“Did you get Australian citizenship?” ISD did not know.

Article #13

During one of the breaks in interrogation, Roslan and Larsson were in the room with me, typing on their phones. Still looking at his phone, Larsson asked “Zul, why you didn’t get Australian citizenship?”

I stared at them “You know if I answer you, I will get in more trouble.”

They looked surprised.

“Did you get Australian citizenship?” Roslan queried.

“Yes.”

They rushed out of the room. They returned to the room a few minutes later with Tim and Ong. Tim asked me to confirm if I was an Australian citizen. I told him I was.

Charlton joined the interrogation the next morning. Charlton asked me if I had citizenship of any other country. I told him I did not. I was told that I needed to decide which citizenship I would renounce. Tim gave me a form to request Australian consulate assistance.

I was not sure if I wanted to seek consulate assistance. I was hoping they would release me soon on Restricted Order and did not want to aggravate the situation by asking for consulate support. I was sure that if I requested support, they would deny it and become more aggressive. I would be told that I had something to hide.

I told Tim that I was not sure if I wanted to ask for Australian consulate support. Tim told me to write a letter thanking the ISD for allowing me time to decide.

Tim had also asked me for my home computer hard disk drive. He told me to get my family to ship my hard disk to the ISD when they returned to Melbourne. When I told him it did not make sense since my children would need to use the computer too, he told me I was trying to hide and that I was being deceptive.

I knew the drill. I did not think anything I said mattered anymore given how many false confessions I had signed.

All I waited for was the chance to write the truth in the mitigation statement. Every night in the cell, I would run through in my mind, all the statements that I had to sign. I would verbally restate the truth to myself. Recounting the statements and restating the truth helped me remember what happened and eased the emotional stress from the false statements.

I was sure that everyday when I was brought to interrogation would be the day I was allowed to write my actual statements. After the third week, Charlton visited me and said he was not happy with my statements because I did not implicate myself enough.

“I am going to detain you.”

After he left, Ong blamed it on the statement about AlBarra father in law’s tractor. (Read here)

He insisted I should have said I wanted to migrate to Syria to join ISIS. But I had the opportunity to implicate myself more the next few days so that his bosses would accept that I was not a threat anymore.

I was told that if I implicated myself then they would feel confident that I was not a threat since I had taken responsibility.

But if I rejected their accusations, then that means I was lying and would be a threat.

As the days went, I was forced to make up more and more stories about myself. I thought it was amazing that they essentially told me that if I told the truth, I would be detained but if I lied, I would be released.

Towards the fourth week, the ISD became more interested in my friends at Almakhazin. They asked about the other members but soon focused on Muhammad.

They demanded to know how much money Muhammad had. I told them I had no clue. He never shared that information with me. Chang noted that Muhammad was wealthy. “What if Muhammad want the world to end? He has money to do things.”

His mental leaps would impress a kangaroo.

He wanted to find something to implicate my friends and would try anything. They asked me if Muhammad supported ISIS. I said no. I told them that in 2014 when I was in Singapore, Muhammad did not even know who they were even when they were reported in the media. Soon after ISIS captured Mosul, I told Muhammad that “this guy want to set up a Caliphate”, while pointing to Baghdadi’s picture. He liked the thought of a Caliphate (as many Muslims do) but had no clue who Baghdadi was or what they were doing.

Soon after, when Muhammad heard of the atrocities he clearly rejected ISIS. He had nothing to do with them. But it did not stop ISD from trying.

After I was given the Detention Order, Larsson and Ong met with me, and asked for more information about Muhammad. Ong said “I met with my boss. He was anxious! He received new information about Muhammad. He said to me follow the money.”

They repeatedly asked me about his money. I kept telling them I had no clue. But I told them the idea of Muhammad wanting the world to end did not make sense.

“He wanted his children to take over funding the Qur’an school and his business when they grow up. How could he be planning for the end of the world if he had multigenerational plans for his school and business?”

They kept telling me to implicate Muhammad until I had nightmares of Muhammad being detained too.

Continued in the next article.

---