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. Like, really stressful. They slept under mosquito nets in Salahis bedroom, and woke up to the sound of a bleating sheep. During the next several days, Abu Hafs travelled toward the Pakistani province of Balochistan. 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. The gulf between the U.S. governments public disclosures and its secret practices was etched into his body and his mind. 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. It was the first time Wood had encountered the Quran. But by then the Soviet Union had collapsed, and, while Salahi was in training, the Afghan government lost its Russian support. But, when the list of detainees finally arrived, he recalled, my reaction was, What the fuck? 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. 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. When he discovered the forged letter from Zuleys team, saying that the United States had captured Salahis mother, he resigned from the case. agents threatened Salahi with torture, and tried to intimidate him. Wood left for the airport at 4 A.M. Salahi spent much of the day watching YouTube compilations of the worst American Idol auditions. I dont like power, he said. Id read about Muslim heroes who faced the death penalty, head up, he wrote. NOUAKCHOTT - Mohamedou Salahi is beaming.His welcoming smile is a sign that our conversation, delving into his recent past, may not be so excruciating after all. 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. It is basically subject to perception. Mohamedou Ould Slahi. . In Nouakchott, Abdellahis men detained Salahi again in the fall of 2001, at the request of the Americans. He signed it. He let you down! An interrogation memo listed plans to shave Salahis head and beard, dress him in a burqa, and make him bark and perform dog tricks, to reduce the detainees ego and establish control.. Most of his incarceration was spent in a cell at a detention camp at. After roughly three weeks, F.B.I. 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. In time, he was given back his pain medication. Abu Hafs walked into the house ahead of us, and disappeared into the crowd. But with these people you cannot be likable. He was left for hours in the Caribbean sun. 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. Having accepted his guards, Salahi wrote, the next phase of captivity was getting used to the prison, and being afraid of the outside world.. 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. Oh, Allah, help me! But, when he wanted to engage, he spoke with a worldly, provocative humor that Wood found appealing. His whole reputation rested on this fiction. After Salahi was processed, he spent thirty days in a cold isolation cell, a practice that the U.S. government considered a main building block of the exploitation process, as it allows the captor total control over personal inputs. When the isolation period was over, Salahi learned from other detainees that there was a difference in opinion between those who had lived in European democracies and those who had lived only in Muslim countries, with the latter group arguing that Americas war on terror was an anti-Muslim crusade. I thought they were going to execute me, Salahi wrote. team left Guantnamo, and the torture began. February 27, 2019. Its not looking good, the presiding military officer replied. I dont remember whether I hit the floor or was caught by the other guards. LadenGerman for computer shopand he figured that, to the Americans, Laden would be a red flag. Summer/Autumn 2015. Case of Mohamedou Ould Slahi. His proximity to so many events and high-level jihadi figures could not be explained by coincidence, they thought, and only a logistical mastermind could have left so faint a trail. At the time, Slahi had been in captivity for two years, accused of acts of terrorism. One day, they had coffee at a hotel, by the pool, with the legal team of a current Guantnamo detainee. But, hey, I have to cope with it. When they removed his shackles, the man, who was shaking with fear, suddenly jerked to the left. had been torturing detainees at black sites for several months; now the Guantnamo leadership wanted to understand the legal gymnastics that would be required to implement a program of their own. Eventually, one of the interrogators told Salahi that he was going to be sent to Mauritania for more questioning. 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. 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. Steve Wood was elated when he heard the news. Near the airport parking lot, Salahi stood in a light-blue boubou, the traditional Mauritanian robe, with a turban to obscure his identity. 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. With a movie based on his ordeal. While he was held at Gitmo, Slahi was repeatedly tortured in an . This is enough money to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life. A common bounty was five thousand dollarsfar more money than most Afghans earned in a yearand the result was an explosion of human trafficking by various armed groups, Mark Fallon, the deputy commander of Guantnamos Criminal Investigation Task Force, wrote in his memoir, Unjustifiable Means, which was heavily redacted before being published, in 2017. 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. As he was led away for questioning, he said: "Don't worry mom, I'll be back soon." He has been charged with no crime, but Slahi never returned. By now, he had enough information about the kind of story he had to craft, because, he wrote, through my conversations with the FBI and the DoD, I had a good idea as to what wild theories the government had about me., Zuley walked in, and Salahi started lying. They prayed together, ate together, and enjoyed a picnic of bread and tea in the dunes of the Sahara. black site. He often wakes up shaking, crying, and grinding his teeth. 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. This was my first time hearing these words, Salahi said. Before his deployment, he had aspired to become a police officer. You trust the handcuffs and everything, but, no matter what, wed never be with him one on onethere would always be a partner, Wood told me. 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. They stripped, and rubbed their bodies all over his, and threatened to rape him. What followed was a period of experimentationoverseen by psychologists, lawyers, and medical personnelat C.I.A. 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. 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. It takes a lot of prep to start the job, but, when youve done your bit, youre leaving things better than when you arrived, he said. 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! Slahi . His heavily redacted book about his time in the U.S. facility was published in January 2015. No adult in Woods life had ever looked so frightened and so vulnerable. Her wife was on hand to support her last month, as she scooped the coveted Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe for her efforts in The Mauritanian. 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. Wood walked into the main area, which housed the guards; through a door was the prisoners sleeping space. He started in on the books he had been too afraid to request in Guantnamoones about Islam. Afghanistans civil war entered a new stage, with rival Islamist groups vying for control, and Salahi wanted no part of it. 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. (For the past sixty years, the Cuban government has sought to nullify the agreement, and it refuses to cash the checks.) Mohamedou Ould Sah es uno de tantos casos que estn sufriendo en una prisin, acusados de delitos que no cometieron. He was never charged with a crime, although the U.S. government suspected him of involvement in the September 11th attacks. That December, shortly before his twentieth birthday, Salahi boarded a flight to Pakistan and crossed into Afghanistan, and although he never met bin Laden, he soon pledged his allegiance to the Al Qaeda leadership. A former leader of several provinces explained to me that Abu Hafs, bin Ladens former Sharia adviser, is now an adviser to the President. But he did not consider himself a member of Al Qaeda, or a facilitator of its operations. For 14 years and two months . I was thinking, Those were the worst people the world had to offer?, Investigators had the same question. Donald Rumsfeld told reporters that the men in Guantnamo were among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth. But after Brandon Neelys first shift, on the day the detention camp opened, no one really spoke much, he recalled. Salahi didnt know their real names, and never heard from them again. . Salahi told Wood that he had written four more books in detention, but he hadnt been allowed to take them out of Guantnamo. One day they would deprive him of food, and the next theyd force him to drink water until he vomited. But instead the United States is stating to the world very clear and loud that democracy does not workthat when you need to get down and dirty, you need a dictatorship. The Mujahideen are committed to not carry out any military activity in Mauritania, the letter saysas long as the Mauritanian government released imprisoned fighters, abstained from attacking Al Qaeda cells abroad, and paid the group between ten and twenty million euros per year, to compensate and prevent the kidnapping of tourists. (The Mauritanian government has denied that it negotiates with terrorist groups.). Cole, and hoped that some of the men who were being shipped to Guantnamo would have information about the case. 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. 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