Under Suspicion | Translation

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Translated by MC Editorial

[Daniel Alarcón]: This is Radio Ambulante. I’m Daniel Alarcón. 

Today’s story begins on November 13, 2018 with an Argentinean family of Lebanese origin: the Abraham Salomón family. That day, they were at their house in Floresta, a neighborhood in the southwest of Buenos Aires.

At around four in the afternoon, Axel, 25, and Marcelo, his father, left the house to reopen their small store, which sold cleaning products. The store was right next door; it was a very short walk.

They had barely taken a few steps when a scream broke the silence. This is Axel:

[Axel Abraham Salomón]: I hear someone say, “Get down on the floor, get down on the floor.” Of course… I looked back to see whether there was someone behind me.

[Daniel]: What he saw was a group of men advancing towards them. They were pressed against the wall, as if crouching, and they wore military clothes—boots, helmets, balaclavas, and long weapons that Axel thought were machine guns.

They also wore bulletproof vests with an acronym stamped in white: GEOF. Grupo Especial de Operaciones Federales, a division of the Argentinean federal police specialized in operations against terrorism and drug trafficking.

Axel did not understand that they were coming for him until one of those men grabbed him by the neck and threw him to the ground. Face down, he could barely see what was happening. He could only see his father, who was in the same position a few meters away. What he heard was the sound of the boots of the police officers kicking open the door of the house. He was stunned. 

[Axel]: Many things cross your mind. It goes a thousand per hour. Why me? What happened? What did I do? What didn’t I do?

[Daniel]: In the confusion, still lying on the ground with his arms tied behind his back, he could only pray for his two-year-old daughter, Laiah, who was inside the house. Axel heard her scream, and begged them:

[Axel]: “Listen, do whatever you want to me, but my daughter is in there,” I tell him, “she’s three years old, please, let me in and let me comfort her, at least. “

[Daniel]: But the more he begged, the more they yelled at him. 

[Axel]: “No, no, you can’t, you have to stay here, you have to stay here. You can’t move.” And I moved, and the more I moved, the more they tightened the handcuffs on me.

[Daniel]: He was only slightly reassured to know that his daughter was with her grandmother, Paola. 

[Paola Salomón]: I was sitting on the couch, watching television with my granddaughter on my lap, feeding her with the bottle. I started to hear banging. I said, “What’s happening? What are they throwing?”

[Daniel]: Suddenly, the police entered the house. 

[Paola]: Like a tsunami that’s coming towards you and you say… I didn’t understand. No, no, no, I couldn’t understand. 

[Daniel]: The men pointed their guns at her and shouted non-stop. 

[Paola]: The only thing they told me was get down on the floor, get down on the floor! “But please, the child,” I said, “be careful, what if you fire a shot by mistake?”

[Daniel]: Frightened, she threw herself to the ground and with her body protected her granddaughter, who would not stop crying. She did not know where her husband and her son were. 

[Paola]: And that’s when it all started. They began to break doors, glass. They opened the kitchen cupboards, they filmed, I don’t know… the glasses, the cups… maybe they were counting how many glasses I have. They scrambled everything.

[Daniel]: She managed to see her son and her husband entering the house again—handcuffed. She looked for her husband, to see whether he could give her an explanation. But she got no answer.

Meanwhile, Axel was being yelled at and questioned:

[Axel]: “Where are the weapons? Tell me where the weapons are. Let’s keep everything simple: tell me where they are. “

I said, “What? I don’t know what you’re looking for,” I tell him. “Yes, you have an AK 47,” he says.

[Daniel]: An AK 47 or Kalashnikov, an assault rifle. Axel didn’t know what they were talking about. He didn’t even live there, in his parents’ house. Two years earlier, he had moved with his wife and his daughter to an apartment in a nearby neighborhood. But the officers insisted. They threatened him: If he didn’t say where the weapons were, they were going to break everything.

[Axel]: “Break everything you want,“ I say. “You will not find it because such a thing does not exist. You came looking for something that doesn’t exist here.”

[Daniel]: There was no AK 47, but there were other weapons: hunting rifles, some revolvers, and ammunition that had belonged to his great-grandfather. Axel hardly remembered they were there. And the officers didn’t take long to find them. They also confiscated military clothing, a couple of computers, cell phones, a tablet, and an external drive. They arranged everything on the floor, next to a sign with the acronym PFA, Argentinean Federal Police, and they took photos of it.

Axel and his family sat in the living room for hours, with no answers as to what they were being accused of, or information about what they were going to do to them. At about 7 pm, Gamal, 23, Axel’s younger brother, who was coming home from work, saw a crowd of people outside the house.

When he reached the door, he was handcuffed immediately and brought into the house.

He saw his family. His mother was crying, his brother was handcuffed, and his father had his hands tied with a seal, a kind of plastic strip.

The wooden doors had holes kicked in and various pieces of furniture were shifted out of their usual place. He also saw all the things the police had piled up.

