So much had changed since he had been taken into custody, more than fifty-four hundred days earlier. They tightened the chains on his ankles and wrists, then threw him into the back of a truck, drove to the water, and loaded him into a speedboat. I was, like, What else have they lied about? he said. One of the men momentarily removed Salahis blindfold, and shined a flashlight into his eyes. (For the first several weeks of the invasion, Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, believed that everyone spoke Afghan.) In a rush to leave Kandahar, two dozen senior Al Qaeda officials boarded a bus, but Abu Hafs, fearful that a single air strike could decapitate the jihadi movement, urged them to disperse. By the time Salahi arrived at Guantnamo, on August 5, 2002, Fallons lite interagency criminal-investigation task force had been sidelined, and Lehnert had been replaced. It became fashionable for high-profile corporate-law firms to represent Guantnamo clients, pro bono, but many detainees rejected representation, because they thought it was a ploy to lend legitimacy to an unjust detention. And now he belongs to the Americans.. The Senegalese did the talking, but the Americans provided the questions and reported back to D.C. Each government claims that it has come to the rescue of the population, which had been neglected and abused by the previous government, Badre Eddine told me. Back on land, Salahi was carried to Echo Special, the trailer, which would be his home for several years. 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 . Abu Hafs was back in Afghanistan, living with his family in Kandahar. At the time, Slahi had been in captivity for two years, accused of acts of terrorism. He left the Oregon National Guard, and started working night shifts at a twenty-four-hour gym near Portland. In Kandahar, Abu Hafs felt the Americans closing in. It was the pretty blond interrogator bringing in these disks with footage from Al Qaeda and Taliban training camps in Afghanistan, Wood recalled. The Mauritanian tells the true story of Mohamedou Ould Salahi - played by Tahar Rahim in a Bafta-nominated turn - a man from the northwestern African state of the title, whose tenuous. During the Amnesty International live stream, someone on Twitter commented that, of the two of them, Wood looked like the detainee. All his friends and family knew him as the guy who was guarding a high-value detainee, and really proud of it, Wood told me. Wood stayed with Salahi for four days. He was very silly. Each time, the minister liedeven after the Red Cross had started delivering Salahis letters from Guantnamo to his family. 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. For the first time, Salahi was in the custody of uniformed American soldiers. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, the author of an internationally bestselling memoir that detailed the torture he endured as a detainee in Guantnamo Bay, says he has been denied a passport by. But Amanda is an American, and so their son is now a citizen of the country whose purported values Salahi wants to believe in but has never seen. He was not happyhe didnt want to leave, Abdellahi told me. A security guard handed him a filthy black turban, to hide his face during the drive to the secret-police headquarters. 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.. We knew he wasnt a threat. Where once he had struggled to forgive himself for enjoying Salahis company, he now felt bad about having to lock the door at the end of each shift. In 1998, he had travelled to Afghanistan, and spent a year in Al Qaeda training camps, where he learned to handle weapons and explosives. And I knew that the request was justified, because he had connections in this milieu, these Islamo-terrorist circles, and he might be able to give his captors some ideas of how to improve security. In November of that year, Salahi moved to Montreal, where he began leading prayers at a prominent mosque. The men were dragged out of their cells. He gently held Salahis shoulder, and said, Everythings O.K. Salahi shook his head, and clicked his tongue in disagreement, but refused to speak. 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. Wood left for the airport at 4 A.M. Salahi spent much of the day watching YouTube compilations of the worst American Idol auditions. 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. He was terrifiedhe wanted to go back to Canada, where interrogators behaved within the bounds of the law. Few locals spoke French, but since the country had been arbitrarily drawn up as a vast, mostly desert territory, populated by numerous ethnic groups who spoke different languages, there was no alternative for official documentation. I think he still sees any baby in my family as a future inmate. Brahim Ebety, Salahis Mauritanian lawyer, told me that he is considering a lawsuit against the Mauritanian government. The night terrors kept coming. Walid, who was sixteen, stayed behind. He denied involvement with terrorism and was never charged with a crime. Salahi, I wish I were not part of this shit, he said. The F.B.I. But he thought, What the fuck is this? Everyone wants to close Guantnamo, but what will happen to the detainees? Mohamedou Ould Sah es uno de tantos casos que estn sufriendo en una prisin, acusados de delitos que no cometieron. Meanwhile, the Bush Administrations pretext for invading Iraq was collapsing, and so was Woods trust in government. They were very jumpy, Salahi recalled at his hearing. But a friend helped him find work installing Internet routers for a telecommunications company. During the next several days, Abu Hafs travelled toward the Pakistani province of Balochistan. And Steves interest is to impress the girls. Thirty-five years later, the United States government drew inspiration from this experiment in its approach to interrogating terror suspects. had raided a hotel in Khartoum. Look him up, dude. Wood is six feet three, with a shaved head, a shy, stoic manner, and the musculature of an lite bodybuilder. . 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. I said, No. (Investigators later determined that Ressam had left Montreal for a safe house in Vancouver on November 17thnine days before Salahi arrived in Canada.) On September 26th, Schroen and six other officers loaded an aging Soviet helicopter with weapons, tactical gear, and three million dollars in used, nonconsecutive bills. On July 17, 2003, a masked interrogator told Salahi that he had dreamed that he saw other detainees digging a grave and tossing a pine casket with Salahis detainee number into it. When he discovered the forged letter from Zuleys team, saying that the United States had captured Salahis mother, he resigned from the case. In time, he became suspicious that Salahis confessions had been elicited through torture, and were therefore tainted evidence. 