Did translator turn traitor? Answer may mean death for Dearborn man accused of spying

BY TAMARA AUDI
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- He had spent months working in a prison camp for accused terrorists on the edge of a blue-green Caribbean bay wrapped in rolled razor wire and suffocating, hot-breath humidity. GUANTANAMO BAY
The U.S. Navy base: Called Gitmo from its military abbreviation, GTMO, it covers 45 square miles about 15 miles south of Guantanamo, Cuba, on that island nation's southeastern tip.
Who lives there: About 3,200 people, including 750 service members, their families, support staff and some Cuban exiles.

What's there: A typical military base that has medical facilities, schools for dependents, base exchange and commissary, a McDonald's, bowling alley, golf course and cinema.

Source: Free Press research

It was here that Ahmad al-Halabi's American life began to come apart.

The young Air Force supply clerk from Dearborn was serving as a linguist, translating the words of men imprisoned as Al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorists and held in a vast maze of open-air metal cages perched on Cuban cliffs.

Al-Halabi's temporary, 3-month assignment had been extended by three months, then extended again. His father in Detroit recalled his son expressing at some point: "I can't take it here anymore. It's a very confusing situation. Your mind cannot accept what's going on."

At age 23, al-Halabi had volunteered for the duty after his superiors encouraged the Syrian-born immigrant to serve his country in a way few could. Al-Halabi left for the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo with a record of accolades for his performance and an early promotion to senior airman.

But nearly nine months after arriving at Guantanamo, al-Halabi was arrested in July and accused of spying. He is charged with 30 offenses, among them possession of classified materials, attempting to deliver 180 messages to an unnamed enemy in Syria and unapproved contact with prisoners, including bringing them baklava.

Al-Halabi's family says he is guilty of nothing more than a little human compassion, and possibly a misunderstanding of what was allowed off the base. His father, Ibrahim al-Halabi, insists that however difficult his son's time was on Guantanamo, he never would betray the country that gave him an education and a future.

"His heart is pure and straight; he is like honey," he said of his son.

But the military says his betrayals were so serious that he could be executed if convicted.

Al-Halabi's path from shy Dearborn teenager to dutiful serviceman to international spy suspect has raised fears of an espionage ring in a setting the U.S. government considers vital to its war on terrorism. Two other camp workers have been arrested and are under investigation.

Soldiers assigned to the detention camp, known as Camp Delta, say they face extraordinary challenges as they cope with daily pleas and manipulation from prisoners held in conditions that critics say are inhumane.

As al-Halabi entered this high-pressure world, a freshly minted American citizen and devoted Muslim, his profession and his faith were immediately at odds.

Inside Camp Delta
Camp Delta is guarded by armed patrols and surrounded by layers of security fences covered with green mesh, obscuring the surging Caribbean hundreds of feet below.

The Muslim detainees are being held indefinitely as enemy combatants, a legal limbo that has left them without representation or an idea of when or if they will be released. Some have been held for nearly two years, plucked off streets and battlefields in home countries throughout the Middle East and the Far East. They have not been charged with crimes, but U.S. officials said they are providing valuable information that could prevent future terrorist attacks.

Down the road from Camp Delta, three detainees -- ages 13 to 15 -- are held in a smaller pen called Iguana Cottage. As a reward for good behavior, U.S. soldiers have cut a window through the green mesh so the teens can stand in the dirt yard and see the ocean shimmer on the horizon. They write to their parents and watch National Geographic videos in an air-conditioned hut. They have stopped asking when they are going home.

More than a dozen prisoners at Camp Delta have tried to kill themselves repeatedly. Others are showing signs of insanity. Some try to befriend their captors. Others are aggressive, shouting, "Nazis! Liars!" to passing soldiers.

Rows of 7-by-8-foot cages in the maximum security portion of the camp contain familiar objects of Islam: Korans, prayer rugs, prayer beads and skull caps issued by the military. Under guard towers and floodlights, the men listen to the call to prayer broadcast on a military CD.

Men are pulled from their cells for interrogation at all hours and rewarded with a backgammon board, a cup for water or transfer to larger community pens with greater privileges if they provide useful information. Fans are turned on when the temperature in the camp hits 85 degrees; lights never are turned off.

Camp Delta officials defend the treatment of prisoners and say the process is necessary. It yields vital information, they say. The more cooperative they are, the more their individual conditions improve. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who commands the task force that oversees the operation, said the methods have helped interrogators extract six times as much intelligence last month as they had in previous months.