[Gamal Abraham Salomón]: So I see all that, and when you don’t understand something, you can’t even relate it to anything, like they were going to do something to you because of that.

[Daniel]: The policemen didn’t answer his questions, either. So Gamal sat with the rest, handcuffed, and waited.

Several more hours passed like that, until one of the police officers approached them. Marcelo could stay, but Axel and Gamal would have to go with them. They were told that they would be taken to testify before the judge, since the Delegation of Israeli Associations of Argentina, DAIA, an institution that represents Jewish organizations in the country, had filed a criminal complaint against them.

When Paola heard this, she stood between her sons and the police.

[Paola]: “No, you are not taking him away,“ I said, “don’t take him away.” 

[Daniel]: She was afraid it was the beginning of something serious—a judicial process made up by the police, or something along those lines. She knew it happened sometimes; she had seen it on the news.

Paola did not want to be separated from her children. She was terrified of leaving them alone in the hands of the police.

[Paola]:  I said, “I’m going with them, I’m not going to bother you, I’ll just sit there with them.” “No. How can you go with them?” “Yes, I won’t disturb you,” I said… “I’ll just be with them.”

[Daniel]: One of the officers told her that it was just a formality, that her sons were going to testify and would return that same evening. Gamal asked permission to talk to her and managed to convince the police to cuff his hands in the front for a few minutes so that he could touch her.

[Gamal]: So I hug her and hold her face and tell her, “Stay calm, we’re going to come back, God willing.”

[Daniel]: He wasn’t lying to her just to calm her down: he was convinced that it was a mix-up and that they would return that same night. And he would never use God’s name in vain, especially not with her, who had taught him to take refuge in Islam and prayer when things got difficult.

Life suddenly presented them with a test. And they still didn’t know just how big a test it was going to be. 

We’ll be back after a break.

[Daniel]: We’re back with Radio Ambulante. Our producer Emilia Erbetta picks up the story.

[Emilia Erbetta]: Axel and Gamal, handcuffed, left their house together, but once outside, they were separated.

The peace that Gamal had shown at home, in front of his parents, fell apart as soon as he got in the patrol car.

[Gamal]: It’s a fear like… you have no idea.

Fear and uncertainty. Because I didn’t know what was going to happen and because I was afraid of the situation. I had never experienced something like that, nor had I done things to experience something like this.

[Emilia]: They didn’t tell him where they were taking him. But from the way the car went, he figured they were going north of the city. He was quiet, in the back seat, between two police officers, with two others in front. The officers were talking to each other, and one even sent a WhatsApp audio. Gamal was able to hear what he was saying. 

[Gamal]: “We’re coming back from a raid. This is political.”

[Emilia]: Hearing that word, “political,” puzzled him. Neither he nor his brother were active in any organization, and they were not involved in politics. He thought of all the times he had heard stories about how slow the Argentinean legal system is, how long legal proceedings for cases take—sometimes amounting to years without a resolution, and he had heard about the corruption of the legal system and its complicity with political power.

And, at that moment, he felt sure of something:

[Gamal]: When I heard the phrase “this is political,” I said, “That’s it, I’ll never get out,” I said.

[Emilia]: The patrol cars pulled up about forty minutes later. They had come to a property that covered an entire block. It was like a small gated community. There were several buildings with white walls, and streets lined with trees.

It was midnight when they were taken out of the patrol cars and into one of those buildings. Inside, Gamal saw an official shield that read “Anti-Terrorist Investigation Unit Department” of the Federal Police.

Their fingerprints were then taken, their data was recorded, and they were made to undress in order to photograph their tattoos.

Then Axel was taken to a small room with a television. He was sitting there, watching an old soccer game, when a police officer came over and removed his handcuffs. The relief of having his hands free after so many hours was short-lived. Another officer approached immediately and ordered him to be handcuffed again. He told Axel to stand up, and he began searching him. 

[Axel]: I tell him, “They already searched me before coming here.” “Well, I’m going to search you as many times as I want,” he says.

[Emilia]: In a different situation, Axel would have reacted; he wouldn’t have let anyone talk to him like that, with that arrogance. But there he felt helpless.

[Axel]: At that moment you have no choice but to bow your head, unfortunately, because they have power over you.

[Emilia]: He was afraid that if he tried to resist, everything could be worse. He knew that in fact, what that police officer was telling him was something else:

[Axel]: “I do what I want with you.” Like, “You’re a number and I don’t care.”

[Emilia]: And so he entrusted himself to God.

[Axel]: I said, “If this is how it is, it is your will. Well, so be it. And I’m going to try to hold on as long as I can.”

[Emilia]: Meanwhile, Gamal had been taken straight to a small cell that contained a thin, foam-like mattress, a smelly toilet, and a bright white light that could not be turned off. There were no windows, so there was no way to tell whether it was day or night.

The door had a narrow, horizontal opening, like a mail slot. His food would be passed through there, they explained, during the time he was detained.

