Until I started working at Reprieve, I did not often think of Guantánamo Bay — the torture that detainees have endured, scores still held there despite being cleared (84 of 164, or 51% of them), the horrors of force-feeding, a black mark on America’s reputation for decency and human rights.
Translating to a high standard is difficult — that’s why people do degrees before they ask to be paid to translate even material of little consequence. I should know. I am German, and — to give just one example — I have tripped over the word “irritated” on numerous occasions myself. In German, it means you are bemused; a Brit is more likely to take offence.
I am working at the charity Reprieve at the moment whose lawyers were counsel in the infamous case of Mohammed el Gharani. He was just 14 years old when he was seized for a bounty in Pakistan. His US interrogators used a Yemeni translator, but Mohammed spoke Saudi Arabic. The word zalat meant ‘money’ to the interrogators; to Mohammed it meant ‘salad’. He could not understand why they wanted to know what zalat he had taken to Pakistan with him. He said he could get it anywhere he wanted. They got excited, and demanded to know where. He described various market stalls around Karachi. They thought he was an Al-Qaida financier and as a consequence, he then went on to spend seven years in Guantánamo before a conservative federal judge found the intelligence was so woeful that they could not even work out how old he was. Mohammed’s interrogators had heard what they expected — or wanted — to hear.
I am bemused — and perhaps Chancellor Angela Merkel is irritated — by the current debate in Britain about whether the Security Services need greater supervision. Frau Merkel is no doubt annoyed at allegations that the British were involved in US recording of her mobile phone conversations. All this took place at the same RAF base where GCHQ is, even today, apparently complicit in the illegal US drone attacks in Yemen. I am astounded that some people in Britain seem so certain that the security services always get it right and need no meaningful oversight. The fact that the Investigatory Powers Tribunal has not upheld a single complaint out of the 1,500 made against them points either to a claim to infallibility that rivals the Pope, or a fundamentally flawed system of review.
If asked to choose, I know which side I would come down on. In my work with Reprieve, I just came across another amusing, but catastrophic, example of intelligence agents being woefully lost in translation. To most secret agents, Al-Qaida is an international terrorist organization seeking to advance Islamic fundamentalism. The Arabic dictionary tells us that Al-Qaida means “the base” — coincidentally, the name given to the naval station in Guantánamo Bay by its US personnel. But there is also a small town called Al-Qaida in the Lahij region of Yemen.
Reprieve’s latest Guantánamo client, Emad Abdalla Hassan, is 34 years old and has been held without trial for more than 11 years — most of his adult life. He has been on hunger strike since 2007, force fed almost 3,000 times, and he now weighs only 85 pounds (slightly over six stone). His right nostril is entirely closed, and he suffers horribly each day as the military nurses force the tube up his left. His peaceful protest is focused on only one goal: put me on trial or set me free. Ironically, of course, President Barack Obama publicly agrees with Emad that Guantánamo shames America, and should be closed.
In August 2001, Emad travelled from Yemen to Pakistan in order to pursue university studies in Faisalabad. There he lived in off-campus accommodation together with other students from Arabic background. After September 11, Emad was one of hundreds of Arabs rounded up by Pakistani security forces and then handed over to the Americans for a $5,000 bounty. Given the poverty in the region, that would translate to about a quarter of a million dollars to someone in London — so ask yourself who might turn you in for such wealth.
The US intelligence agencies had paid good money, and the informants said Emad was a terrorist. Now it was just a matter of proving it. Emad has been cleared for roughly half his time in detention, but when he was first seized, the US thought he had something to do with Al-Qaida. Indeed, he did. He grew up around Aden, which is just 80 miles south of Al-Qaida. When the US interrogators first demanded whether he knew of Al-Qaida he was totally honest — he knew it well. Somewhere between his Arabic and the American ear, the truth got lost.
Like Mohammed el Gharani, Emad had never even been to Afghanistan, let alone fought there. It took years before the US intelligence machine finally figured out its mistake. We cannot tell when he will finally be released. And it will take eternity before Emad receives an apology, even in private.
Anybody could have looked up Al-Qaida on Google Maps — just as they could have asked Saudi Arabia for a simple birth certificate to confirm Mohammed’s age. The ‘intelligence officers’ just did not bother, because they thought they already knew what was going on. Yet, the result of just a single word lost in translation has been devastating: eleven years, and still counting, of Emad’s life has been wasted, just as he wastes away on his hunger strike.
Reprieve delivers justice and saves lives. To find out more visit reprieve.org (US) or reprieve.org.uk (UK).
