or are you gonna to cooperate?” [REDACTED] asked.

p. 227: [REDACTED] sent me back to my cell, warning me, “today is just the beginning, what’s coming is worse.” […] “I am being stopped from taking my pain medication and my Ensure, which were necessary to maintain my head above water,“ I said. The interrogators would organize the sessions so that they would cover the time when you are supposed to take your medication. I had two prescriptions, tabs for the sciatic nerve back pain and Ensure to compensate the loss of weight I had been suffering since my arrest. I usually got my meds between 4 and 5 p.m., and so the interrogators made sure that I was with them and missed my medication. [EDITORS NOTE: “The medical records document increased low back pain ‘for the past 5 days while in isolation and under more intense interrogation’ and note that the pain medication prescribed for him could not be administered throughout July 2003 because he was at the reservation].

p. 228: The torture was growing day by day. The guards on the block actively participated in the process. The [REDACTED] tell them what do to with the detainees when they came back to the block. I had guards banging on my cell to prevent me from sleeping. They cursed me for no reason. They repeatedly woke me, unless my interrogators decided to give me a break. I never complained to my interrogators about the issue because I know they planned everything with the guards.

p. 230-231: As soon as I stood up, the two [REDACTED] took off their blouses, and started to talk all kind of dirty stuff you can imagine, which I minded less. What hurt me most was them forcing me to take part in a sexual threesome in the most degrading manner. What many [REDACTED] don't realize is that men get hurt the same as women if they are forced to have sex, maybe more due to the traditional position of the man. Both [REDACTED] stuck on me, literally one on the front and the other older [REDACTED] stuck on my back rubbing [REDACTED] whole body on mine. At the same time they were talking dirty to me and playing with my sexual parts. I am saving you here from quoting the discusting and degrading talk I had to listen to from noon or before until 10 p.m.

pp. 231: I refused to stop speaking my prayers, and after that, I was forbidden to preform my ritual prayers for about one year to come. I also was forbidden to fast during the sacred month of Ramadan October 2003 and fed by force […] I was just wishing to pass out so I didn't have to suffer, and that was really the main reason for my hunger strike; I knew people like these don't get impressed by hunger strikes. Of course they didn't want me to die, but they understood there are many steps before one dies. “You’re not gonna die, we’re gonna feed it up your ass,” said [REDACTED].

pp. 231-232: I have never felt as violated in myself as I had since the DoD team started to torture me to get me to admit to things I haven’t done. You, dear reader, could never understand the extent of the physical, and much more the psychological, pain people in my situation suffered, no matter how hard you try to put yourself in another’s shoes. Had I done what they accused me of, I would have relieved myself on day one. But the problem is that you cannot just admit to something you haven’t done; you need to deliver the details, which you can’t when you hadn’t done anything. Its not just, “yes, I did it!” no, it doesn't work that way: you have to make up a complete story that makes sense to the dumbest dummies. One of the hardest things to do is to tell an untruthful story and maintain it, and that is exactly where I was stuck.

p. 233: Humiliation, sexual harassment, fear, and starvation was the order of the day until around 10 p.m. Interrogators made sure that I had no clue about the time, but nobody is perfect; their watches always revealed it. I would be using this mistake later, when they put me in dark isolation.

p. 234 “I could have refused, but my boss would have given me a shitty job or transferred me to a bad place. I know I can go to hell for what I have done to you,” one of them [guards] told me.

pp. 235-236: [REDACTED] started playing a track very loudly – I mean very loudly. The song was, “let the bodies hit the floor.” I might never forget that song. At the same time, [REDACTED] turned on some colored blinkers that hurt the eyes. “if you fucking fall asleep, I’m gonna hurt you,” he said. I had to listen to the song over and over until next morning. I started praying […] “Stop fucking praying,” he said loudly. I was by this time both really tired and terrified, and so I decided to pray in my heart. Every once in a while [REDACTED] gave me water. I drank the water because I was only scared of being hurt. I really had no real feeling for time […] When [REDACTED] joined the team, they organized a 24-hour shift regime. The morning shift with [REDACTED] started between 7 and 9 a.m. and ended between 3 and 4 p.m.; the dayshift with [REDACTED] ran between 4:30 and 10 or 11p.m.; and the nightshift was with [REDACTED]. He always took over when [REDACTED] left; [REDACTED] would literally hand me over to him. This went on until august 24, 2003; I rarely got a break or relief from even one of the shifts […] “Three shifts! Is it not too much for a human being to be interrogated 24 hours a day, day after day?” […] “We could put on more personnel and make four shifts. We have more people,” [REDACTED] answered. And  that's exactly what happened. The team was reinforced with other [REDACTED], and instead of a three-team, I had to deal with four fresh people during a 24-hour period.

