Abu Hafs, Salahis cousin and a senior Al Qaeda official, evaded capture. He wouldnt take any chances. Through the window I started to see the sand-covered small villages around Nouakchott, as bleak as their prospects, he wrote. In the two and a half years since his return, he has received several professional visitorsSiems, his lawyers, and the filmmaker Michael Bronner, who is adapting Salahis diaryand also personal visits from a lawyer, whom Ill call Amanda. (All charges were later dropped, and Yee was honorably discharged. For the next two months, Abu Hafs taught jihadi recruits at a madrassa. So look at me, Salahi said. (In his diary, Salahi wrote, I was eager to let my predator know, I am, I am.) When the conversation was over, the Jordanians blindfolded Salahi and put a set of soundproof earmuffs on him. This is enough money to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life. A common bounty was five thousand dollarsfar more money than most Afghans earned in a yearand the result was an explosion of human trafficking by various armed groups, Mark Fallon, the deputy commander of Guantnamos Criminal Investigation Task Force, wrote in his memoir, Unjustifiable Means, which was heavily redacted before being published, in 2017. He was accused of being a part of the Al-Qaeda by the American government. Finally, when Slahi and his wife moved to Montreal, in 1999, they attended the al Sunnah mosquethe same mosque attended by Ahmed Ressam, a member of Al Qaeda who had been arrested, shortly. Salahi came to think of his interrogators as acting out a Mauritanian folktale in which a blind man is given the gift of a single, fleeting glimpse of the world. The whole time I was thinking, you know, What does he really think of us? he recalled. Instead, they are tried by secret military commissionsif they are tried at all. Never turn your back, the sergeant major warned him. They took off from Uzbekistan and flew into northern Afghanistan, over the snow-capped mountains of the Hindu Kush. The Corrupt World Behind the Murdaugh Murders. 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 . My cell expanded, the lights became brighter, colors more colorful, the sun shone warmer and gentler, and everyone around me looked friendlier, he wrote. He was not happyhe didnt want to leave, Abdellahi told me. Theyd ask me, Whos in there?, and Id say, I dont know, probably somebody famous.. Mohamedou Ould Slahi: I always told myself, at the end of the day, I didn't do wrong to anyone. Seven or eight of his ribs were broken. You know, when you just fall asleep and the saliva starts to come out of your mouth? Salahi said. When my turn came, two guards grabbed me by the hands and feet and threw me toward the reception team, Salahi wrote. Youve still got, like, a solid eight inches.. Around that time, after a long period without contact, Abu Hafs called Salahi from bin Ladens satellite phone. 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. But Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who spent almost 14 years at Guantnamo and says he was brutally beaten and threatened with execution without ever being charged with a crime, has some advice for his onetime captors: Come clean about what was done to the detainees there, and transfer those accused of committing the Sept. 11 attacks to the United . Medical personnel had noted that Salahi had sciatic-nerve issues; now interrogators kept him in stress positions that exacerbated them. But the call to jihad interrupted his studies. I hope you think of us as more than just guards. Nice to meet you, Wood said. He grabbed his shortwave radio. 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. In the restored edition, Salahi added, I want to repeat and affirm this message here, and to say that now that I am home, that dream is also an invitation. The guards, who were officially prohibited from interacting with him, began asking questions. 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. The Mauritanian tells the story of Mohamedou Ould Salahi, a man of Mauritanian origin who spent 14 years in the notorious American military detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he. A fourth was Ramzi bin al-Shibh, the attack cordinator; while in C.I.A. He had spent the morning of the worst terrorist attack in American history lying on his mothers couch, high on painkillers after a tonsillectomy, but when he emerged from the haze he was angry, focussed, and longing for deployment. 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. But the government had abandoned the theory that Salahi knew about 9/11 before it happened. How does he live? had been torturing detainees at black sites for several months; now the Guantnamo leadership wanted to understand the legal gymnastics that would be required to implement a program of their own. According to a senior U.S. diplomat, when the United States was negotiating the terms of his return, the Mauritanians did agree that they would not give him a passport for some x amount of time. Two and a half years later, Salahi and his lawyers have no clarity about the parameters of x, or about why the United States has any say in whether the Mauritanian government issues a passport to a Mauritanian. Everyone wants to close Guantnamo, but what will happen to the detainees? 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. 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. . Seems a little creepy., Sensory deprivation can cause hallucinations, usually visual rather than auditory, but you never know, Zierhoffer replied. One night in October, 1999, a friend of Salahis asked him to host three Muslims who were passing through Duisburg. I figured Ive seen the guy, but where and when? Salahi wrote in his diary. For seventy-six days, he lived in solitary confinement, in a cold cell with surveillance cameras and the lights always on. During interrogations, detainees were forced to perform mock satanic rituals, or were draped in the Israeli flag. team and their Afghan counterparts travelled through much of northern Afghanistan, laying the groundwork for the U.S. military invasion. After the failed attack, Canada began to aggressively investigate the Montreal cell. