Mohamedou Ould Slahi was born on 21 December, 1970, is a Writer. I had started to lose feeling and it would have made no difference anyway.. Then a sergeant major pulled him aside for a brief interview, and assigned him to work the night shift in Echo Special, a secret, single-occupancy unit that had been built to house the United States militarys highest-value detainee. With a movie based on his ordeal. I am denied my freedom because I was denied my freedom, Salahi said. Then Abu Hafs greeted Wood, who, appearing paralyzed by confusion, coldly took his hand. One of Salahis friends, who was now living in Canada, suggested that he move to Montreal. In time, he was given back his pain medication. ; mosques in Duisburg; and his cousin Abu Hafs al-Mauritani. He was terrifiedhe wanted to go back to Canada, where interrogators behaved within the bounds of the law. But he did not consider himself a member of Al Qaeda, or a facilitator of its operations. Salahi was asked about innocuous exchanges from intercepted e-mails and phone calls, as if they had been conducted in code. But it wasnt until two years later that bin Laden shared with the Shura Council the broad outlines of the attack: four planes; two civilian targets; two government targets. So look at me, Salahi said. Even if the military believed he was innocent, he figured that he knew too much about classified torture programs to be let out into the world. Force-feeding during the daylight hours of Ramadan, when Muslims are supposed to fast. Amna Nawaz: He was tortured by his American interrogators, subjected to solitary confinement,. . The examiner described Salahi, whose answers contradicted everything he had confessed to Zuley in the preceding weeks, as eager to prove that he is providing accurate information. The results were decisive: No deception indicated.. Recently released "Guantnamo Diary" author Mohamedou Slahi gives a heartfelt thanks to his supporters in this moving new video, filmed where he belongs: at home with his family. No, its not looking good at all, Salahi said. Wood told Salahi that he was working for his brothers construction company, repairing bridges. But I give him advice, and he takes it., Mauritania was the site of regular jihadi violence in the second half of the aughts, while Abu Hafs was living in Iran. Have you heard of Nelson Mandela? Wood recalled Salahi saying. Slahi told me he is hearing voices now, the interrogator wrote. He and Abdellahi knelt on the runway, and prayed together. were entering a period of self-reflection; during the next several years, internal and congressional investigations would expose many of the worst abuses that had been inflicted on Salahi and other men in custody. February 27, 2019. Her wife was on hand to support her last month, as she scooped the coveted Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe for her efforts in The Mauritanian. After Salahi was processed, he spent thirty days in a cold isolation cell, a practice that the U.S. government considered a main building block of the exploitation process, as it allows the captor total control over personal inputs. When the isolation period was over, Salahi learned from other detainees that there was a difference in opinion between those who had lived in European democracies and those who had lived only in Muslim countries, with the latter group arguing that Americas war on terror was an anti-Muslim crusade. Ramadan was approachingwhen the men leading prayers read aloud the entire Quran during the course of a lunar cycleand, Salahi recalled, my friend said, We need you here in Canada because we have no Hafez, the Arabic word for a man who can recite the Quran from memory. agents threatened Salahi with torture, and tried to intimidate him. Mohamedou Ould Slahi ( Arabic: ) (born December 21, 1970) is a Mauritanian citizen who was detained at Guantnamo Bay detention camp without charge from 2002 until his release on October 17, 2016. black site. In the spring of 1992, Salahi returned to Afghanistan. Another two years passed before Salahis name caught the attention of Deddahi Ould Abdellahi, the head of Mauritanias security-intelligence apparatus. As they left baggage claim, Salahi later wrote in his diary, my hands were shackled behind my back and I was encircled by a bunch of ghosts who cut me off from the rest of my company. As soon as the prisoner was taken to the hospital, another detainee would be foundhis sheet wound around his neck and tied to his cage wall. There, Schroen contacted the leaders of the Northern Alliance, an armed group that had spent years fighting the Taliban, with little external support. The transcript omits much of his testimony, noting that, at the moment he started to describe the