I was, like, What else have they lied about? he said. On August 13th, Donald Rumsfeld authorized the interrogation plan for Salahi. When Abu Hafs reached Quetta, in Pakistan, he found the citys private hospital filled with injured Al Qaeda members. 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. Some of Mohsens bad friends, as Salahi described them, visited Mohsens apartment while he was hosting Salahi. One day, Salahi started requesting paper from his guards. interrogator told him that the military would take over his interrogation. Why is standing limited to 4 hours? he wrote in the margin, referring to a proposed stress position. The men were dragged out of their cells. Outside of the political discussions, he and Salahi passed the hours playing rummy, Risk, and chess. He was a victim of an extremely rare crime: that a country had kidnapped its own citizen and handed it over to a foreign country, outside of the justice system, outside of all legal processes, Brahim Ebety, the Salahi familys lawyer in Nouakchott, told me. Were gonna feed you up your ass, an interrogator said. . Badre Eddine had spent some four decades organizing grassroots campaigns against the practice of slavery and other human-rights violations, and for this he had spent years in remote detention sites, under a succession of authoritarian regimes. (His wife returned to Nouakchott.) 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. I thought hed be back in no time, he told me. The prosecutor assigned to Salahis case was a lieutenant colonel named Stuart Couch, who had retired from the military before 9/11. And Mohamedou probably thought I was thinking the same thingthat, to me, he was just a job, and nothing more. So, during one of his final shifts, Wood broke protocol and showed Salahi a photo of Summer. In a newly published journal he reveals allegations of torture and sexual abuse. 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. On October 17, 2001, Abu Hafss madrassa took a direct hit from a missile. Salahi was on a publicity campaign, to draw attention to the injustice of his withheld passport, and at times it seemed to Wood as if he were a propthe former guard who recognized Salahis innocence. Mohamedou Ould Salahi, from Mauritania, was born in 1970. One of Salahis friends, who was now living in Canada, suggested that he move to Montreal. He grabbed his shortwave radio. No chairs, no lying down, no more access to his prescription pain medication. For the next seventy days I wouldnt know the sweetness of sleeping. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, 44, has been held prisoner inside Guantanomo Bay since 2002. He walked into the sleeping area and found Salahi lying in the fetal position, shaking. And Jodie Foster, 58, was spotted enjoying some. He thought, It must be somebody really importantthe most dangerous person in the world, perhapsto have this special attention, a guard force just for him. During the next few months, Wood showed up between prayer times, to avoid any pressure to participate. Over a three-way Anglo-French-African video call, Mohamedou Ould Slahi and Tahar Rahim are exchanging hearty greetings. It was cheaper to fly to Dakar than to Nouakchott, and his brothers drove three hundred miles to meet him there. The evidence against him lacked depth, but investigators considered its breadth conclusive. In isolated, poor regions of South Carolina, coming from an lite familyoffereda feeling of impunity. Not wanting to lose their bounties, the captors sprayed the tops of the boxes with machine guns to open ventilation holes. I want bin Ladins head shipped back in a box filled with dry ice. His friend, Hosni Mohsen, introduced him to the imam at the Al Sunnah mosque. A couple of years later, he considered visiting Mauritania, to track down Salahis family and apologize for his role in Salahis detention. 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. I was educating myself on the world. But, because Salahis trailer was a national secret, Wood kept a cordial distance from most of the other guards. Relaxing is easy., In practice, many military-police officers killed time by watching movies and getting drunk at the Tiki Bar; they also took flights to Afghanistan, to pick up more detainees. Mohamedou Ould Slahi spent 14 years of his life as a detainee in the United States military prison at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. black site. 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. . ), The government no longer attempted to prosecute Salahinobody had touched the criminal case since Couch withdrewbut it argued that he should nevertheless be detained indefinitely. . Salahi also pushed him to research Western foreign-policy blundersfor example, that in 1953 the American and the British intelligence services had orchestrated a coup in Iran, overthrowing a popular Prime Minister in order to prop up a tyrannical, pro-Western Shah. It sucked that I didnt have the freedom to travel, Salahi recalled in the military hearing. So that scared me away, he said. After 14 years. I told him I have no problem with the Jews, either, man. When I shared Abu Hafss account of his return with the senior U.S. diplomat, she replied, Its the first Im hearing any of it. The Mauritanians didnt inform the United States of his return until probably weeks later, she said. Until recently, the former spy chief Deddahi Ould Abdellahi lived directly across the street. He would be held there for 14 years without charge. In Guantnamo Diary, Mohamedou Ould Slahi describes the months of brutal interrogation, sleep deprivation, beatings, starvation, and sexual assault he endured at the U.S. government's notorious detention center in Cuba. Mohamedou Ould Slahi Born: December 21, 1970 Birthplace: Rosso, Mauritania Jodie Foster Born: November 19, 1962 Birthplace: Los Angeles, California, USA Nancy Hollander Born: March 10, 1944 Benedict Cumberbatch Born: July 19, 1976 Birthplace: Hammersmith, London, England, UK Lt. Col. Stuart Couch Born: April 20, 1965 Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian who lived briefly in Montreal, has launched a $30-million lawsuit against the federal government. Abdellahi had bought him a new outfit, but Salahi had refused to eat, and the fabric was loose on his shoulders. Abu Hafs, however, regarded the Pakistanis as duplicitous. The proceeds from his book were paying for a nieces studies in Dubai and a nephews masters degree in applied mathematics at a university in Kuala Lumpur. The U.S. government gathered that in 1991, when Salahi was twenty, he swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden, and the following year he learned to handle weapons at an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. What would we tell the Mauritanians? the diplomat replied. Each time, the minister liedeven after the Red Cross had started delivering Salahis letters from Guantnamo to his family. In 2005, during the military hearing, Salahi had urged the presiding officer not to send him back to Mauritania. English was his fourth language. I felt so bad, and kept praying silently, Nothings gonna happen to you dear brother.. The devotion, the routine of the five daily prayersthat kept Mohamedou going, Wood told me. In time, he became suspicious that Salahis confessions had been elicited through torture, and were therefore tainted evidence. Couch never met Salahi, but, while Zuley was torturing him, Couch received summaries of each new confession. I took the pillow as a sign of the end of the physical torture.. Mohamedou Ould Slahi was born on 21 December, 1970, is a Writer. In November of that year, Salahi moved to Montreal, where he began leading prayers at a prominent mosque. 