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian who lived briefly in Montreal, has launched a $30-million lawsuit against the federal government. Eventually, Salahi would be allowed access to a small patch of soil outside his trailer, where he tended sunflowers, basil, sage, parsley, and cilantro. Twenty-hour interrogations. If you say that you are angry, it is understood as an emotion, he said. He wore handcuffs, leg shackles, earmuffs, blackout goggles, a surgical mask, and a bright-orange jumpsuit. He recalled his political views as being whatever Fox News told us. He didnt know the difference between a Hindu, a Sikh, and a Muslimhe had never met one. A few weeks later, Iranian spies told Abu Hafs to call other Al Qaeda officials and inform them that they would be welcome in Iranalthough, like him, they would live with their wives and children under a form of house arrest, sometimes in prisons, sometimes in lavish compounds and hotels, always in the company of the Revolutionary Guard. The cousins had married a pair of sisters, and so they were now also brothers-in-law. The Bush Administration had decided that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the war on terror, which meant that the men captured abroad could be deprived of the rights of prisoners of war. Then, he wrote, the plane landed, the doors opened, and the warm Cuban sun hit me gracefully. They were told not to wait for Salahi. . ECCHR, which represents Mohamedou Ould Slahi together with partner lawyer Matthias Lehnert, calls on the authorities to speed up the procedure for issuing his visa and to conclude it swiftly. Walid was a prodigious poetin Nouakchott, he had won several awardsand when bin Laden met him he was impressed by his eloquence and conviction. Moreover, he is handicapped. Government censors redacted names, dates, locations, and other sensitive or embarrassing information. Abdellahi called Salahis boss at the telecommunications company, to assure him that Salahi should be allowed to resume work. I want to ask you a favor, if it is O.K. Mitchell argued that, by reverse-engineering this program, interrogators could overwhelm whatever resistance training a detainee might have absorbed from the Manchester manual. Steve Wood was elated when he heard the news. He let you down! An interrogation memo listed plans to shave Salahis head and beard, dress him in a burqa, and make him bark and perform dog tricks, to reduce the detainees ego and establish control.. In Nouakchott, Abdellahi waited for updates from the C.I.A. For Wood, the trip became something more complicated than a visit to a friend. Yacoub climbed into the passenger seat. The punishment for talking to another detainee was to be hung by the wrists, feet barely touching the ground. According to Fallon, The Northern Alliance would jam so many detainees into Conex shipping containers that they started to die of suffocation. The lead officer couldnt speak Mauritanias Hassaniya Arabic, and Abdellahi hardly understood the Jordanian dialect, so Salahi translated for them. He didnt harbor any particular animosity toward Muslims, but he had absorbed his mothers belief: If its not from Jesus then it must be from the Devil. After completing the requirements to become an M.P., Wood enrolled in a criminal-justice program at a nearby community college. They were everywhere in the mosque, in the police car, twenty-four hours. Among the targets of the investigation was Mohsen, Salahis friend and host. In 1999, shortly after graduating from high school, Wood started a job at the local sawmill. I dont like power, he said. Thirty or forty of Abu Hafss followers filled a small wooden shack next to his home, spilling into the street, while he led prayers through a microphone. He wore a broad smile and a white jumpsuit, and moved cautiously toward Wood. During the next several days, Abu Hafs travelled toward the Pakistani province of Balochistan. Military-police officers so frequently abused the Quran during cell searches that detainees demanded that the books be kept in the library, where they would be safe. On paper, Salahi is not listed as the father. The guards also brought him books from the library, including the Bible, which he had requested, he wrote, because I wanted to study the book that must more or less have shaped the lives of the Americans.. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. Its not just, Yes, I did! No, it doesnt work that way: you have to make up a complete story that makes sense to the dumbest dummies. Salahi and I sat on either side of the leader of a political party that has more than a hundred and fifty seats in Parliament. But by then the Soviet Union had collapsed, and, while Salahi was in training, the Afghan government lost its Russian support. Before meeting Salahi, Wood had never heard of Mauritania; Salahi told him that, to his great embarrassment, slavery was still practiced there, even among people close to him. Because detainees are not in U.S. territory, the government has not allowed them to be tried in U.S. courts. Wood became secretive about his calls with Salahi; Wendy began to suspect that he was having an affair. He added that such an attack would be a betrayal of Al Qaedas agreement with the Taliban government, which had provided sanctuary for the group on the understanding that it would do nothing to provoke a full-scale U.S. invasion. The International Committee of the Red Crosswhich has access to many of the worlds most notorious detention sites, some of them in countries where there is no rule of lawhad recently sent representatives to Guantnamo, but the base commander, citing military necessity, had refused to allow them into Echo Special. But, with every day going by, the optimists lost ground, he wrote. The lack of progress, development, and freedom in Mauritanian society inspired in Salahi a righteous anger toward autocracy and corruption, and a desire to fight for something bigger than himself. Soon afterward, Steve and Wendy