When he entered the cell and heard the bolt on the metal door click, he felt some relief. 

[Gamal]: At that moment I felt relief because I said, “Well, I’ll finally be alone to talk to God.”

[Emilia]: And he would have liked to pray because that always calmed him down. When he was upset, stressed or worried about something, praying was like finding a place where he felt safe.

But in the cell he could not pray as he always did, because he did not have any of the elements that Muslims need to pray: not a small stone to separate his forehead from the ground, nor a rug to kneel on, nor a copy of the Koran, the holy book of Islam, to read his prayers. 

[Gamal]: So I just spoke to God. And I was wondering, hey, what did I do to be here? Yes, I worked, studied. I was dating. I didn’t go out on weekends. What did they consider so strange?

[Emilia]: Some time later—he doesn’t know how long—he heard his brother being taken to the next cell. For a while, one of the officers left the door open a crack so they could talk. In those first moments, they talked about God, about their family… They tried to give each other strength. 

[Axel]: “We must stay together. We must be strong. We must endure. Patience. This is a trial from God,” we said. “God does not give you a weight that you cannot carry.” 

[Emilia]: Meanwhile, outside those cells, their arrest was making national news.

[Archive soundbite]

[Channel 9]: Two Argentinean brothers, who are Hezbollah sympathizers, have just been arrested…

[Telenueve]: The issue is that they found a large number of weapons: rifles, shotguns, pistols, revolvers…

[CNN]: All this was in the possession of two people who were supposedly linked to Hezbollah… [Hezbollah in Argentina]

[Emilia]: Hezbollah: a political organization, legal in Lebanon, but with a military branch that is considered terrorist by several countries in the world. In Argentina, talking about Hezbollah has a special meaning, because it is the organization designated as responsible—together with the Iranian State—for the attack on the building of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association, AMIA, where an explosion caused by a car bomb killed 85 people in 1994.

All these news clips were accompanied by pictures of Axel and Gamal. Some media even showed their police records on the screen, showing their ID numbers and even the address of the house where Gamal and his parents lived. It was official information, made public in a press release by the Ministry of Security.

Axel and Gamal’s parents found it unbearable to see the pictures of their children like that, handcuffed, exposed, and also categorized as dangerous terrorists. This is Paola: 

[Paola]: That is a way to humiliate people… Other people’s faces are covered. Why? What investigation did they carry out first? Who cleans up their image before society?

[Emilia]: The same evening their sons were taken away, Paola and Marcelo looked for a well-known lawyer. His name is Ismael Jalil, and he is also a member of the Lebanese community. He was immediately struck by the timing of the arrest, because there were only three weeks left before the start of the G20, an annual forum where the leaders of governments and presidents of central banks from 20 countries meet, and that year, 2018, it would be held in Buenos Aires at the beginning of December. Ismael had a theory: 

[Ismael Jalil]: The government was preparing to give some proof that it was qualified to fight terrorism and fulfill the duties for which it had been called by Trump and company.

[Emilia]: That was a political reading of the arrest, of course. For the lawyer, what was happening to Axel and Gamal was nothing more than a government strategy combined with the Islamophobia that associates the Muslim community with terrorism.

Paola did not know what the G20 was, but she suspected from the beginning that it all had to do with her family’s religion. During the raid, she saw how the officers were interested in a text in Arabic that she had posted on the fridge. It was an Islamic prayer, but by confiscating it with the rest of the things, they had treated it as incriminating evidence.

It was not the first time that she felt prejudice because of her religion.

[Paola]: Sometimes I feel like I must pass a test every day. They judge me because of my veil. No, they don’t judge you for your intellect, for your intelligence, for your studies, for your abilities. You leave your surroundings, the neighborhood, those who already know you, and they start looking at you.

[Emilia]: And there are some moments, some specific circumstances when the stares become even harder, more painful.

[Paola]: When something happens abroad, right? Something happens, an attack, whatever. The looks start to change. 

[Emilia]: They change; it’s as if they were telling you something:

[Paola]: You Arabs, you Muslims—you are the terrorists.

[Emilia]: And now she felt that what was happening to them was nothing more than a monstrous version of those looks.

Axel and Gamal saw the sun again on the morning of Thursday, November 15, almost two days after leaving their house, when a police officer went looking for them to announce that they had to testify at the Federal Courts, east of the city.

They were taken in separate cars and, once there, they were put in cells that were smaller and darker than the previous ones. While he waited, unable to speak to his brother, Axel began to read the sentences that other detainees had written on the walls. One stuck with him:

[Axel]: “Here you learn to live in the dark and away from mom.” And it’s true, you’re alone in there. There you are alone. And you have to figure things out any way you can. 

[Emilia]: A few hours later, they were called in to testify.

They entered the judge’s chambers separately. He did not address them—the court clerk did, and finally explained in more detail why they were detained. The clerk told them that on January 31 of that year, almost eleven months back, the Delegation of Israeli Associations of Argentina, or DAIA, had filed a complaint against them with the Anti-Terrorist Investigation Unit of the Federal Police.