p. 237: “Man, you smell like shit!” said one of the guards more than once. I only got the opportunity to shower and change my clothes when his lowness [REDACTED] couldn't bear my smell anymore; “Take the guy, give him a shower, he smells like shit,” he would say. Only then would I get a shower, for months to come.

p. 240: [REDACTED] order of the day went as follows. When [REDACTED] pulled me to interrogation, [REDACTED] informed the D.O.C not to give me a chair, so I had to settle for the dirty floor—but I didn't even get that, because the D.O.C always asked the guards to make me stand up until [REDACTED] arrived. Then [REDACTED] decided whether to allow me to sit or make me stand up during her whole shift, and after that [REDACTED] made me stand up for the restof the 24 hours.

p. 241: But as soon as I started to pray [REDACTED] started to make fun of my religion, and so I settled for praying in my heart so I didn't give [REDACTED] the opportunity to commit blasphemy.

pp. 241-242: "Yes or no?" the guard shouted, loud beyond belief, in a show to scare me and maybe to impress [REDACTED], who knows? I found this method very childish and silly. I looked at him, smiled, and said, "Neither!" The guest threw the chair from beneath me violently. I fell on the chains. Oh, it hurt.

p. 242: Nothing was left to chance. They hit me in pre-defined places. They practiced horrible methods, the aftermath of which would only manifest later. The interrogators told the A/C all the way down trying to reach 0 [degrees], but obviously, air conditioners are not designed to kill. So in the well insulated room, the A/C fought its way to 49 [degrees] F, which, if you are interested in math like me, is 9.4 [degrees] C—in other words, very, very, cold, especially for somebody who had to sit in it for more than twelve hours, had no underwear, and just a very thin uniform and who comes from a hot country.

p. 243: You may ask, where were the interrogators after installing the detainees in the frozen room? Actually, it's a good question. First, the interrogators didn't stay in the room; they would just come for the humiliation, degradation, discouragement, or other factors of torture, and after that, they left the room and when to the monitoring room next door. Second, interrogators were adequately dressed; for instance [REDACTED] was dressed like someone entering a meat locker. In spite of that, they didn't stay long with the detainee. Third, there is a big pshychological difference for purpose of torture, and when you just go there for fun and challenge. […] The Marine guy started to throw chairs around, hit me with his forehead, and describe me with all kinds of adjectives I didn't deserve, for no reason.

p. 244: He brought ice-cold water and soaked me all over my body, with my clothes still on me. It was so awful; I kept shaking like a Parkinson’s patient.

p. 245: “Oh, ALLAH help me… oh Allah have mercy on me” [REDACTED] kept mimicking my prayers, “ALLAH, ALLAH… There is no Allah. He let you down!” […] During this time in [REDACTED] Camp two individuals were kidnapped and disappeared for good, namely [REDACTED]

p. 246: Between 4 and 5 a.m., [REDACTED] released me, just to be taken a couple of hours later [REDACTED] to start the same routine over.

p. 247: Expecting the cold room, I had put shorts on over my pants to reduce the cold that was penetrating through my bones, but he was extreamly mad, which led him to make a [REDACTED] guard undress me. I never felt so violated. I stood up all the night in the ice-cold room praying, ignoring all his barking and ordering me to stop praying.