separated. Ad Choices. Some guards saw an opportunity to torment the detaineesby tossing the Quran into the toilet, for example, or by breaking the binding under the guise of searching for weapons. Desecration of the Quran provoked riots in the cellblocks, which resulted in IRF teams storming into the cells and beating up detainees. (For the past sixty years, the Cuban government has sought to nullify the agreement, and it refuses to cash the checks.) When a nurse, who spoke only Hassaniya Arabic, filled out Mohamedous birth certificate in the Latin alphabet, she omitted a syllable from his last name. He tried to sleep, but his mind was racing with the expectation of torture at dawn. In Mauritania, Abdellahis men detained Salahis wife and brothers and interrogated them about the Millennium Plot. Now, as he read, I saw how beautiful the religion was, he said. Soon after 9/11 attacks, a call from Slahi's cousin Mahfouz Ould al-Walid, a friend of Osama bin Laden's son, got him arrested in his motherland Mauritania in West Africa and transported to Guantanamo. Mohamedou Ould Slahi was sent to his home country of Mauritania after 14 years of imprisonment. Salahi figured that this was how bin al-Shibh had ended up naming him as a high-level Al Qaeda recruiter. From the floor of Parliament, Badre Eddine noted that Mauritania has no extradition treaty with the United States. To dispel notions that the United States was at war with Islam, detainees were allowed to have private meetings with a Muslim military chaplain, and were given copies of the Quran. (After 9/11, the directorate acted as a proxy jailer for the C.I.A.) But I wasnt the decider. For the first time, Salahi was in the custody of uniformed American soldiers. The United States released Mohamedou Ould Slahi, the author of a renowned prison memoir, after he was detained for more than 14 years in Jordan, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo, and returned him. With the assistance of German intelligence, Abdellahi told me, we started collecting the maximum amount of information. 2023 Cond Nast. Mohamedou Ould Slahi (em rabe: ) (nascido em 21 de dezembro de 1970) um mauritano que foi detido no campo de deteno de Guantnamo Bay sem acusao de 2002 at sua libertao em 17 de outubro de 2016. He began to notice surveillance everywhere. In addition to Salahis abdominal pain, and regular migraines, he still suffers from night terrors. On the other end of the line was a man whose voice he hadnt heard in more than eleven years. Salahi was horrified. His net worth has been growing significantly in 2021-2022 . Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Guantnamo Diary (New York: Little, Brown, 2015). All I can tell you is to tell the truth. They hugged. Larry Siems visited Salahi in Mauritania, and they set about filling in the redactions in the book. They must no longer be denied the right to family. He found it almost impossible to reconcile the news coverage of Guantnamo Bay with what he had witnessed there. The next day, Wood pressed him to talk about the episode, but Salahi wouldnt elaborate. Once, on a technical assignment, Salahi had been photographed near the President of Mauritania; now the lead interrogator accused Salahi of having plotted to kill him. smaller?, One of the F.B.I. Not long afterward, in mid-November, Salahis boss sent him to Mauritanias Presidential palace, to install Internet routers and update the phones. Slahi says his interrogator could not sell his false confessions up the chain of command. You trust the handcuffs and everything, but, no matter what, wed never be with him one on onethere would always be a partner, Wood told me. LadenGerman for computer shopand he figured that, to the Americans, Laden would be a red flag. Wife: Not Available: Sibling: Not Available: Children: Not Available : Mohamedou Ould Slahi Net Worth. team left Guantnamo, and the torture began. Is this something that happens to people who have little external stimulus such as daylight, human interaction etc???? Several of his co-workers were missing fingers, and the manager took every opportunity to denigrate the staff. When he discovered the forged letter from Zuleys team, saying that the United States had captured Salahis mother, he resigned from the case. And I didnt confirm or deny anything, Wood told me. He and Salahi were smitten with the Al Qaeda narrative, that a ragtag group of mujahideen, carrying light weapons and hiding in caves, were taking on a superpower in the defense of all Muslims. And, by the way, I pay my boy, he added, unprompted. Before his deployment, he had aspired to become a police officer. Other men carried box cutters and explosives; Salahi was a ghost on the periphery. After roughly three weeks, F.B.I. A government report describes the facility as having been modified in such a way as to reduce as much outside stimuli as possible, with doors that had been sealed to a point that allows no light to enter the room. Inside, the walls were covered with white paint or paper to further eliminate objects the detainee may concentrate on. There was an eyebolt for shackling him to the floor, and speakers for bombarding him with sound. He remains locked inside the notorious naval base. Where is Osama bin Laden? They shouted and threw objects against the wall. Soon afterward, a jihadi who had attended the same mosqueand who the Americans believed had met Salahiattempted to smuggle explosives in the trunk of a car across the U.S. border; his plan was to detonate suitcases inside Los Angeles International Airport, in what became known as the Millennium Plot. One day, Zuley walked into Salahis cell, carrying a pillow. He never told Wendy about his conversion. 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. There are so many Ahmeds that itll be difficult for them to put him on the no-fly list, Salahi joked. 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. They drove to the airport in silence, in Abdellahis black Mercedes. But his guard suspected otherwise. He knew what he expected to hear. 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