“It doesn’t look like you’re going to make that flight,” he recalls one saying.
He still thought that whatever was happening could be fixed quickly. He had, in his eight months translating for the U.S. military, seen his share of misinterpretations — lousy translations that could easily have dire consequences. Once, in a letter written by a detainee, a translator misunderstood the name of a 13th-century writer for the Arabic word for nuclear, which it resembled. Al-Halabi had to clarify that the man was not requesting books about nuclear weapons.
At times like that, he saw himself as a helpful bridge between the worlds he inhabited: military and Muslim, American and Arab. But experiences like those now made him feel overwhelmed and frightened. Some of the Guantánamo detainees seemed to him to have landed in detention through a mix of bad luck and bad information. Now here he was, another Muslim suspected of something nefarious.
After questioning, he was taken for a medical exam, during which he pleaded with the doctor for help. “You know, sir, believe me, I’m innocent,” he told him. The doctor said he was there only to make sure Al-Halabi was healthy. Officials then stripped him naked, he says, and told him to squat, so they could make sure he wasn’t hiding anything on or in his body. He was given prison clothes, and someone ordered him to stand straight. His holding cell had a bed wrapped in plastic, a metal toilet and a small window. He could see a storm raging outside.
That first night in jail was “the worst night of my life,” Al-Halabi recalls. He lay on the bed, exhausted but unable to sleep, his mind circling around the same questions: What did I say wrong for me to be here? How do I tell my mom? What the hell is happening?
Two days later, he finally learned the answer: The U.S. government said Al-Halabi was a spy.
Federal prosecutors would file 30 charges against Al-Halabi, including espionage and aiding the enemy. Two other men that Al-Halabi worked with at Gitmo were also arrested and charged: Captain James Yee, a Muslim chaplain and Al-Halabi’s friend, and a civilian translator on the base, Ahmed Mehalba. Military officials suggested in interviews at the time that they had broken up a spy ring on the base made up of Muslim and Arab American service members and contractors.