Guantanamo Muslim Adviser Treads Lightly

A detainee holds prayer beads following the midday Islamic prayer, at Camp Delta detention center, Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, Cuba, in this Dec. 4, 2006 file photo, reviewed by a U.S. Dept. of Defense official. Known only as "Zak" by the detention staff and "Zaki" to the detainees, the Middle Eastern man's name is a tightly held secret. No one in his family except his wife knows he works at this U.S. military base, where nearly 400 men captured in Washington's war on terror are held. He is Guantanamo Bay's Muslim cultural adviser, a civilian employee who meets with detainees and helps their American captors understand their Muslim ways. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley) (Brennan Linsley - AP)

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- The Middle Eastern man's name is a tightly held secret. No one in his family except his wife knows he works at this U.S. military base, where nearly 400 men captured in Washington's war on terror are held.

Known only as "Zak" to the detention staff and "Zaki" to detainees, he is Guantanamo Bay's Muslim cultural adviser, a civilian employee who meets with them and helps their American captors understand their ways.

Zak says he has helped add books to the prison library, improve the prisoners' food and at times has raised inmate concerns to the prison's military commander. But he's no advocate for the detainees, and many don't like him very much. Zak says the inmates have branded him a traitor and an enemy of God _ and that they would kill him if they could.

That's why even Zak's native country is kept secret.

"I have to use my experience and my commonsense. I don't want to put myself in any situation that will jeopardize my life," the 49-year adviser told The Associated Press in a rare interview in a conference room just outside the detention center's razor wire-topped fences.

Zak recounted how on a recent night, he had retired to his quarters when he learned that four prisoners wanted to see him right away inside the prison. Zak, the only Muslim cultural affairs adviser at Guantanamo Bay, quickly returned to work, but after talking to guards, decided against the meeting.

He suspected the men were planning to attack him _ most likely with a "cocktail" of bodily fluids.

"Sometimes, I see into their games," said Zak, a lean man with salt-and-pepper hair, as he slowly shook his head as if talking about unruly children.

Zak, who works for a private contractor hired by the military, is vague about his background, saying only that he is an engineer and was educated in Europe and the United States.

He and his wife owned a convenience store somewhere in the United States. They closed it, he said, because customers taunted her after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Zak then became a translator for the United States, working in Iraq. He arrived at this base in southeast Cuba in 2005.

"I want a better future for my kids and your kids and to stop this extremism and terrorism in the Middle East," he said.

Zak sees himself as an educator. He teaches guards, doctors and anyone else with access to the detainees about Islamic religious and cultural sensitivities. It's an important job _ when reports emerged in 2005 that guards had mishandled the Quran, it triggered protests in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Even today, prisoners still claim that guards disturb them during prayers _ an allegation the military and Zak deny. He calls complaints of prisoner mistreatment "baloney."