pp. 251-252: Suddenly a commando team consisting of three soldiers and a German shepherd broke into our interrogation room. Everything happened quicker than you could think about it. [REDACTED] punched me violently, which made me fall face down on the floor. […] “Motherfucker”, I told you, you’re gone!” said [REDACTED]. His partner kept punching me everywhere, mainly on my face and my ribs. He, too, was masked from head to toe; he punched me the whole time without saying a word, because he didn’t want to be recognized. The third man was not masked; he stayed at the door holding the dog's collar, ready to release it on me. […] “Blindfold the motherfucker, if he tries to look—" One of them hit me hard across the face, and quickly put goggles on my eyes, earmuffs on my ears, and a small bag over my head. I couldn't tell who did what. They tightened the chains around my ankles and my wrists; afterward, I started to bleed. All I could hear was [REDACTED] cursing, “F-this and F-that!” I didn't say a word, I was overwhelmingly surprised, I thought they were going to execute me.

p. 252: “Stop praying, motherfucker, you’re killing people,” [REDACTED] said, and punched me hard on the mouth. My mouth and nose started to bleed, and my lips grew so big that I technically could not speak anymore. The colleague of [REDACTED] turned out to be one of my guards, [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] each took a side and started to punch me and smash me against the metal of the truck. One of the guys hit me so hard that my breath stopped and I was choking; I felt like I was breathing through my ribs. I almost suffocated without their knowledge. I was having a hard time breathing due to the head cover anyway, plus they hit me so many times on my ribs that I stopped breathing for a moment.

pp.252-253: After ten to fifteen minutes, the truck stopped at the beach, and my escort team dragged me out of the truck and put me in a high-speed boat. [REDACTED] never gave me a break; they kept hitting me and [REDACTED] in order to make them stab me. “You’re killing people,” said [REDACTED]. I believe he was thinking out loud: he knew his was the most cowardly crime in the world, torturing a helpless detainee who completely went to submission and turned himself in […] Inside the boat, [REDACTED] made me drink salt water, I believe it was directly from the ocean. It was so nasty I threw up. They would put any object in my mouth and shout, “swallow, motherfucker!,” […] The goal of such trip was, first, to torture the detainee and claim that “the detainee hurt himself during transport,” and second, to make the detainee believe he was being transferred to some far, faraway secret prison. We detainees knew all of that; we had detainees reporting they had been flown around for four hours and found themselves in the same jail where they started. I knew from the beginning that I was going to be transferred to [REDACTED] about a five-minute ride.

p. 258: “Move!” “I can’t move!” “Move, fucker! They gave this order knowing that I was too hurt to be able to move. After all I was bleeding from my mouth, my ankles, my wrists, and maybe my nose, I couldn’t tell for sure. But the team wanted to keep the factor of fear and terror maintained.

p. 259: They stuffed the air between my clothes and me with ice-cubes from my neck to my ankles, and whenever the ice melted, they put in new, hard ice cubes. Moreover, every once in a while, one of the guards smashed me, most of the time in the face. The ice served both for the pain and for wiping out the bruises I had from that afternoon. Everything seemed to be perfectly prepared. People from cold regions might not understand the extent of the pain when ice-cubes get stuck on your body. Historically, kings during medieval and pre-medieval times used this method to let the victim slowly die. The other method, of hitting the victim while blindfolded in inconsistent intervals, was used by Nazis during World War II. There is nothing more terrorizing than making somebody expect a smash every single heartbeat.

p. 260: What would the interrogation there look like [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] described his unlucky trip from Pakistan to Egypt to me; so far everything I was experiencing, like the ice-cubes and smashing, was consistent with [REDACTED] story. So I expected electric shock in the pool. How much more power can my body, especially my heart, handle?

p. 263: The doctor once more gave me a bunch of medication and checked my ribs. “Done with the motherfucker,” he said showing me his back as he headed toward the door. I was so shocked seeing a doctor act like that.

p. 265: But in the secret camps, the war against the Islamic religion was more than obvious. Not only was there no sign to Mecca, but the ritual prayers were also forbidden. Reciting the Koran was forbidden. Possessing the Koran was forbidden. Fasting was forbidden. Practically any Islamic-related ritual was strictly forbidden. I am not talking here about hearsay; I am talking about something I experienced myself.

