Neither of them knew that the United States had asked Mauritanias President to hand over Salahi to a rendition team. VIDEO The Mauritanian: Mohamedou Ould Slahi on his 14 years in Guantanamo After 9/11 he was imprisoned and tortured by the US yet never charged with a crime. O.K., screw it, it is not a problemthey can watch me, he said. He grew up measuring political eras by military coups1978, 1979, 1984changes in power that did little to alter the ways in which Mauritanians experienced power. 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. In return, they passed along messages from Salahi, which they had invented, and assured the family that Salahi was well. The document he signed listed one aim of the abuse as to replicate and exploit the Stockholm Syndrome, in which kidnapping victims come to trust and feel affection for their captors. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, 50, has never been convicted of any crime or even charged with any offence. Once every fifteen minutes, a prisoner tried to hang himself by tying his sheet around his neck and fastening it through the mesh of the cage wall, James Yee, an Army captain who served as the Muslim chaplain in Guantnamo, recalled in his memoir, For God and Country, from 2005. He no longer derived much solace from Islam, and rarely prayed. Before dawn, Salahi was taken to an interrogation room. You very much become a child again.. Mohamedou Ould Slahi spent 14 years of his life as a detainee in the United States military prison at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Bin Laden, wary of Al Qaedas fragility, urged him not to speak publicly of his departure. agents threatened Salahi with torture, and tried to intimidate him. But Wood spent his days in the base library, researching topics that Salahi had brought up in the cell. I just remember being super excited, because I thought, Im going to be doing something important, Wood told me. Thats why we had previously let him go. But, Abdellahi continued, shrugging, to refuse a demand from an intelligence agency, in the fight against terrorismthat would have been impossible., On the evening of November 28thMauritanias Independence DaySalahi had been in custody for a week. 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. I told him I have no problem with the Jews, either, man. special agent, was eager to receive the flight manifest. Abu Hafs was back in Afghanistan, living with his family in Kandahar. Guantanamo Bay prisoner Mohamedou Ould Slahi discusses his story being adapted as "The Mauritanian", alongside fmr. Several young men mentioned Salahi as a contact in Germany. Salahis family wasnt notified of his rendition, and so they were surprised that Abdellahi refused to let them see him. The U.S. government concluded that he was the leader of the Montreal-based al-Qaida cell., In Guantnamo, Salahi admitted to this and other allegations. Instead, the men stripped him naked, strapped a diaper on him, and swapped out his shackles for a heavier set. Still, Salahi found his Jordanian interrogators to be highly knowledgeable, and they developed a kind of mutual respect. He was terrifiedhe wanted to go back to Canada, where interrogators behaved within the bounds of the law. His diary is not merely a vivid record of a miscarriage of justice, but a deeply personal memoir terrifying, darkly humorous, and surprisingly gracious. On March 22, 2010, a U.S. district-court judge named James Robertson ruled on Salahis petition to be released. The Senegalese did the talking, but the Americans provided the questions and reported back to D.C. For some thirty hours, Salahi was strapped to a board. The 58-year-old actress, who won the Best Supporting Actress prize for her role in The Mauritanian, appeared on screen for the virtual ceremony with her wife Alexandra Hedison and their dog,. I want to go to a country where I can enjoy my freedom, he said. On most days, he searched Salahis name online, hoping to learn more about the case, and to make sense of his own deployment to Echo Special, to no avail. I thought hed be back in no time, he told me. All I can tell you is to tell the truth. They hugged. Every other week, when Red Cross representatives visited the prison, Salahi and a handful of other C.I.A. While Salahi was being tortured, James Yee, the Muslim military chaplain, discovered that he and the interpreters at Guantnamomany of whom were Muslim Americans, with Middle Eastern backgroundswere being spied on by law-enforcement and intelligence officers. The next day, Abu Hafs invited me to his house, in one of Nouakchotts most expensive neighborhoods. Soon afterward, Canadian investigators came to the apartment and questioned him about the Millennium Plot. In 1998, shortly after Al Qaeda detonated truck bombs outside the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Salahi took a call from a phone number belonging to bin Laden. Abdellahi had bought him a new outfit, but Salahi had refused to eat, and the fabric was loose on his shoulders. On his third visit, he told two Saudi students that he wanted to become a Muslim. 