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. But by then the Soviet Union had collapsed, and, while Salahi was in training, the Afghan government lost its Russian support. His turban was still damp from where his wife had cleaned off other peoples blood. Wood walked into the main area, which housed the guards; through a door was the prisoners sleeping space. A week after Salahi began leading prayers at the Al Sunnah mosque, Ressam drove a rental car onto a U.S.-bound ferry in Victoria, British Columbia. 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. I'm a really big believer in Joe Biden. Instead, the men stripped him naked, strapped a diaper on him, and swapped out his shackles for a heavier set. Ressam told investigators that he had planned to detonate suitcases in a crowded terminal at Los Angeles International Airport. Mohamedou Ould Slahi was sent to his home country of Mauritania after 14 years of imprisonment. I executed orders. As two M.P.s dragged him to the holding area, someone tossed his prosthetic leg out of the bus. Summer/Autumn 2015. Steve Wood was elated when he heard the news. Amna Nawaz: He was tortured by his American interrogators, subjected to solitary confinement,. When Salahis lawyers wrote to him, asking that he inform them of everything he had told the government, he wrote back, Are you out of your mind! I dont remember whether I hit the floor or was caught by the other guards. 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. How does he behave? 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. She is my life. 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. 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. Siems was doing an interview about the diary, and in that moment Salahi finally felt as if he was beginning to take back the narrative of his life. By the time Wood left, he had come to accept his guards and interrogators as family. In June, 2004, the Supreme Court ruled that Guantnamo detainees could challenge the grounds for their detention. I dont have a problem with black peoplehalf my country is black people! But the agent kept using racial slurs. Abdellahi had bought him a new outfit, but Salahi had refused to eat, and the fabric was loose on his shoulders. En 2005, trois ans aprs son arrestation, Mohamedou a commenc rdiger un journal. "And then what they -- pretty much told him, 'This is a bunch of B.S.'" Slahi's life changed . Because detainees are not in U.S. territory, the government has not allowed them to be tried in U.S. courts. contract psychologist who devised the enhanced-interrogation program, describes this period as an element of Pavlovian conditioning, in which the detainee sees his situation improve or deteriorate in direct accordance with his level of compliance. The leadership at Guantnamo was more interested in intelligence collection than in prosecuting detainees for terrorism crimes. It didnt take my interrogator a whole lot of time to understand the situation. Another American official arrived, and took Salahis photograph and fingerprints. Although he towered over Salahi, he hesitated before taking his hand, and when he did he noted how delicate Salahi was. His wife, two-year-old son and brother live here. Popularly known as the Writer of Mauritania. Still, Salahi found his Jordanian interrogators to be highly knowledgeable, and they developed a kind of mutual respect. When he refused to back out of the interview, Wendy insisted that he wear an on-camera disguise. Thank you for a wonderful evening!, Ive done it, Igor! The protest lasted for several days as twenty-three prisoners tried to hang themselves.. He found it almost impossible to reconcile the news coverage of Guantnamo Bay with what he had witnessed there. I Tweeted it. 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. When Mohamedou Ould Slahi walked away, unshackled, from a U.S. military plane in Nouakchott, Mauritania, the author of Guantnamo Diary hoped he was finally free. Now bin al-Shibh, who was being tortured in C.I.A. But Wood spent his days in the base library, researching topics that Salahi had brought up in the cell. By the following day, the lead Senegalese officer was convinced that there was no reason to hold Salahi. 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. Later, Salahi moved to Germany, where, the Americans assessed, his primary responsibility was to recruit for al-Qaida in Europe. Among his alleged recruits were three of the 9/11 hijackers, all of whom served as pilots on separate planes. (During the layover in Casablanca, he had drunk a Red Bull and twenty-two shots of espresso.) Wood contacted one of Salahis lawyers, using a made-up name and a new e-mail address, to inquire about Salahis well-being and the status of his case. Then Abu Hafs greeted Wood, who, appearing paralyzed by confusion, coldly took his hand. Wood, who was twenty-three, had recently learned that his girlfriend was pregnant. The detainees protested, and so it was decided that every detainee who refused the Quran would be IRFed. While the detainees were receiving medical treatment for their post-IRF injuries, the Qurans were placed back in their cells. 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. It was the first time Wood had encountered the Quran. Near the airport parking lot, Salahi stood in a light-blue boubou, the traditional Mauritanian robe, with a turban to obscure his identity. The man confined there was referred to by his detainee number, 760. Wed try to cover it back up, real quick, but eventually we were, like, fuck it. After all, only the Americans suspect me of terrorism, no other country. And I didnt confirm or deny anything, Wood told me. The punishment for talking to another detainee was to be hung by the wrists, feet barely touching the ground. 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. For seventy-six days, he lived in solitary confinement, in a cold cell with surveillance cameras and the lights always on. His net worth has been growing significantly in 2021-2022 . The irony is that I have never been in the States, and all the other countries I have been in kept saying, The guy is alright.. He and Abdellahi knelt on the runway, and prayed together. His father died in a plane crash when he was three years old, and his mother brought him and his brothers up in Molalla, Oregon, a lumber town about an hour south of Portland. Salahi landed in Montreal on November 26, 1999. 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. Salahi was terrified. . Mauritania is an Islamic republic, with rich traditions in poetry and recitation that belie its dismal rates of literacy and economic growth. You could always tell when someone got IRFed, as the detainees throughout the camp would start chanting and screaming, Neely recalled. 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. 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. The Americans, with their policies, bore the fruit of the events of September 11th, Abu Hafs said on camera. Eventually, one of the interrogators told Salahi that he was going to be sent to Mauritania for more questioning. Salahi told him that he was now home. Had Wood remained as a regular guard, in one of the regular cellblocks, he might have finished his deployment with his understanding of the global war on terror more or less intact. Before his deployment, he had aspired to become a police officer. At first I thought it was an armed robbery, but, when the airport police approached, the guy behind me flashed a magic badge, which immediately made the policemen retreat. Salahi and his brothers were thrown into the back of a van and driven to a detention site. Everyone, including myself, was very nervous, he said. I am denied my freedom because I was denied my freedom, Salahi said. 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. Is this something that happens to people who have little external stimulus such as daylight, human interaction etc???? Neuer Kurator des African Book Festival Berlin" wird Mohamedou Ould Slahi Houbeini. But his guard suspected otherwise. 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. One day in November, after burying several friends, Abu Hafs sought out an Al Jazeera journalist. The interrogations always circled back to the Millennium Plot. came to much the same conclusion.) 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. Later that day, Neely and his partner brought an elderly detainee to the holding area and forced him to his knees. He was terrifiedhe wanted to go back to Canada, where interrogators behaved within the bounds of the law. 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.. Al Qaeda had by this time transformed into an international terrorist organization that was launching attacks in East Africa and the Middle East. Its so empty, now that Steve left, he said to me. had copied in Nouakchott. No showers for weeks. You know, when you just fall asleep and the saliva starts to come out of your mouth? Salahi said. Ad Choices. His mother was dead, and so was one of his brothers, but there were teen-age nieces and nephews whom he was meeting for the first time. Abu Hafs, Salahis cousin and a senior Al Qaeda official, evaded capture. Several more days of interrogation followed. 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