According to the DAIA, an anonymous message had come into their email that said: “…in a gym there is a person named Gamal Salomón, a Muslim and a supporter of Hezbollah. Although I have no contact with him (…) this person travels to Lebanon several times a year to train. He has shown them videos shooting long weapons (…) this person has an AK-47 put away (…) I’m leaving you his and his brother’s social networks.”  The email was accompanied by two screenshots of the Facebook profiles of Axel and Gamal.

Axel asked to be shown the videos. 

[Axel]: And the clerk says, “No, no, I don’t have them.” So what am I doing here? I tell them, “You are depriving me of my freedom. Without strong evidence. I don’t understand. Every person is innocent until proven otherwise,” I say. “You, more than anyone, should know that.”

[Emilia]: They gave him no answer and continued with the questions.

In the accusation against Axel and Gamal, there was another central point: their trips to Lebanon, Syria and Iran. They were interested in knowing how they had traveled, with whom, why, and how they had paid for those trips.

Gamal tried to answer in as much detail as possible. He had been to Lebanon four times, twice with his family, including Axel. They had also been in Syria to visit, along with other relatives, the Záynab Mosque, the Shrine of the Prophet Muhammad’s granddaughter in Damascus, and he, on his own, had spent a month and a half in Iran taking a course in Islamic religion.

They also asked him about the weapons found in the family home during the search. There were several—a shotgun, four revolvers, two pistols, and a compressed air rifle, the kind used to hunt animals. Gamal said they were part of the family heirloom and that some of them he had never seen before.

[Gamal]: The weapons were in one room—in two rooms. They found them because of instructions from my father that said, “Yu will find this here, this is there, this is here, this is under lock…”

[Emilia]: Everything except a 1909 Mauser rifle that was in his room, kept in its holster because his grandmother had left it there many years ago.

[Gamal]: And the Mauser remained there, with its holster. Everything was always in the same place. When we moved, that room became my brother’s and mine, and the Mauser stayed there. We don’t even touch it.

[Emilia]: They had also included a baseball bat as evidence.

[Gamal]: Things that were ours, yes, but a baseball bat? My dad bought it for me for Children’s Day. I remember when I was a boy with the mitt and the ball, and they added it as if it were a lethal weapon, like saying, “Look what he had, a baseball bat.” 

[Emilia]: And they also included a baton that had been a gift from a policeman friend, and a wooden stick that was actually a broomstick, painted in colors, that his father used to practice Sibpalki, a martial art.

[Gamal]: They put it there as if they were weapons of war, weapons that a terrorist has to use.

[Emilia]: Another thing that the police seized from the home during the raid was a magnet with the photo of the Secretary General of Hezbollah. Gamal told them it was something they had brought back from one of those trips to Lebanon, as a souvenir of something important in that country. 

[Gamal]: When you go to Cuba, you bring a magnet of Che Guevara or Fidel, if you like it or if you sympathize, or if you agree, or because it is something related to the country, it is transcendental in the country where you visited, so you bring it…

[Emilia]: They spent several hours testifying. When they were done, they were taken back to a cell. Now they could be together, so they took the opportunity to talk and exchange a little peace of mind. Since they had answered all those questions, surely everything would start to become clear. That’s what Axel thought. 

[Axel]: I thought I was making a statement and I would walk out, that it was all a mix-up, that they had made a mistake.

The judge had up to ten days to decide their procedural situation after the statement. But just a few hours later, he had made up his mind. Gamal recalls how it was explained to him:

[Gamal]: They told me that the request for release the lawyer had filed after the questioning had been rejected by the judge and that they were to refer me to a penitentiary unit in the next few days.

[Emilia]: To the Ezeiza prison, an hour from Buenos Aires. One of the largest in Argentina.

Gamal barely reacted. 

[Gamal]: I was confused, I was very tired… I said, “Okay.” No, I didn’t say anything else; I didn’t even ask them why. 

[Emilia]: They were accused of illegal possession of war weapons and stockpiling of ammunition, two crimes that carry penalties of up to 10 years in prison. They would leave for the prison two days later.

We’ll be back after a break. 

[Daniel]: We’re back with Radio Ambulante. Emilia Erbetta continues the story.

Emilia Erbetta continues the story.

[Emilia]: Before leaving for the Ezeiza jail, Axel and Gamal spent the night together in one of the cells of the federal courthouse.

It was a long, cold, very difficult night. Axel can’t forget it.

[Axel]: We were starving, we ate bread, we drank water, nothing else. They made my brother clean all the bathrooms in exchange for a blanket because we were cold. We slept, I remember, back to back to keep warm with our faces on the floor.

[Emilia]: But it wasn’t just the cold and exhaustion. They were also paralyzed by fear. 

[Axel]: Everything is very uncertain in there. I didn’t know whether I would be transferred, then killed… by another prisoner, I don’t know. It is a world unknown to me. I didn’t know what was going to happen to me in there.