"We will continue to detain enemy combatants in a humane manner," he said. "I know of no other country in the world that takes care of their enemies the way we do. Everything we do at Camp Delta I'm proud of."

Weary of tour
Before he arrived at Guantanamo in November 2002, al-Halabi had been serving as a supply clerk at Travis Air Force Base, near Sacramento, Calif. His career had gone well to that point. In 2001, he was honored as Airman of the Year for his squadron. He already had won the early promotion to senior airman.
Al-Halabi worked with about 70 other linguists scattered across the base at Guantanamo, which looks like a cross between a fading Caribbean resort and a Midwestern subdivision -- except for the palm trees and wandering iguanas.

Linguists accompanied CIA interrogators into Camp Delta regularly, translating questions and answers. Many guards also called on translators to settle camp disputes and to help communicate with prisoners. Medical workers at the camp hospital needed translators to help diagnose the sick, communicate with them after suicide attempts and try to talk them out of hunger strikes.

Al-Halabi filled at least some of those roles at the hospital, a worker who saw him there said. According to military records, al-Halabi may also have filled a role translating detainee mail.

When his initial 3-month tour was extended three additional months, he postponed his wedding.

At the end of the second tour, his assignment was extended another three months. His family said he had grown frustrated. His months working in the camp were beginning to wear on him. His father said the young man didn't want to be there anymore.

Ibrahim al-Halabi characterized his son as feeling that conditions at the camp were inhumane. He described his son as saying: "This is not for me to see this. People are being blamed for things. They're innocent."

Al-Halabi's father said his son, who was to be married in Damascus, Syria, tried to focus on the wedding. It had been arranged by al-Halabi's mother.

A new life
Ahmad al-Halabi is the ninth -- and last -- child of Ibrahim and Wafica al-Halabi. He was born into a family of five daughters and three other boys that filled a large, bustling second-floor flat in Damascus.

His mother stayed home to care for the family; his father worked across the Middle East and Europe, building a reputation as a cook.

Al-Halabi loved swimming, computers and team sports.

"Oh, we all spoiled him," said his older sister, a U.S. citizen who lives in Anaheim, Calif. She asked not to be identified because she fears harassment of her family.

In 1989, al-Halabi's parents divorced after 31 years of marriage. That same year, his father decided to make a new life in the United States. He moved to Detroit, lived in a small flat and worked in the kitchens of several Arabic restaurants. He sent money home to Syria and eventually became a U.S. citizen.

After his father sent for him, al-Halabi moved to Dearborn in 1996 at age 17. He was scared to leave Damascus, his sister said, but in the end he couldn't resist the lure of America and college.

From there, al-Halabi's life followed the familiar path of many young Arab immigrants in metro Detroit. He enrolled at Fordson High School in Dearborn and, like other new teenage immigrants, was called a "boater" for his faltering English and cultural missteps. After school, he worked alongside his father in Arabic restaurants.

The older al-Halabi now had two sons nearby and dreamed of opening his own restaurant with their help. But neither son wanted to spend his life cooking. Especially not Ahmad, who was determined to go to college.

In high school, he fell in love with a pretty, dark-haired girl. His father went to see her father about marriage, but the girl's father demanded a $50,000 dowry -- money the family didn't have.

After high school and with dreams of college still in mind, al-Halabi came across an Air Force Web site one night. It promised money for college. Al-Halabi told his father that if he joined the Air Force, he could one day make more than $60,000 a year.

"It became his dream," his father said. His other dream was California. He loved the warm weather and ocean.

In January 2000, both dreams came true. Al-Halabi enlisted and was assigned to Travis Air Force Base in northern California.

He worked in a logistical squad, overseeing supplies and equipment loaded onto huge gray C5 cargo planes. Travis-based planes later played a key role in supplying equipment, troops and humanitarian aid to Afghanistan and Iraq.

He also took computer programming classes at a college.

At least once a week, he ventured off the base a few miles into the town of Fairfield, where he prayed at a makeshift mosque contained in a neat, pastel green house in the center of town. It was a different experience from the huge mosques of Dearborn filled only with Arabs. This tiny house of worship was open to Hispanic and black Muslim converts, and was often led by Indian immigrants.

Al-Halabi took easily to his life at Travis. "He loved the order," his sister said. "He liked that you had to get up at a certain time, and ate at a certain time."