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. He said he was going to bring in black people, Salahi recalled, in the military hearing. With the assistance of German intelligence, Abdellahi told me, we started collecting the maximum amount of information. In the eighties, he and a younger cousin, a slender poet named Mahfouz Ould al-Walid, spent their evenings at a local caf, where the owner showed videos of the Palestinian struggle and the jihad in Afghanistan, which the Soviet Union had invaded in 1979. See what it did to his family., A job posting depicts life as an intelligence officer in Guantnamo Bay as a rewarding challenge with incredible surroundingssunsets, beaches, iguanas, pristine Caribbean blue. Thank you for a wonderful evening!, Ive done it, Igor! But instead the United States is stating to the world very clear and loud that democracy does not workthat when you need to get down and dirty, you need a dictatorship. WASHINGTON - The U.S. government has transferred Mohamedou Ould Slahi to his native Mauritania, where he is to be reunited with his family. The local dive shop offered gear and certifications for sailing, water-skiing, snorkelling, scuba diving, and more: No experience, no problem. Mohamedou Ould Slahi was born on 21 December, 1970, is a Writer. Government officials suggested that Yee was running an elaborate spy ringthat he and other Muslims had infiltrated the military, and represented the gravest insider threat since the Cold War. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Guantnamo Diary (New York: Little, Brown, 2015). . The Mauritanian, Kevin Macdonald's movie based on the true story of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian man . And now he belongs to the Americans.. I took the pillow as a sign of the end of the physical torture.. The Actual True Story of Ahmed and Zarga - Mohamedou Ould Slahi 2021-02-23 An epic story of a Bedouin family's survival and legacy amid their changing world in the unforgiving Sahara Desert. I arrived just before the sunset prayers. Pendant des mois, il a crit ses mmoires . The release comes 14 years after he was first brought by the United States to the prison at Guantanamo Bay. In 1996, when Abu Hafs was twenty-one, he drafted bin Ladens most important fatwa: an eleven-thousand-word document excoriating the Saudi Kingdom and warning the U.S. Secretary of Defense that Al Qaedas adherents have no intention except to enter paradise by killing you. The fatwa was Al Qaedas declaration of war against the United States. He walked into the morning sunlight in a daze, unable to reconcile his impression of the man in Echo Special with the depiction of the terrorist in the dossier. (After 9/11, the directorate acted as a proxy jailer for the C.I.A.) I'm a really big believer in Joe Biden. Another year passed. As Michael Lehnert, a Marine Corps major general who briefly served as the detention camps first commander, later testified to Congress, What better way to enrich yourself, while resolving old grudges, than to finger a neighbor who was your enemy, regardless of his support for either Al Qaeda or the Taliban?. Walid was a prodigious poetin Nouakchott, he had won several awardsand when bin Laden met him he was impressed by his eloquence and conviction. It is basically subject to perception. That May, U.S. Navy Seals killed bin Laden, and collected more than a million documents from his compound in northern Pakistan; among them was a letter from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, seeking the central leaderships blessing to enter into a secret agreement with the Mauritanian government. From the floor of Parliament, Badre Eddine noted that Mauritania has no extradition treaty with the United States. The men were dragged out of their cells. Twelve days later, a group of men charged into Salahis cell with a snarling German shepherd. One night in October, 1999, a friend of Salahis asked him to host three Muslims who were passing through Duisburg. The interrogations always circled back to the Millennium Plot. I really think that he's a good man. Wood was the second of three boys. They must no longer be denied the right to family. [4] Slahi traveled from his home in Germany to Afghanistan in December 1990 "to support the mujahideen." Salahi became Slahi. So began a life in which governments