p. 265: When I woke up from my semi-coma, I tried to make out the difference between day and night. […] “Come on!” they put on their masks. “Stop praying.” I don't recall whether I finished my prayer sitting or if I finished at all. As a punishment [REDACTED] forbade me to use the bathroom for sometime. […] As soon as the assessing doctor reported that I was relieved from my pain, it was time to hit again before the injuries healed, following the motto “strike while the iron’s hot.”

p. 267: “The good thing is, we don't have to dirty our hands with you; we have Israelis and Egyptians doing the job for us,” [REDACTED] continued, while taunting me sexually by touching me everywhere.

p. 268: “I don't know. But maybe he is too relaxed in his place. We should maybe take away some of his sleep, said [REDACTED]. I’ve never seen a human being as emotionless as he was. He spoke about keeping me from sleeping without a single change in his voice, face, or composure.

p. 269: “Your mom is an old lady. I don't know how long she can withstand the conditions in the detention facility”

pp. 270-271: My diet times were deliberately messed up. I was starved for long periods and then given food but not given time to eat. “You have three minuets: Eat!” a guard would yell at me, and then after about half a minute he would grab the plate. “You’re done!” and then it was the opposite extreme: I was given too much food and a guard came into my cell and forced me to eat all of it. When I said, “I need water” because the food got stuck in my throat, he punished me by making me drink two 25-ounce water bottles. […] “I cant drink,” I said when my abdomen felt as if it was going to explode. But [REDACTED] screamed and threatened me, pushing me against the wall and raising his hand to hit me. I figured drinking would be better and I drank until I vomited […] They cursed, shouted, and constantly put me through rough military-like basic training. “Get up,” “walk to the bin hole.” “Stop!” “Grab the shit!” “Eat.” “You got two minutes!” “You’re done!” “Give the shit back!” “Drink!” “You better drink the whole water bottle!” “Hurry up!” “Sit down!” “Don’t sit down unless I say it!” “Search the piece of shit!” Most of the guards rarely attacked me physically, but [REDACTED] hit me once until I fell face-down on the floor, and whenever he and his associate grabbed me they held me very tight and made me run in the heavy chains: “Move!”

p. 271: No sleep was allowed. In order to enforce this, I was given 25-ounce water bottles in intervals of one to two hours, depending on the mood of the guards, 24 hours a day. The consequences were devastating. I couldn't close my eyes for ten minutes because I was sitting most of the time on the bathroom. Later on, after the tension was relieved, I asked one of the guards, “Why the water diet?” Why don't you just make me stay awake by standing up, like in [REDACTED]? “Psychologically its devastating to make somebody stay awake on his own without ordering him,” said [REDACTED].

p. 272: It wasn't much: I was deprived from all comfort items that a detainee needs except for a mattress and a small, thin, worn out blanket. For the first weeks I also had no shower, no laundry, no brushing. I almost developed bugs. I hated my smell.

p. 272: I started to hallucinate and hear voices as clear as crystal. I heard my family in a casual familial conversation that I couldn't join. I heard the Koran readings in a heavenly voice. I heard music from my country. Later on the guards used these hallucinations and started talking with funny voices though the plumbing, encouraging me to hurt the guards and plot an escape.

p. 278: Now, thanks to the unbearable pain I was suffering, I had nothing to lose, and I allowed myself to say anything to satisfy my assailants. Session followed session since I called [REDACTED]. […] “People are very happy with what you’re saying,” said [REDACTED] after the first session. I answered all the questions he asked me with incriminating answers. I tired my best to make myself look as bad as I could, which is exactly the way you can make your interrogator happy.

p. 284: “Show him no mercy. Increase the pressure. Drive the hell out of him crazy,” said [REDACTED]. And that was exactly what the guards did. Banging on my cell to keep me awake and scared. Taking me violently out of my cell at least twice a day for a cell search. Taking me outside in the middle of the night and making me do PT I couldn't due to my health situation. Putting me facing the wall several times a day and threatening me directly and indirectly. Sometimes they even interrogated me, but I never said a word to my interrogators because I knew the interrogators were behind everything.