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. They drove up to the stairs of an airplane, but, Salahi wrote, he was so exhausted, sick, and tired that I couldnt walk, which compelled the escort to pull me up the steps like a dead body.. The man confined there was referred to by his detainee number, 760. black sites and military facilities. And, by the way, I pay my boy, he added, unprompted. Amanda, who lives in Europe, was pregnant, and Salahi would miss the birth of his son. 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. The men slept on his floor and left for Afghanistan at dawn. Other men carried box cutters and explosives; Salahi was a ghost on the periphery. They look like a prison uniform with stripes! The sessions Wood witnessed were calm and courteous, with Salahi attempting to answer everything asked of him. In 1999, shortly after graduating from high school, Wood started a job at the local sawmill. Guantanamo Diary Revisited recounts the experience of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a citizen of Mauritania, who was imprisoned at the Guantnamo Bay facility from 2002 to 2016, accused by American. Once they do, he will disappear and never be heard from again. Salahi was told to imagine the worst possible scenario he could end up in, and that he would soon disappear down a very dark hole. In time, Wood began to think of everything he had known before meeting Salahi as a narrow-minded myth of American superiority, notable for its omissions of overseas misadventures. I dont like power, he said. 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. 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 some versions I saved many lives, in others I was saved, but somehow we all managed to escape, unharmed and free., Wood reconnected with Salahis lawyers, this time using his real name. 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. Soon afterward, in Guantnamo Bay, Salahi saw his own face on a TV screen. I was scared to hell, Salahi recalled at his hearing. Eventually, Salahi would be allowed access to a small patch of soil outside his trailer, where he tended sunflowers, basil, sage, parsley, and cilantro. The mission had not been accomplished. When Wood watched the evening news, he saw photographs of American M.P.s torturing and sexually humiliating Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib. No, its not looking good at all, Salahi said. James Mitchell, the C.I.A. In 2004, Steve Wood was deployed to Guantnamo Bay, as a member of the Oregon National Guard. 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. (Forty people remain in the camp, at an annual cost of some ten million dollars a detainee.) He remains locked inside the notorious naval base. 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. I wish you good luck, the agent said. Allah! Shortly before the first detainees arrived, Robert McFadden, an N.C.I.S. Case of Mohamedou Ould Slahi. In 1988, the Saudi ideologue Osama bin Laden announced the formation of Al Qaeda. The guards, who were officially prohibited from interacting with him, began asking questions. Outside of the political discussions, he and Salahi passed the hours playing rummy, Risk, and chess. Bin Laden, wary of Al Qaedas fragility, urged him not to speak publicly of his departure. But, after Salahi returned to Germany, they had scarcely been in touch. As at Guantnamo, he often worked at night. After work, Salahi went to his mothers house. I felt so bad, and kept praying silently, Nothings gonna happen to you dear brother.. Military doctors offered to take care of it, but Salahi declined; his release date was only a couple of months away, and he wanted to get the surgery on his own terms, once he was free. He was held in Guantanamo Bay from. 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. Every day, Mariem Mint Elwadia asked God for the same thing: She wanted to see her son, Mohamedou Ould Slahi, just one . 2023 Cond Nast. Some of Mohsens bad friends, as Salahi described them, visited Mohsens apartment while he was hosting Salahi. They stripped, and rubbed their bodies all over his, and threatened to rape him. Before dawn, Salahi was taken to an interrogation room. Since then, I have received it, eaten it, and paid for it! (His wife returned to Nouakchott.) But I changed my mind after Guantnamo, he told me. Twenty-hour interrogations. In 2008, he met a woman named Wendy at a bar. Soon afterward, they travelled together to Sudan, where bin Laden ran a construction company and a jihadi training camp, and sped around Khartoum in bin Ladens white Mercedes. After 14 years. A fourth was Ramzi bin al-Shibh, the attack cordinator; while in C.I.A. Then, he wrote, the plane landed, the doors opened, and the warm Cuban sun hit me gracefully. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, 50, has never been convicted of any crime or even charged with any offence. Guantnamo Diary and the American Slave Narrative. But with these people you cannot be likable. In Robertsons assessment, the governments evidence about Salahi was so attenuated, or so tainted by coercion and mistreatment, or so classified, that it cannot support a successful criminal prosecution. He concluded, Salahi must be released from custody.. The Mauritanian is stunningly tragic and leaves audiences with a host of questions about how its events were allowed to take place, but another notable issue is why the Obama administration blocked Mohamedou Ould Slahi's release from Guantanamo Bay. In his home country, Neely said, this man had seen some of his friends and family members executed on their knees. The mans response was hardly unique; a military document, drafted ten days later for the base commander, noted that the detainees think they are being taken to be shot., Officially, the job of the Internal Reaction Force was to restrain unruly detainees, to prevent them from injuring themselves or the guards. No adult in Woods life had ever looked so frightened and so vulnerable. An officer shouted Code Red! into a radio, and the Internal Reaction Force team raced to the scene and hog-tied him. They really know who is who, and, as a result, they were very reluctant to torture me. I want to be able to show bin Ladins head to the President. Black added that he and Bush wanted to avoid the spectacle of a courtroom trial. Guantanamo Bay prisoner Mohamedou Ould Slahi discusses his story being adapted as "The Mauritanian", alongside fmr. But his guard suspected otherwise. In 1999, shortly after graduating from high school, Wood recalled an M.P., Wood a! 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