treated Salahi in accordance with their own mistakes. In time, Yee came to believe that Islam was systematically used as a weapon against the prisoners. Guards mocked the call to prayer, and manipulated Islamic principles of modestyby having female guards watch naked detainees in the showers, for exampleto create tension as an excuse to exact violence. Notably absent is any mention of the Millennium Plot, or any allegation that Salahi had committed a crime. ), 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. As two M.P.s dragged him to the holding area, someone tossed his prosthetic leg out of the bus. Mohamedou Ould Slahi fights for freedom after being detained and imprisoned without charge by the U.S. Government for . I went back to my tent and laid down to go to sleep. How could he possibly know? The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. Its their citizen, and its their country.. Though Salahi was a skilled electrician, he hired Yacoub to fix his TV. He remains locked inside the notorious naval base. He left the Oregon National Guard, and started working night shifts at a twenty-four-hour gym near Portland. The man confined there was referred to by his detainee number, 760. I thought there would be a lot of formalities, especially for a terrorist suspect such as myself, but nothing like that happened, Salahi wrote. 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. The plane landed at sunset. His turban was still damp from where his wife had cleaned off other peoples blood. This is my daughter. Did you see what Steve brought me? Salahi said, pointing to some baby clothes. 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. One of the hardest things to do is to tell an untruthful story and maintain it, and that is exactly where I was stuck., On September 8th, Salahi asked to speak to Zuley. On May 22nd, Salahis lead F.B.I. I tried to press the topic with Salahi, but it was as if his transfer from Guantnamo had carried with it a kind of transposition of restraint, from shackles to self-policing. was funding and equipping many of the mujahideen groups. Over a three-way Anglo-French-African video call, Mohamedou Ould Slahi and Tahar Rahim are exchanging hearty greetings. For the next two months, Abu Hafs taught jihadi recruits at a madrassa. Striking horror, panic, and fear in the hearts of the enemies of Allah is a divine commandment. He added that American citizens should blame their law-enforcement and intelligence agencieswith their satellites, ground stations, millions of spies, and huge budgetsfor the fact that the hijackers had found a security breach as big as a whole fleet of hijacked civilian aircraft, and managed to shove Americas nose into the ground.. But the call to jihad interrupted his studies. Just remember Allah always has a plan. The Corrupt World Behind the Murdaugh Murders. There, an intelligence officer named Yacoub confiscated Salahis Quran and left him in a dank cell. 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. He tried to sleep, but his mind was racing with the expectation of torture at dawn. He was driven around for three hours, to make him think that he was being transported to a different facility. In Islam, the Quran is considered the transcribed word of God; some Muslims keep the book wrapped in cloth, never letting it touch unclean surfaces. Abu Hafs spent the next decade in relative luxury, exercising alongside foreign diplomats in one of Tehrans swankiest gyms, and looking after bin Ladens sons along with his own. All afternoon, guards screamed at the detainees to shut up and walk faster, called them sand niggers, and said that their family members and countries had been obliterated by nuclear bombs. This is the exact opposite of whats supposed to happen. There was no fanfare, no announcement. The Americans learned only that, as a condition for return, he agreed that he would renounce his former association and embark on a message of denouncing terrorism and preaching a more tolerant and pacifist message. I asked whether the United States, after learning of his return, had sought to detain or rendition him. In the military hearing, Salahi described the torture program in vivid detail. In November of that year, Salahi moved to Montreal, where he began leading prayers at a prominent mosque. Soon afterward, in Guantnamo Bay, Salahi saw his own face on a TV screen. Through the window I started to see the sand-covered small villages around Nouakchott, as bleak as their prospects, he wrote. Now, in a phone call, Amanda suggested edits for Salahis speechthat he take out lynching, for example, and make his remarks more graciousand Salahi accepted all of them. I felt this decision stemmed from the