[Emilia]: They were taken to the prison at dawn on Friday, November 16, three days after their arrest. They rode in a small police van with other detainees, cuffs on their hands and feet, and in silence. Gamal didn’t even dare look around. 

[Gamal]: My brother had told me not to look at anyone—they just might take it personally. A prisoner could react violently. 

[Emilia]: Although he was only 3 years older, Axel always fulfilled his role as Gamal’s older brother and protector. But during the trip he was just as terrified.

When the van stopped, they both felt the same:

[Gamal]: And we said, “Well, just about anything can happen here. Everything you saw in the movies, that can happen here. It could be different, it could be worse, better—I don’t know.”

[Emilia]: As soon as they went in, they began to hear whistles. Gamal shivered.

[Gamal]: “That’s it,” I said, “they’ve singled me out.”.

[Emilia]: “They’ve singled me out.” In other words, they already knew he wasn’t one of them.

They were fingerprinted and taken to a cell, together. Accompanying each other, being able to talk… this made them feel somewhat better. Gamal felt that what was happening to them was a test, and that they, like the Prophet Muhammad once upon a time, had to face it by taking refuge in faith. In faith and in each other. An hour later, they were placed in a queue along with eight other detainees. 

[Gamal]: They called us one by one and told us which wing of the building each one of us was going to go to. They call me and say, “You are going to go to G.” And they tell my brother, “You are going to go to wing C.”

[Emilia]: A few minutes later, a police officer approached him. 

[Gamal]: “They sent you to the worst pavilion; you have no idea what that is like,” he told me… And I said, “What?” And he said, “If you want to live, you will have to put money on the table.”

[Emilia]: The whole situation seemed unreal, like a scene from a movie.

[Gamal]: “What do you mean, money? What do you mean, if want to live?” I didn’t understand anything. “So,” I said, “they are going to kill me.” And he didn’t answer, and told me, “Keep calm. The prisoners will explain it to you when you come in later.” That’s when the psychological torture began.

[Emilia]: When he went to his zone, he couldn’t believe his eyes. The place was awful. He found what looked like the remains of a fight. Things were scattered everywhere. His cell smelled bad. On a tray were the remains of what had once been chicken and was now a rotten mass full of bugs. There was also a dirty toilet and a thin, torn mattress, impregnated with the smell of cigarettes. As well as he could, Gamal lay down on the mattress. He had no pillow and no blanket, and the place was cold, damp. He felt exhausted but didn’t think he could sleep. He was terrified.

[Gamal]:  That night I cried myself to sleep because I thought they would kill me the next day. I said, “That’s it. I wasn’t able to say goodbye to my family or anything. They will kill me here.”

[Emilia]: In his cell, Axel felt the same way. 

[Axel]: I cried like a baby. In there it makes no difference—no matter how much you want to sleep, you can’t. You close your eyes, but your head keeps thinking.

Because you wake up at the slightest noise; it’s automatic because you think something could happen to you.

[Emilia]: Separated, each one in his area, the days began to pass, days in which there was not much to do. They watched television in the common area they shared with the other inmates, they talked with some of them, and they counted the hours until they could call home and talk to their family. That provided some relief. Each one on his own, they tried to do the same: avoid getting into trouble, and above all not react when other inmates or the guards called them “bomb” or “little bomb.” After all, it wasn’t the first time it had happened to them. This is Gamal:

[Gamal]: I’m so used to hearing jokes like bomb-thrower, little bomb, that it feels normal… And what I’m telling you is something very serious, because it feels normal to be discriminated against or… to see that that stereotype of a Muslim terrorist used against you… or to see your name linked to terrorism and… it is very serious. 

[Emilia]: It hurt, but they knew it was best to ignore it.

It was the same thing their mother did when she went to visit them in jail those first days. When she went up to Security, she was asked to stand over a large scanner that is used to check that no one brings in prohibited items. Paola was wearing long sleeves and had her hair covered by the Islamic headscarf. One police officer…

[Paola]: She made me stand in front of the scanner and she looks at her partner and makes a boom, as if saying that I was going to explode.

[Emilia]: Paola was silent. 

[Paola]: I could not do anything. What was I going to do? I was afraid that… my sons were inside. I say, “What if they do something to them?” A mother’s thoughts. I wanted to take care of them at all times.

[Emilia]: Axel and Gamal were separated for about five days, until they were transferred to the same wing for inmates who displayed good conduct. It was a much quieter place. Together, life in prison became a little easier. Although they slept in separate cells, they spent a large part of the day keeping each other company.

But still, Gamal was overwhelmed by the color of the prison. Everything was gray.

[Gamal]: There is no green or red or yellow, blue, something different, no. It is two shades of gray: a light gray and a dark gray, half and half. There are no other colors.

[Emilia]: Sometimes he felt that that constant, ever-present gray was one more wall. To avoid it for a while, Gamal invited Axel to his cell. There they spent hours talking and looking out a small window at the property that surrounds the prison. The grass, the barbed wire, and in the distance, the highway. 