p. 285: To forbidding me any kind of comfort items, they added new rules. One: I should never be lying down; whenever a guard showed up at my bin hole, I always had to be awake, or wake up as soon as a guard walked into my area. There was no sleeping in the terms that we know. Two: my toilet should always be dry! And how, if I am always urinating and flushing? In order to meet the order, I had to use my only uniform to dry the toilet up and stay soaked in shit. Three: my cell should be in predefined order, including having a folded blanket, so I could never use my blanket.

p. 322: It was about time! One of the measures of my punishment was to deprive me of any hygienic shaves, tooth brushing, or haircuts, so today was a big day.

p. 327: But I found in chess a very interesting game, especially the fact that a prisoner has total control over his pieces, which gives him some confidence back.

p. 330: The only guard who participated in the transport party was [REDACTED]. And he used every opportunity to hit me in the new place. You could tell he found no problem in beating me, since he did it with the blessing of the highest authority in GTMO.

p. 331: [REDACTED] was the most violent guard. In the building [REDACTED] the guards preformed regular assault on me in order to maintain the terror. They came in a big masked team, screaming and giving contradictory orders so I wouldn't know what to do. They would drag me out of my cell and throw my belongings all over the place.

pp. 331-332 The game was over when they made me sweat. I knew the guards didn't have the order to beat me, but this guard used every opportunity to hit me and claw me deeply.

p. 343: But I couldn't respond to the letter because I was still not allowed to see the ICRC.

p. 345: You cannot imagine how happy I was to be able to decide the time and amount of water I could drink. People who never have been in such a situation cannot really appreciate the freedom of drinking whenever they want, however much they want.

p. 347-348: In GTMO the [REDACTED] is integrally responsible for both detainees’ happiness and their agony, in order to have total control over detainees. [REDACTED] and his colleagues [REDACTED] categorically refused to give the ICRC access to me. Only after [REDACTED] left was it possible for the ICRC to visit me.

p. 366: [REDACTED] used to keep detainees who were not allowed to sleep “entertained”. He deprived me of sleep for about two months, during which he tried to break my mental resistance, to no avail. To keep me awake, he drove the temperature of the room crazily down, made me write all kinds of things about my life, kept giving me water, and sometimes made me stand the whole night. Once he stripped me naked with the help of a [REDACTED] guard in order to humiliate me. Another night, he put me in a frozen room full of propaganda pictures of the U.S, including a picture of George W. Bush, and made me listen to the national anthem over and over.

pp. 367-368: [REDACTED] was serving several detainees at the same time; I could here many doors slamming, loud music, and detainees coming and leaving, the sound of their heavy metal chains giving them away. [REDACTED] used to put detainees in a dark room with pictures that were supposed to represent devils. He made detainees listen to the music of hatred and madness, and to the song “let the bodies hit the floor” over and over for the whole night in the dark room. He was very open about his hatred towards Islam, and he categorically forbade any Islamic practices, including prayers and mumbling the Koran. […] Even with all that, on around [REDACTED] the special team realized that I was not going to cooperate with them as they wished, and so the next level of torture was approved. [REDACTED] and another guy with a German shepherd pried open the door of the interrogation room where [REDACTED] and I were sitting. It was in [REDACTED] building. [REDACTED] and his colleague kept hitting me; mostly on my rips and my face and made me drink salt water for about three hours before giving me over to an Arabic team with an Egyptian and Jordanian interrogator. Those interrogators continued to beat me while covering me in ice cubes, one to torture me, and two to make the new, fresh bruises disappear. […] Then, after about three hours, Mr. X and his friend took me back and threw me in my prison cell. “I told you not to fuck with me motherfucker!” was the last thing I heard from [REDACTED]. Later on, [REDACTED] told me that [REDACTED] wanted to visit me for friendly purposes, but I didn’t show any eagerness, and so the visit was cancelled. I am still in that same cell, although I no longer have to pretend I don't know where I am. […] They finally allowed doctors to see me around March 2004, and I was able to get psychological assistance for the first time that April. Since then I have been taking anti-depressant Paxil and Klonopin to help me sleep. The doctors also prescribed a multi-vitamin for a condition that was due to a lack of exposure to the sun. I also got some sessions with some psychologists who were assessing me; they really helped me, though I couldn't tell them the real reason for my sickness because I was afraid of retaliation.