commands desire to be able to tell the media that we gave all detainees a Quran out of sensitivity to their religious needs, he wrote. As he read about Islamic history, he began to seek clarity in the Quran itself. At the time, Slahi had been in captivity for two years, accused of acts of terrorism. Near the airport parking lot, Salahi stood in a light-blue boubou, the traditional Mauritanian robe, with a turban to obscure his identity. A close friend of his had been the co-pilot of one of the planes that was flown into the World Trade Center, and Couch told the Wall Street Journal that he had renlisted because he wanted to get a crack at the guys who attacked the United States. When he saw the governments file on Salahi, he considered pursuing the death penalty. In 1967, Martin Seligman, a twenty-four-year-old Ph.D. student in psychology, conducted an experiment that involved delivering electric shocks to dogs in various states of restraint. Donald Rumsfeld told reporters that the men in Guantnamo were among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth. But after Brandon Neelys first shift, on the day the detention camp opened, no one really spoke much, he recalled. On the other end of the line was a man whose voice he hadnt heard in more than eleven years. I was forbidden from seeing the light of the day; every once in a while they gave me a rec-time at night to keep me from seeing or interacting with any detainees. (All charges were later dropped, and Yee was honorably discharged. A private jet landed, and out climbed a Jordanian rendition team. Salahis detainee dossier lists his reasons for transfer to Guantnamo: to provide information on the Al Qaeda training camp he had attended in 1992; a separate Afghan militia, which had received substantial backing from the C.I.A. According to interrogation memos, they decorated the walls with photos of genitalia, and set up a baby crib, because he was sensitive about the fact that he had no children. Wood walked into the main area, which housed the guards; through a door was the prisoners sleeping space. And Steves interest is to impress the girls. When the ice melted, they punched him, then repacked the ice to freeze him again. It was cheaper to fly to Dakar than to Nouakchott, and his brothers drove three hundred miles to meet him there. This episode was recorded on June 7th 2021.Dr Jordan Peterson's guest Mohamedou Ould Slahi shares his experience with more than a decade of torture, interrog. I received the present with a fake overwhelming happiness, and not because I was dying to get a pillow, he wrote. They really know who is who, and, as a result, they were very reluctant to torture me. Oh, Allah, help me! He began to wonder whether the case against Mohamedou Salahi was as flimsy and politically motivated as that for the invasion had been. He devoured volumes on history, foreign affairs, politics, civil rightspretty much any type of book you could think of, other than, like, romance novels, he said. When Abu Hafs reached Quetta, in Pakistan, he found the citys private hospital filled with injured Al Qaeda members. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, now 50, was arrested in Mauritania three months after the 9/11 attacks, and detained in Jordan and Afghanistan before being transferred to Guantnamo in August 2002, where his long incarceration included 70 days of intensive torture and three years of 18-hours-a-day interrogations. One day, they had coffee at a hotel, by the pool, with the legal team of a current Guantnamo detainee. No prayers, no information about the direction of Mecca. He stopped praying in public. Look up the prison on Robben Island. came to much the same conclusion.) By now, Wood was no longer dating Summers mother. Having accepted his guards, Salahi wrote, the next phase of captivity was getting used to the prison, and being afraid of the outside world.. explained to Wood that the current guard force called Detainee 760 Pillow, because when they had arrived, several months earlier, a pillow was the only object in his possession. Abdellahis men confiscated his passport, once again citing a request by the Americans. He just said, Dude, they fucked me up.. black site. LadenGerman for computer shopand he figured that, to the Americans, Laden would be a red flag. Ressam told investigators that he had planned to detonate suitcases in a crowded terminal at Los Angeles International Airport. Salahi agreed, and Abu Hafs wired around four thousand dollars to his German account. I keep thinking, Here it comesI am fixing to see what a terrorist looks like face to face, Neely, who was twenty-one at the time, said. I think we all became friends. But he wasnt sure that Salahi believed him.