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. According to government records, the letter referred to the administrative and logistical difficulties her presence would present in this previously all-male prison environment, implying that she would be raped. with you, and that is to tell me five things that you are grateful for today, he told one of them. and the G.I.D., but received none. I was, like, Maybe hes right. (In fact, the 9/11 plot was organized more than a year before bin al-Shibh visited Duisburg.) 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. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Guantnamo Diary (New York: Little, Brown, 2015). He began to wonder whether the case against Mohamedou Salahi was as flimsy and politically motivated as that for the invasion had been. Herrington later reported that the interrogators were unsure of the real names of more than half the detainees. Meanwhile, the Bush Administrations pretext for invading Iraq was collapsing, and so was Woods trust in government. They took off from Uzbekistan and flew into northern Afghanistan, over the snow-capped mountains of the Hindu Kush. . I have contact with Osama bin Ladens operative, who was helping launder money. The detainee introduced himself as Mohamedou Salahi, then reached for a handshake, and said, Whats up, dude?. I just remember being super excited, because I thought, Im going to be doing something important, Wood told me. Several of his co-workers were missing fingers, and the manager took every opportunity to denigrate the staff. The United States leases the land beneath the Guantnamo Bay detention facility from Cuba, for four thousand and eighty-five dollars a year, under an agreement signed after the Spanish-American War. Salahi agreed, and Abu Hafs wired around four thousand dollars to his German account. 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. I thought it was a new U.S. method to suck intels out of your brain and send them directly to a main computer which analyzes the information, he wrote. When Yee went on leave, he flew to Jacksonville, Florida, where he was interrogated and arrested, then blindfolded, earmuffed, and driven to a Navy brig in South Carolina. Wood stayed with Salahi for four days. They didnt tell me, because they were scared, Salahi recalled. 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. I hope you treasure every minute of strangers telling you to treasure every minute., I ordered my meal more than an hour ago! In return, they passed along messages from Salahi, which they had invented, and assured the family that Salahi was well. 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. Other Guantnamo prisoners threw punches and feces and urine, but, according to the classified dossier, Salahis only disciplinary infraction was that, on May 11, 2003, he possessed an excessive amount of MRE food., Salahi often appeared sullen and withdrawn. But, after the diary came out, they learned that Mohamedou is not high value, hes just a guy who got fucked over for years. He added, Guantnamo has a long shadow for everyonenot just the detainees.. The Pentagon had reported that he was dead. Schroen recalled, When I began to distribute moneytwo hundred thousand dollars here, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for thisI think that they were convinced that we were sincere. In the next few weeks, Schroens C.I.A. Yacoub had a large family and a small salary, so, when Salahi was released, he started paying Yacoub to do occasional tasks. In 2005, Mauritania had a military coupthe typical way in which power has changed hands since independence. The techniqueswhich government documents identify as omnipotence tactics, degradation tactics, debilitation tactics, and monopolization of perception tacticshad been developed by Communist forces during the Korean War, to coerce prisoners into making false confessions, for propaganda purposes. He wrote a letter to his wife and children, but there was no way to send it, and so he kept it in a pocket in his robes. Neely later found out that the elderly detainee had jerked because, when he was forced to his knees, he thought he was about to be shot in the back of the head. 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. An M.P. 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. 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. The next morning, Salahi was led to the office of the Mauritanian intelligence chief, Deddahi Ould Abdellahi. Mohamedou Ould Slahi or Salahi (Arabic language: ) (born December 31, 1970) is a Mauritanian who has been detained at Guantnamo Bay detention camp since August 4, 2002. Where is Osama bin Laden? They shouted and threw objects against the wall. But, when the new commander asked Stuart Herrington, a retired colonel and Army intelligence officer, to assess operations at the facility, Herrington found that most interrogators lacked the training and the experience required to be effective. In 1999, shortly after graduating from high school, Wood started a job at the local sawmill. Summer/Autumn 2015. In September, 2002, Army officers started referring to Guantnamo as Americas Battle Lab., Early in the afternoon of October 2, 2002, a group of interagency lawyers and psychologists met to come up with a framework that used psychological stressors and environmental manipulation to foster dependence and compliance. The C.I.A. He was terrifiedhe wanted to go back to Canada, where interrogators behaved within the bounds of the law. In 1998, he had travelled to Afghanistan, and spent a year in Al Qaeda training camps, where he learned to handle weapons and explosives. Mitchell argued that, by reverse-engineering this program, interrogators could overwhelm whatever resistance training a detainee might have absorbed from the Manchester manual. Because detainees are not in U.S. territory, the government has not allowed them to be tried in U.S. courts. Look up the prison on Robben Island. Salahi underwent daily interrogations. 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