In 2001, his mother called from Syria with exciting news: She had found a wife for him. The girl was sweet and pretty and from a good family. Al-Halabi's mother and the girl's mother had known each other for years. Al-Halabi flew to Syria to meet her. He liked her immediately, his family said, and the two were engaged. He returned to Travis, intent on bringing her to the United States as soon as they married.

In August 2002, al-Halabi was sent to a military base in Kuwait as part of a routine supply troop. Three months later, he was deployed to Guantanamo Bay.

Scrutiny and sympathy
Al-Halabi was unaware of it, but he was under scrutiny even before he arrived at Guantanamo. The list of charges against him details his alleged criminal activity as starting in December 2002 -- less than a month after he arrived there.

An affidavit for a search warrant of his Travis post office box said investigators started watching al-Halabi "based on reports of suspicious activity while he was stationed at Travis AFB and also while deployed to Kuwait" -- assignments he had before Guantanamo. The suspicious activity is not described.

Even murkier is when and why Al-Halabi might have started to sympathize with men his commanding officers firmly believed were terrorists.

In the affidavit for a search warrant, U.S. Air Force special agent Lance Wega said al-Halabi had made statements at Guantanamo "criticizing the United States policy with regard to the detainees and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. He has also expressed sympathy for and has unauthorized contact with the detainees."

Al-Halabi's lawyer, Air Force Maj. Kim London, said he is not a spy and described him as a dutiful, patriotic service member.

"If the public knew the evidence in this case, I can't imagine the media being as slanted," London said. "But they don't know, because the government has classified it."

On some level, sympathy is not uncommon at Guantanamo, according to service members who guard the prisoners.

"You always feel sympathy for them because they are human beings, just like us," said 20-year-old Omar Morales, a National Guard reservist assigned to the military police unit that guards prisoners. "But you always want to keep it professional. Sometimes when you see a guy, and you get to know things about him, you say to yourself, 'Is this guy a terrorist?' "

Prisoners often appeal directly to translators for help.

"I have to go in there with the mind-set that they are all terrorists," said Graylon Person, 22, also a reservist assigned to guard detainees. "You're looking at an old guy, he's trembling like Muhammad Ali, and you're thinking, 'He's really a terrorist?' "

Person and Morales said they believe in the importance of the mission, but they have come up with a private assessment of who is guilty and who is not, based on two months of working in the camp: 70 percent are terrorists, 30 percent are not, they said.

"I could see people sympathizing," Morales said. "Especially their own people."

Miller, the general in charge of the operation, said of the detainees: "Everyone in Camp Delta has either been involved in terrorist activity or supported terrorist activities."

Miller also said he was not aware of any problem with sympathy for prisoners. To curtail such problems, military commanders rotate the guards regularly and strictly control all movement and contact within the facility. And officials have established combat stress teams of counselors to meet with service members.

"We train our leaders to recognize when soldiers are having stress," said Brig. Gen. Mitchell LeClaire, the second in command of the mission and commander of the National Guard's 177th Military Police Brigade based in Taylor.

If al-Halabi was cracking under the pressure of constant appeals from prisoners and frustrated by his extended deployment at Guantanamo, he had places to turn, officials said. Whether he made use of them is classified information.

A fight for his life
On July 19, military counterintelligence officers secretly searched his Guantanamo quarters. According to court records, the agents photographed contraband documents they discovered there, including detainee mail. Agents also copied the hard drive of his laptop. They left everything as they had found it; al-Halabi never knew they were there.

By then, his family members were beginning to arrive in Syria for the wedding. Five hundred people had been invited. His father was already there. His mother, who was ill with cancer and being treated in California, left against the advice of doctors to meet her son in London on July 27. They planned to fly to his wedding together.

On July 23, al-Halabi boarded a plane bound for Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida.

As he stepped off the plane, he was arrested.

Shortly after al-Halabi's arrest, a popular Muslim chaplain and a civilian Arabic translator were arrested for lesser security breaches at Guantanamo that also suggested developing sympathies for the detainees.

Al-Halabi is awaiting a military trial while being held at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Military officials would not comment on the case, because most details are classified.

For the al-Halabi family, their youngest son's troubles have been disastrous. Both of al-Halabi's parents are in failing health. Al-Halabi could, before the end of November, enter a court battle for his life. His fiancee, in a tearful phone call to him, said she wanted to wait for him. Recently, al-Halabi asked for his worn, green and gold Koran.