While in custody, Salahi had befriended Yacoub, the intelligence officer who had been one of his guards. After 14 years. No one will know what happened to him, and eventually, no one will care.. Echo Special was a trailer that had been divided in two. In the military hearing, Salahi described the torture program in vivid detail. But, in practice, IRFing was often done as a form of revenge, initiated liberallyfor example, when a detainee was found to have two plastic cups instead of one, or refused to drink a bottle of Ensure, because he thought that he was being given poison. By the spring of 2003, Salahi had been visited in Guantnamo by investigators from Canada and Germany, and questioned by various U.S. government agencies. I felt so bad, and kept praying silently, Nothings gonna happen to you dear brother.. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, 45, was subjected in 2003 to a special interrogation at Guantnamo Bay. 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. 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. I Tweeted it. Published now for the first time, Guantanamo . For seventy-six days, he lived in solitary confinement, in a cold cell with surveillance cameras and the lights always on. 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. Everyone on the team was dressed entirely in black, their faces obscured by balaclavas. Youve still got, like, a solid eight inches.. When they finished, Salahis lawyers delivered a CD-rom with the scanned pages to Larry Siems, a writer and a human-rights advocate, who has written extensively on government misconduct in the aftermath of 9/11. Mohamedou Ould Salahi, from Mauritania, was born in 1970. Bet youll think twice next time about saying you know me, he said, laughing. 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. One of the seven authors was Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian man who was held without charge for 14 years, during which time he was repeatedly tortured, before his release in 2016. Thats like asking Charlie Sheen how many women he dated. The important stuff was in his diary, he said, which they could read only inside a secure facility near Washington, D.C. 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. Its not looking good, the presiding military officer replied. 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. Born on 21 December 1970 in a small town in Mauritania, Ould Slahi received a scholarship to study in Germany in 1988. It was the first time in my thirty-year CIA career that I had ever heard an order to kill someone, Schroen wrote. 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. Now, faced with their own incompetence, Fallon wrote, interrogators were quick to blame classic Manchester resistance tactics!. In 2004, Steve Wood was deployed to Guantnamo Bay, as a member of the Oregon National Guard. 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. Mohamedou Ould Sah es uno de tantos casos que estn sufriendo en una prisin, acusados de delitos que no cometieron. In the minutes before the first detainees set foot on Guantnamo, you could literally hear a pin drop, Brandon Neely, a military-police officer, recalled, in an interview with the Guantnamo Testimonials Project, at the University of California, Davis, in 2008. 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. custody, claimed that Salahi had recruited him into Al Qaeda. I was an agent of the state. When Wood told the old man that he had worked at Guantnamo Bay, the man suggested that he keep it to himself. Several Mauritanians had travelled to battlefields in Afghanistan and Bosnia, and Mahfouz Walid had become an important figure in Al Qaeda; he now went by the nom de guerre Abu Hafs al-Mauritani. Everyone, including myself, was very nervous, he said. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, 44, has been held prisoner inside Guantanomo Bay since 2002. I want to go to a country where I can enjoy my freedom, he said. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. He stopped praying in public. Wood left for the airport at 4 A.M. Salahi spent much of the day watching YouTube compilations of the worst American Idol auditions. Herrington later reported that the interrogators were unsure of the real names of more than half the detainees. The release comes 14 years after he was first brought by the United States to the prison at Guantanamo Bay. February 27, 2019. During interrogations, an intelligence officer, known among the detainees as William the Torturer, forced Salahi into stress positions that exacerbated his sciatic-nerve issues. Wood became secretive about his calls with Salahi; Wendy began to suspect that he was having an affair. 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. But Salahi wanted to live free of surveillance, and he decided to leave the country. For the next seventy days I wouldnt know the sweetness of sleeping. Katja's life collapses after the deaths of her husband and son in a bomb attack. And Id say, No matter what you did in the past, man, youve saved thousands of lives. Id always say that, and hed just shake his head, like, Bullshit., One night, when Salahi was asleep, Wood heard sounds that reminded him of a child having a nightmare. After the failed attack, Canada began to aggressively investigate the Montreal cell. I wish you good luck, the agent said. He signed it. You very much become a child again.. He liked to rile his guards into debating equality, race, and religion, and he wielded a sophisticated understanding of history and geopolitics to chip away at their beliefs. 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. I'm a really big believer in Joe Biden. Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Couch truly believed Mohamedou Ould Slahi was guilty. I figured Ive seen the guy, but where and when? Salahi wrote in his diary. 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. 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.. All he saw was a rat, Salahi wrote. 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. The mosque had thousands of attendees, a few of whom belonged to an Algerian jihadi group that had come to the attention of the French and Canadian intelligence services. Mohamed Elmoustapha Ould Badre Eddine, a left-wing member of the Mauritanian Parliament, conducted inquiries of his own, but made no progress. The lead officer couldnt speak Mauritanias Hassaniya Arabic, and Abdellahi hardly understood the Jordanian dialect, so Salahi translated for them. Since then, I have received it, eaten it, and paid for it! Bad people always want to blend into a crowd, Salahi explained at the military hearing. Is this something that happens to people who have little external stimulus such as daylight, human interaction etc???? Mauritanian immigration officials detained him for an hourhere was a giant American, all muscle and veins, saying that he had met Salahi in Guantnamo Baybut eventually one of Salahis nephews persuaded them to let Wood in. His whole reputation rested on this fiction. After a near-fatal stabbingand decades of threatsthe novelist speaks about writing as a death-defying act. They went through checklists