[Gamal]: I would look out the window and see the green grass. I saw the blue sky, I saw the white clouds, and I saw the colors of the cars, and that for me was the best thing in the world, the landscape.

We breathed the air that came from outside… it was the sublime moment of the day.

[Emilia]: Axel saw something more than a landscape.

[Axel]: We saw freedom… that people don’t… they have no notion of what freedom is.

[Emilia]: Those moments together were a relief, but to be really calm, they still needed to be able to pray. Every time she went to see them, their mother brought them halal clothes and food, that is, prepared according to Muslim rules. On one of her first visits, she also brought them a prayer rug and a Koran, but she was denied permission to bring them in.

That time, Paola returned to her house distraught. But a few days later, during one of those calls, Axel and Gamal gave her some news: 

[Paola]: One of my sons tells me, “Someone gave us… I’m sorry I’m crying…. They gave us a rug and a Koran in here.”

[Emilia]: It had not been a gesture from the guards, but from another detainee, whom Axel had met by chance during a medical examination.

[Axel]: He approached and said, “Hey, so you guys are Muslims.” “Yes.” And he says, “Oh, look, you know, I have a rug. If you want, I’ll give it to you. And you know what else I have? I have a Koran,” he tells me. “Yes, yes, someone had also given it to me. I have it there, but no, I don’t use it. Take it,” he says.

[Emilia]:  He couldn’t believe what the man was telling him. He didn’t ask what he was doing with those things there. The man didn’t tell him either, but it was clear to Axel…

[Axel]: You can call me crazy, but for me it was a sign from God. I see it… I see it like that, like a miracle. I don’t know, a message as if to say, “Here I am.” Because it was pretty crazy. They wouldn’t let me bring it in from outside. And just some guy I don’t know, he’s got it in there.

[Emilia]: With the rug, the Koran and a piece of paper they placed between their foreheads and the fabric, they had everything they needed to pray. And in there, they needed that more than ever. 

[Gamal]: We clung to it, and it’s like more and more God was giving you the signs that, “I am with you. Don’t give up, I am with you, be patient.”

[Daniel]:  We’ll be back after a break. 

[Daniel]: We’re back with Radio Ambulante. Emilia Erbetta continues the story.

[Emilia]: In the meantime, all their parents could do was follow the legal process and try to speed it up. They talked to the lawyer constantly and knew that the evidence against their children was weak. For example, the anonymous video that the DAIA complaint spoke of was not attached to the file as evidence. Paula couldn’t understand it. She wondered…

[Paola]: Why do they not investigate? That anonymous thing, where did it come from? There is always the double standard.

You have to investigate on both sides, where that anonymous letter came from. It was a very serious accusation they made… terrorism… very serious.

[Emilia]: Her husband had explained that the older guns had belonged to the children’s great-grandfather, and that a newer Bersa pistol, which had also been taken, was his and he had the half-finished paperwork for a carry permit. It was an irregularity, yes, but not serious enough for her sons to be held in a federal prison.

The truth is that the investigation against Axel and Gamal had already fallen apart once. A first federal judge had dismissed this same complaint from the DAIA because he had found no connection between Axel and Gamal, to the supposed terrorist cells of Hezbollah that were mentioned in that anonymous email that had started everything. However, he sent the investigation of a possible illegal possession of weapons to the legal system of the City of Buenos Aires.

Nine months later, in September, the DAIA ratified the complaint and added the addresses of the gyms where Axel and Gamal trained. So, after some intelligence work by the City Police, the case returned to the federal jurisdiction, because the City prosecutor recused himself from investigating people allegedly linked to terrorist networks, since that is a federal crime. So the investigation had been reactivated, which led to the raid.

All this had happened in a span of eleven months, while the Argentinean government was preparing the G20 Summit. Since the beginning of their term, the President at that time, Mauricio Macri, and the Minister of Security Patricia Bullrich had placed at the core of their policies the idea of an Argentina that should be aligned with the key countries in the fight against terrorism and drug trafficking. To that end, they increased the intelligence budget, bought weapons and surveillance software, and established agreements of cooperation and information with other countries.

This policy intensified as the G20 Summit drew closer. So much so that several human rights organizations and members of the opposition warned that the government was using the summit to harden the discourse against social protest and exaggerate its war against terrorism with measures such as the detention of Axel and Gamal.

On November 16, 2018, the same day that the Salomón brothers were transferred to the Ezeiza prison, Congresswoman Myriam Bregman, of the Leftist Front, went on television to talk about the minister’s policies regarding the G20.