abuse, the recording equipment began to malfunction and that the tapes were distorted. The transcript continues, The Detainee wanted to show the Board his scars and location of injuries, but the board declined the viewing. (By now, the U.S. government was rolling back authorizations for torture techniques, and the military and the C.I.A. She told me that she thought he was doing something really dangerousthat people might think Steve was sympathetic to someone who was involved in 9/11, and go after him, her, and their baby daughter. Guantnamo Diary and the American Slave Narrative. In Nouakchott, Abdellahis men detained Salahi again in the fall of 2001, at the request of the Americans. In Nouakchott, Abdellahi and his subordinates began to map out the network, detaining people close to Abu Hafs and soliciting the names of other jihadis. Wood was the second of three boys. He did not respond to requests for comment.) One night in October, 2016, Woods phone rang while he was in a Safeway in Portland. He recalled, I took the pen and paper and wrote all kinds of incriminating lies about a poor person who was just seeking refuge in Canada and trying to make some money so he could start a family. The night shift was twelve hours, and he never saw Salahi shackled or restrained. After a hustled day of tackling a myriad of issues and directly contributing to the global war on terrorism, it reads, fun awaits. Officers could partake in pottery classes, paintball, rugby, tennis, and softball, or exercise in several pools and gyms. team and their Afghan counterparts travelled through much of northern Afghanistan, laying the groundwork for the U.S. military invasion. It was the first time in my thirty-year CIA career that I had ever heard an order to kill someone, Schroen wrote. For the rest of the interrogation session, he was forced to look at photos of corpses from the aftermath of the attacks. Abu Hafs, Salahis cousin and a senior Al Qaeda official, evaded capture. If you say that you are angry, it is understood as an emotion, he said. Near the airport parking lot, Salahi stood in a light-blue boubou, the traditional Mauritanian robe, with a turban to obscure his identity. Everything that happened to meeverything I witnessed in Guantnamo Bayhappened in the name of democracy, in the name of security, in the name of the American people, Salahi told the audience at the Amnesty event. Wood became secretive about his calls with Salahi; Wendy began to suspect that he was having an affair. Mauritanian hospitals dont have the capacitythey typically send such patients to Francebut what Salahi didnt know was that his repatriation would not amount to the restitution of his rights. . Three years into his captivity Slahi began a diary, recounting his life before he disappeared into U.S. custody and daily life as a detainee. When he refused to back out of the interview, Wendy insisted that he wear an on-camera disguise. Wood is six feet three, with a shaved head, a shy, stoic manner, and the musculature of an lite bodybuilder. "And then what they -- pretty much told him, 'This is a bunch of B.S.'" Slahi's life changed . The abuse wound down slowlyno more hitting, but no comfort items, either, and no uninterrupted periods of rest. His wife and children left first; once they had settled in Nouakchott, Abu Hafs said, the challenge was to transport himself thousands of miles without being detected, arrested, or subjected to rendition. Mauritania is much bigger than Guantnamo Bayyou can move around. But I insist on freedom., Another liberty Salahi identified as having been taken from him is that of expressing the full range of human feelings. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. According to The Exile, a comprehensive account of post-9/11 Al Qaeda, by the investigative journalists Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy, who gained access to Abu Hafss diaries, he ghostwrote most of Osamas speeches, religious judgments, and press releases. In 1998, bin Laden wrote Abu Hafs into his will. On a Tuesday afternoon in September, 2001, one of bin Ladens messengers sought out Salahis cousin, Abu Hafs, and told him to keep an eye on the news. He had come to think of himself as a dead camel in the desert, when all kinds of bugs start to eat it. Most of the interrogations were conducted by the F.B.I., whose questions now centered on establishing a connection between Salahi and 9/11. Salahi underwent daily interrogations. His mother dated a string of alcoholics and addicts, and took the children to an evangelical church on Sundays; Pat Robertsons sermons blasted from the living-room TV. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, author of "Guantanamo Diary," was released after a review board determined that his continued detention was not necessary to protect against a threat to U.S. security . Salahi figured that this was how bin al-Shibh had ended up naming him as a high-level Al Qaeda recruiter. investigations and was on a no-fly list, and that several men who had attended the Masjid As-Saber had been convicted on terrorism charges. Seven months later, his deployment ended. In return, they passed along messages from Salahi, which they had invented, and assured the family that Salahi was well. Salahi told him that he was now home. Salahi was led to a small private aircraft. A fourth was Ramzi bin al-Shibh, the attack cordinator; while in C.I.A. Abdellahis men confiscated his passport, once again citing a request by the Americans. One day, they had coffee at a hotel, by the pool, with the legal team of a current Guantnamo detainee. Based on a misreading of materials in his possession, and the vague aspersions of Islamophobic military officers, prosecutors accused him of treason and aiding the enemy, and threatened to pursue the death penalty. At other times, the questions originated from material on his hard drive, which the F.B.I. On October 17, 2001, Abu Hafss madrassa took a direct hit from a missile. There, an intelligence officer named Yacoub confiscated Salahis Quran and left him in a dank cell. Everyone on the team was dressed entirely in black, their faces obscured by balaclavas. Im now in Canada, attending a mosque where we believe a very dangerous group is attending. And, because it was Ramadan, Salahi was leading prayers. But a friend helped him find work installing Internet routers for a telecommunications company. Bush Administration lawyers had taken the position that enemy combatants could be held indefinitely, without trials, and that in order for something to qualify as torture it must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death. By the end of the following year, Salahi knew more about classified security operations than any private American citizen. ), Later that month, a military lawyer named Diane Beaver drafted a legal justificationdescribed later by a congressional inquiry on torture as profoundly in error and legally insufficientfor a set of abusive interrogation techniques. So empty., In recent months, the push for Salahis passport has taken on new urgency. Wood started sporadically attending prayers. I want to see photos of their heads on pikes, Black said, according to Schroens memoir, First In, published in 2005. I was scared to ask too many questions, I was scared to read a book on Islam while I was in there, or show too much interest., Woods concerns were not unjustified. Like, what is a motherfucker? Instead, the men stripped him naked, strapped a diaper on him, and swapped out his shackles for a heavier set. They said I was bringing shame upon the family, and protecting a terrorist, Wood recalled. Afghanistans civil war entered a new stage, with rival Islamist groups vying for control, and Salahi wanted no part of it. On the night of July 19, 2002, the Jordanians transported Mohamedou Salahi, blindfolded and in chains, to the airport in Amman, where a new team took over. Then the men were loaded onto an airplane. (The C.I.A. But Wood spent his days in the base library, researching topics that Salahi had brought up in the cell. Outside Echo Special, Wood started reading about Guantnamo on activist Web sites, but a colleague warned him that Internet traffic was monitored on the base. In public, the Bush Administration and its military leadership asserted that Guantnamo was filled with men who would stop at nothing to destroy the U.S. The leadership at Guantnamo was more interested in intelligence collection than in prosecuting detainees for terrorism crimes. . English was his fourth language. I just wanted this to be me and God.. In the first edition of Guantnamo Diary, Siems had included an authors note: In a recent conversation with one of his lawyers, Mohamedou said that he holds no grudge against any of the people he mentions in this book, that he appeals to them to read it and correct it if they think it contains any errors, and that he dreams to one day sit with all of them around a cup of tea, after having learned so much from one another. The sessions Wood witnessed were calm and courteous, with Salahi attempting to answer everything asked of him. All he saw was a rat, Salahi wrote. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, 50, has never been convicted of any crime or even charged with any offence. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. One day in the spring of 2012, Abu Hafs slipped out of custody during a visit to the gym. 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