of questions that had been developed by their superiors, and seemed impervious to nuance, or to the notion that some detainees may have been sent there in error. Another two years passed before Salahis name caught the attention of Deddahi Ould Abdellahi, the head of Mauritanias security-intelligence apparatus. Among such methods as forced nakedness, dietary manipulation, daily twenty-hour interrogations, waterboarding, exposure to freezing temperatures, and the withholding of medical care, Beaver endorsed the use of scenarios designed to convince the detainee that death was imminent. (She later expressed surprise that her legal opinion had become the final word on interrogation policies and practices within the Department of Defense.) An accompanying memo, drafted by a military psychologist and a psychiatrist, explained that all aspects of the environment should enhance capture shock, dislocate expectations, foster dependence, and support exploitation to the fullest extent possible., In November, 2002, the set of proposed techniques landed on Donald Rumsfelds desk. [1] Slahi escreveu um livro de memrias em 2005 enquanto estava preso, o qual o governo dos EUA desclassificou em 2012 com inmeras . The Taliban was rapidly losing ground. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who underwent brutal interrogations while he was held at Guantnamo Bay, is a free man in Mauritania after nearly 15 years as a detainee. I just remember being super excited, because I thought, Im going to be doing something important, Wood told me. The plan, conceived by James Mitchell, a psychologist working on contract for the C.I.A., was to induce learned helplessness in humans by combining an individually tailored regimen of torture techniques with environmental manipulation. The decision to simultaneously protect and detain Al Qaeda members was apparently made by Irans spy chief, Qassem Suleimani. I was, like, What else have they lied about? he said. Twenty-hour interrogations. Mohamedou Ould Slahi: I always told myself, at the end of the day, I didn't do wrong to anyone. Salahis freedom became a strain on Woods marriage. Oh, Allah, help me! He was accused of being a part of the Al-Qaeda by the American government. During the Amnesty International live stream, someone on Twitter commented that, of the two of them, Wood looked like the detainee. They werent the only people taken by this strugglethe C.I.A. Did this license lead Alex Murdaugh to commit fraud after fraudand then kill his wife and son? . From the floor of Parliament, Badre Eddine noted that Mauritania has no extradition treaty with the United States. Where is Mullah Omar? they asked. 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. Yee, who had converted to Islam in the early nineties, sent a request up the chain of command, but was rebuffed. Bin Laden, wary of Al Qaedas fragility, urged him not to speak publicly of his departure. Salahi denied knowing Ahmed Ressam, and added that he thought the entire narrative around the attack had been concocted to unlock the terrorism budget and hurt the Muslims. At the time, he later wrote, I believed excessively in Conspiracy Theoriesthough maybe not as much as the U.S. government does.. Salahi figured that this was how bin al-Shibh had ended up naming him as a high-level Al Qaeda recruiter. WASHINGTON - The U.S. government has transferred Mohamedou Ould Slahi to his native Mauritania, where he is to be reunited with his family. In 2005, during the military hearing, Salahi had urged the presiding officer not to send him back to Mauritania. 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. Each time, the minister liedeven after the Red Cross had started delivering Salahis letters from Guantnamo to his family. I thought there would be a lot of formalities, especially for a terrorist suspect such as myself, but nothing like that happened, Salahi wrote. A lot of these prisoners were actually looking forward to being handed over to the Americans, figuring it would be pretty obvious they werent Al Qaeda. Yet hundreds of them were sent to Guantnamo Bay, which ended up housing seven hundred and eighty people. Within a few months, dozens of Al Qaeda members were living in Tehran, undergoing occasional interrogations, aware that their Iranian hosts could betray them at any moment. But sometimes, after coperating, hed get depressed and anxious, and say, Im a bad Muslim, Wood told me. The decision to keep his conversion a secret from everyone in his life made him feel at times as if being Muslim were wrong, even though, in his heart, he still believed. Then, and on at least one other occasion, a member of Al Qaedas Shura Councilits leadershipwired some four thousand dollars to Salahis bank account in Germany; Salahi withdrew the cash and handed it to men who were travelling to West Africa, to facilitate what the Americans assessed to be money-laundering and telecommunications projects for al-Qaida., In 1999, the Shura member called Salahi, but U.S. intelligence didnt know what his instructions were. They drove to the airport in silence, in Abdellahis black Mercedes. You could always tell when someone got IRFed, as the detainees throughout the camp would start chanting and screaming, Neely recalled. I petitioned the Defense Department to allow me to show him the edited manuscript, but they turned me down. In 2015, it was published, by Little, Brown, as Guantnamo Diary.. Id come home and iron my uniform, and my roommates didnt know a thing, he said. Salahi saw a mentally ill old man subjected to this method. It was such a good feeling.. But the problem is that you cannot just admit to something you havent done; you need to deliver the details, which you cant when you hadnt done anything. . Until recently, the guards and the interrogators had worn Halloween masks inside the cell. But he did not consider himself a member of Al Qaeda, or a facilitator of its operations. He identified himself as Captain Collins, a Navy officer who had been sent to Guantnamo by the White House. It was my way of telling him, Man, I trust you. One of the Algerian jihadis was Ahmed Ressam, a serial thief who was living in Canada under a false identity. Have you heard of Nelson Mandela? Wood recalled Salahi saying. Still, Salahi found his Jordanian interrogators to be highly knowledgeable, and they developed a kind of mutual respect. But Wood spent his days in the base library, researching topics that Salahi had brought up in the cell. He knew what he expected to hear. And I didnt confirm or deny anything, Wood told me. According to Fallon, The Northern Alliance would jam so many detainees into Conex shipping containers that they started to die of suffocation. 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. 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. The anteroom was filled with Mauritanian dignitaries and lites, all men, sitting on couches that lined the perimeter. Then, he wrote, the plane landed, the doors opened, and the warm Cuban sun hit me gracefully. The Mauritanian, Kevin Macdonald's movie based on the true story of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian man . 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