[Archive soundbite]

[Myriam Bregman]: She is saying practically all the time that she is doing intelligence on all the organizations of social and political militants, and that is illegal, so she justifies it because of the G20… But later, it is used again to seriously stigmatize the Muslim community, as we saw today. For this reason, in addition to repudiating and pointing out Bullrich’s atrocities…

[Emilia]: In those days leading up to the G20, Axel and Gamal were not the only ones detained. The police had also carried out operations on the premises of anarchist groups and had arrested two other men in Buenos Aires on suspicion of terrorism. In a radio interview in which she was asked about that case, Minister Bullrich also spoke about the arrests of Axel and Gamal.

[Archive soundbite]

[Patricia Bullrich]: Two brothers who had, shall we say, the use of weapons and a number of videos showing situations of attacks… 

[Emilia]: The G20 met on November 30, and the city of Buenos Aires came to a standstill. The media were talking about the most important security deployment in Argentinean history and the millions of dollars invested to protect world leaders.

The president decreed a holiday on the first day, which fell on a Friday, and on several television programs, the minister advised people to leave the city for the long weekend.

[Patricia Bullrich]: Our recommendation is that you use the long weekend to leave, that you leave on Thursday, because the city is going to be very tense, because the security measures are very strong and the decisions we are going to make if there is violence are going to be immediate decisions because we are not going to allow it.

[Emilia]: Some international media also connected the arrest of Axel and Gamal to the arrival of the G20.

[Archive soundbite]

[AFP-TV]: Argentina is ready to host the G20 Summit, Security Minister Patricia Bullrich said on Friday: “We believe that we are ready and prepared; we are going to have a large number of security forces.”

The police arrested two brothers this week in Buenos Aires for alleged links to the Hezbollah movement, seizing knives and weapons of different calibers. 

[Emilia]: Axel and Gamal had been detained in Ezeiza for two weeks when the presidents began to arrive in Argentina: Donald Trump, Angela Merkel, Vladimir Putin, Emmanuel Macron, Xi Jinping…

The lawyer told them that everything would be cleared up when the G20 ended and Paola repeated this to her sons whenever she could.

But when she came back home, she would fall apart and all she wanted was to sleep… 

[Paola]: And wake up once they were outside. Let it all seem like a dream. That is what I felt sometimes, wanting to sleep and wake up and have them here with me. 

[Emilia]: The G20 Summit ended on December 1, by which time Axel and Gamal had already been under arrest for nearly three weeks.

Five days later, Paola and Axel’s wife were in the queue at the jail waiting to visit them, when they were approached by a police officer. 

[Paola]: And he says, “No, no, no, no, the boys are not here.” “What do you mean they are not?” “No, they are not,” he tells me. And I say, “But where are they?” He says, “They were summoned.” And to tell you the truth, I didn’t understand the word. I told him, “Look, tell me what it means, because I don’t understand you. My head no longer… it doesn’t work. I can’t understand any more.”

[Emilia]: The officer explained that they had gone to testify again before the judge in the federal court. So Paola and her daughter-in-law went back home.

During the time that they had been away, going to the prison, the father of the young men had gotten a call from the lawyer and had gone with him to the court. He was already there when Axel and Gamal arrived. They had been taken out of their cells very early without much explanation and did not know what to expect. 

[Gamal]: And then, as we are walking down the hall, arriving at the judge’s chambers, I see my dad… 

[Emilia]: As soon as he saw his father’s face, he knew it would be good news. 

[Gamal]: He smiles at me and goes like this, and I see the lawyer who tells me we are going home. And then when he told me we are going home, I said, “It’s over, I’m free.”

[Emilia]: Gamal relaxed, at least a little. In any case, in the courthouse he was told that he was being prosecuted for possession of weapons and that he was under an embargo of 300,000 pesos—about eight thousand dollars at that time—because the confiscated weapons were in his house. He could not leave the country and would have to report to the court once a month. He said yes to everything; he promised they would not have any problems with him. All he wanted was to get out of there.

As for Axel, the finding was no grounds, because he did not live there at the time of the raid. The process did not end completely, but he could be released while it continued.

 That was a different story.

It was two in the afternoon when Axel’s wife received a message from her mother-in-law. Paola was next to her. 

[Paola]: Telling her, “We are bringing them home…” Oh! My daughter-in-law jumped! “They are bringing them!” And I fell. My legs went limp. 

[Emilia]: When the brothers left the office, they were longer handcuffed. They arrived home and a crowd was waiting for them. 

[Gamal]: When I get home, I see all the people from the community, everyone in the street waiting for us, everyone in the street shouting.

[Emilia]: For Paola, having her children home again was the answer to all her prayers. 

[Paola]: That day was, Oh! Like I got them back. They were reborn for me.

[Emilia]: The whole family celebrated until dawn, and when they went to bed, all the Abrahams slept through the night for the first time in almost a month.

The case against them was closed in March 2019, almost five months later.

In legal terms, they were dismissed, which means that there was not enough evidence to continue or go to trial.

So Axel and Gamal returned gradually to their former lives. Although it was not without obstacles. Gamal lost his job at an institution that accompanies people who want to get a visa for the United States. They told him it had to do with a budget cut, but he could never shake the idea that it had to do with his arrest. He also had problems with some telephone companies, because unknown people had gotten mobile lines in his name, thanks to his personal information published by the media.

