The plane landed at sunset. He was never charged with a crime, although the U.S. government suspected him of involvement in the September 11th attacks. Today Slahi, who is now 50, resides back home in Mauritania, though he is far from free. We got to the site at sunrise; the sky was a hazy, muted orange, from wildfires burning to the south. The men never abused Salahi, but, as the days became weeks, he wished that they would just turn him over to the United States, where, he assumed, he could at least challenge the legal grounds of his detention. Wife: Not Available: Sibling: Not Available: Children: Not Available : Mohamedou Ould Slahi Net Worth. You could always tell when someone got IRFed, as the detainees throughout the camp would start chanting and screaming, Neely recalled. The guards, who were officially prohibited from interacting with him, began asking questions. 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. 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. Allah! Soon afterward, Steve and Wendy separated. custody, bin al-Shibh named Salahi as the man who had arranged his travel to Afghanistan and his introduction to bin Laden. Twenty-hour interrogations. Since then, I have received it, eaten it, and paid for it! I want bin Ladins head shipped back in a box filled with dry ice. But the government had abandoned the theory that Salahi knew about 9/11 before it happened. 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. Stand the fuck up! an interrogator said. Salahi underwent daily interrogations. 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. So, completely different goals in life., Sometimes Wood opened Salahis Quran to a random page and told him the verse number, and Salahi would recite it aloud from memory, first in Arabic, then in English. Pendant des mois, il a crit ses mmoires . He added that, as the worlds most powerful democracy, the United States had the means to uphold and pressure other countries to uphold human rights. As at Guantnamo, he often worked at night. An officer shouted Code Red! into a radio, and the Internal Reaction Force team raced to the scene and hog-tied him. On a Tuesday afternoon in September, 2001, one of bin Ladens messengers sought out Salahis cousin, Abu Hafs, and told him to keep an eye on the news. Now bin al-Shibh, who was being tortured in C.I.A. After all, only the Americans suspect me of terrorism, no other country. Nevertheless, he spent 14 years of captivity in America's notorious Guantanamo Bay prison,. On December 19th, Abu Hafs boarded a bus in Quetta, carrying a fake passport and a suitcase full of cash. Thank you for a wonderful evening!, Ive done it, Igor! Bet youll think twice next time about saying you know me, he said, laughing. In the dark you create things out of what little you have., Had I done what they accused me of, I would have relieved myself on day one, Salahi wrote in his diary. Mohamedou Ould Slahi spent 14 years of his life as a detainee in the United States military prison at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. He and his comrades were told that many of the detainees were responsible for 9/11 and, given the opportunity, would strike again. 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. VIDEO The Mauritanian: Mohamedou Ould Slahi on his 14 years in Guantanamo After 9/11 he was imprisoned and tortured by the US yet never charged with a crime. 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. It was not every day, the tortureI would say maybe twice a week. While other detainees were mercilessly beaten, strung up by their limbs, and sexually assaulted, he added, all they did was strike me at different times in the face, and hit me against the concrete wall.. The cousins had married a pair of sisters, and so they were now also brothers-in-law. A former leader of several provinces explained to me that Abu Hafs, bin Ladens former Sharia adviser, is now an adviser to the President. 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. (Until 2007, a terrorist sanctions list included Salahis name as an alias for Abu Hafs.). The journey to Nouakchott took almost three days, with long layovers in New York and Casablanca. I told him I have no problem with the Jews, either, man. . 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.. And now he belongs to the Americans.. 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. During a lull in conversation, he turned to Salahi and, gesturing toward Wood and me, said, So, you studied in the United States?. I thought hed be back in no time, he told me. The devotion, the routine of the five daily prayersthat kept Mohamedou going, Wood told me. I went back to my tent and laid down to go to sleep. Mauritanian hospitals dont have the capacitythey typically send such patients to Francebut what Salahi didnt know was that his repatriation would not amount to the restitution of his rights. By the second week of December, it was clear that Kandahar would fall. The Pentagon had reported that he was dead. by Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Larry Siems ( 32 ) $17.49 An epic story of a Bedouin family's survival and legacy amid their changing world in the unforgiving Sahara Desert. 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. Outside Echo Special, Wood started reading about Guantnamo on activist Web sites, but a colleague warned him that Internet traffic was monitored on the base. Neuer Kurator des African Book Festival Berlin" wird Mohamedou Ould Slahi Houbeini. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. Did this license lead Alex Murdaugh to commit fraud after fraudand then kill his wife and son? How can I render uninterrupted interrogation that has been lasting the last 7 years. In response, detainees would stop coperating and start chanting or praying; in an attempt to reassert control, Fallon wrote, the interrogators would duct-tape their mouths, further guaranteeing that they wouldnt get any informationand so it would go. Nevertheless, he recalled, each failed interrogation was taken as proof that the detainees were both Al Qaeda and trained to resist these methods. In 2000, investigators in northern England had discovered a jihadi field manual that included advice on lying to captors. The Ambassador called Nouakchott, and the foreign minister ordered the Embassy to fabricate a passport, using a fake name. The men slept on his floor and left for Afghanistan at dawn. As a teen-ager, Salahi memorized the entire Quran. Through the window I started to see the sand-covered small villages around Nouakchott, as bleak as their prospects, he wrote. Near the airport parking lot, Salahi stood in a light-blue boubou, the traditional Mauritanian robe, with a turban to obscure his identity. Twelve days later, a group of men charged into Salahis cell with a snarling German shepherd. -From Guantnamo Diary, by Mohamedou Ould Slahi It was a simple prayer. Illustration by Tyler Comrie; source photograph from Stringer/ AFP/ Getty (face). The man confined there was referred to by his detainee number, 760. In the U.S., it was morning. Salahi saw a mentally ill old man subjected to this method. If I say that I am angry, it is seen as a threat to national security., The next day, Salahi brought Wood and me to a friends wedding party, hosted by Mauritanias best radiologist. . Des milliers de livres avec la livraison chez vous en 1 jour ou en magasin avec -5% de rduction ou tlchargez la version eBook. Slahi . They stripped, and rubbed their bodies all over his, and threatened to rape him. Wood became secretive about his calls with Salahi; Wendy began to suspect that he was having an affair. After she converted to Islam, they married in a religious ceremony. One of Salahis friends, who was now living in Canada, suggested that he move to Montreal. 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. But it stopped abruptly after a failed assassination attempt against the President, in 2011, which raised questions about whether he was cutting deals with Al Qaeda. I was scared to ask too many questions, I was scared to read a book on Islam while I was in there, or show too much interest., Woods concerns were not unjustified. Seems a little creepy., Sensory deprivation can cause hallucinations, usually visual rather than auditory, but you never know, Zierhoffer replied. In fact, Id say, without you, September 11th would never have happened, one of Salahis interrogators told him. 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. After roughly three weeks, F.B.I. They drove to the airport in silence, in Abdellahis black Mercedes. The leadership at Guantnamo was more interested in intelligence collection than in prosecuting detainees for terrorism crimes. 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. Never turn your back, the sergeant major warned him. 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. (Forty people remain in the camp, at an annual cost of some ten million dollars a detainee.) 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. 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. Yacoub climbed into the passenger seat. Soon afterward, Canadian investigators came to the apartment and questioned him about the Millennium Plot. M Despite the Covid pandemic, which postponed its initial release by one year, the biopic "Designated Guilty" (The Mauritanian), adaptation by director Kevin MacDonald of the memoir "Les carnets de Guantanamo" by Mauritanian Mohamedou Ould Slahi, has finally been released. I dont have a problem with black peoplehalf my country is black people! 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