Axel had other problems. During his arrest, all his credit cards were cancelled for involvement in a terrorism case.

And today, almost five years later, all his data is still posted on the internet. 

[Gamal]: You Google our names or type “the Salomón brothers” and all the… the news shows up.

[Emilia]: It is as if they had been frozen in November 2018. In Argentina, the first results with their names are the articles and videos that were published about them after their arrest.

One, from the Argentine media outlet Infobae, says: “Two followers of the terrorist group Hezbollah were detained in Buenos Aires with a large number of weapons.”

These articles are a reminder of damage that is irreparable to them and that is still happening. There is a name for this in Argentinean law: continuing damage. It was explained to me in a call by their current lawyer, Brian Magnaghi, who represents them in a process that began in 2022 to try to clear their name. It is a civil lawsuit against certain media, to get them to take down from the web those posts in which they describe them as terrorists. 

So far, they have had no results. The lawyer also represents them in a claim for damages against the Argentinean State. Because Axel and Gamal want the Judiciary to answer the question that still torments their family: Why was their house raided and why were they arrested with no more evidence than an anonymous complaint?

Even his father, who preferred not to speak to us for this episode, asked that before a group of journalists when they were detained:

[Archive soundbite]

[Marcelo-TN]: Can anyone make an anonymous complaint and ruin the lives of two people just because?

[Emilia]: The lawsuit could take years to resolve, but Axel and Gamal want the Argentinean State to admit that it did wrong. 

[Brian Magnaghi]: The most serious thing of all was requesting a search warrant based on an anonymous complaint without any type of proof. Certain steps have to be carried out in an investigation to support a measure like that.

[Emilia]: But there is a question that they know the Judiciary will not be able to answer: Why them? At that point, the lawyer has a hypothesis that is difficult to prove in court but that does offer a possible reading of everything that happened.  

[Brian]: If they had not been Muslims—this is a personal reading, right?— this would not have prospered, right? The fact they were called Abraham Salomón, the fact they were religious, was what gave carte blanche to the State and the media to be able to do whatever they wanted with them. After having years and years and years of demonizing a culture, demonizing a religion, just linking them to a criminal act was enough for everyone to presume they had something to do with it.

[Emilia]: And although it is difficult to prove, Axel, Gamal, and also their family, are convinced that their identity and their religion was what put them in the crosshairs. This is Gamal:

[Gamal]: Just the other day, my mother and I were talking, and she said, “Gamal, how can it be that we always have to be held accountable? Why? Why do I have to go around clarifying that I am Argentinean, that I am a Muslim and Argentinean, that I am not a terrorist that I do not set bombs…? Is it fair?” she asks me. “No, ma, it’s not fair.”

[Emilia]: In these six years, Axel had another daughter and Gamal dropped out of Marketing to study Law. 

[Axel]: Being accused of terrorism is… it’s like… sorry for what I’m about to say, OK? But they throw a bucket of shit at you and give you a swab to clean yourself. 

[Emilia]: However, that three-week nightmare also taught both of them something. For Axel, although it sounds paradoxical, it was proof that not everyone has bad intentions.

[Axel]: There are still good people. Inside the prison there are people who really want change. There are people, many innocent people who are in there, for the same thing that I went through. 

[Emilia]:  He often thinks of that day when another detainee approached him and gave him a Koran and a prayer rug. He took it with him when he was released and sometimes, still today, he uses it to say his prayers.

For Gamal, the change was even more profound, almost existential.

[Gamal]: It taught me to value freedom. People think that it is normal to be free… And so you live your life and make plans… but you do not realize that you are free.

[Emilia]: And now, sometimes, he forgets again. But when that happens, when he takes his freedom for granted, he always returns to that scene, the one of the afternoons he spent with his brother, both looking out at the world through that small prison window. 

[Daniel]: To this day, the brothers and their family do not know the origin of the anonymous complaint against them.

Emilia Erbetta produced this story. She is a producer for Radio Ambulante and lives in Buenos Aires.

This story was edited by Camila Segura and Luis Fernando Vargas. Bruno Scelza did the fact-checking. The sound design is by Andrés Azpiri. Ana Tuirán made the music.

The rest of the Radio Ambulante team includes Paola Alean, Lisette Arévalo, Pablo Argüelles, Adriana Bernal, Aneris Casassus, Diego Corzo, Camilo Jiménez Santofimio, Rémy Lozano, Selene Mazón, Juan David Naranjo, Melisa Rabanales, Natalia Ramírez, Barbara Sawhill, David Trujillo, Elsa Liliana Ulloa and Desirée Yépez.

Carolina Guerrero is the CEO. 

Radio Ambulante is a podcast by Radio Ambulante Estudios, produced and mixed on the Hindenburg PRO program. 

Radio Ambulante tells the stories of Latin America. I’m Daniel Alarcón. Thanks for listening.