Before dawn, Salahi was taken to an interrogation room. Steve Wood with Salahi, his former prisoner, in Mauritania, in January. But I wasnt the decider. One day in the spring of 2012, Abu Hafs slipped out of custody during a visit to the gym. agents visited Salahis cell. The U.S. military prisons leadership considered Mohamedou Salahi to be its highest-value detainee. 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.). The Mauritanian: The True Story of Mohamedou Ould Slahi The 50-year-old was detained for 14 years without being charged with a crime By Laura Martin 31 Mar 2021 This year sees the 20th. 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. For seventy-six days, he lived in solitary confinement, in a cold cell with surveillance cameras and the lights always on. Back on land, Salahi was carried to Echo Special, the trailer, which would be his home for several years. He recalled his political views as being whatever Fox News told us. He didnt know the difference between a Hindu, a Sikh, and a Muslimhe had never met one. He did not respond to requests for comment.) Salahi generally avoids Abu Hafsthey have fundamentally different views of Islam, and he worries that any association could further complicate his life. The interrogator added that, if Salahi didnt start talking, he would be buried on Christian, sovereign American soil., On August 2nd, military records show, an interrogator told Salahi that he and his colleagues are sick of hearing the same lies over and over and over and are seriously considering washing their hands of him. He denied involvement with terrorism and was never charged with a crime. In October 2016 he made it home after 14 years in Guantnamo Bay, Cuba, where the U.S. government had imprisoned and tortured him as a suspected terrorist. Military-police officers so frequently abused the Quran during cell searches that detainees demanded that the books be kept in the library, where they would be safe. He would be held there for 14 years without charge. 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. He remains locked inside the notorious naval base. 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. He was never charged with a crime, although the U.S. government suspected him of involvement in the September 11th attacks. Salahi was asked about innocuous exchanges from intercepted e-mails and phone calls, as if they had been conducted in code. On his third visit, he told two Saudi students that he wanted to become a Muslim. As Michael Lehnert, a Marine Corps major general who briefly served as the detention camps first commander, later testified to Congress, What better way to enrich yourself, while resolving old grudges, than to finger a neighbor who was your enemy, regardless of his support for either Al Qaeda or the Taliban?. and the G.I.D., but received none. 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. Stand the fuck up! an interrogator said. Discover Mohamedou Ould Slahi's Biography, Age, Height, Physical Stats, Dating/Affairs, Family and career updates. He began to wonder whether the case against Mohamedou Salahi was as flimsy and politically motivated as that for the invasion had been. Seems a little creepy., Sensory deprivation can cause hallucinations, usually visual rather than auditory, but you never know, Zierhoffer replied. On March 22, 2010, a U.S. district-court judge named James Robertson ruled on Salahis petition to be released. His friend, Hosni Mohsen, introduced him to the imam at the Al Sunnah mosque. What I was told was that his information had saved thousands of American lives, Wood said, and this is what theyd given him to keep talking., Salahi was taken into custody when he was thirty years old, but he had already lived on four continents, and spoke fluent Arabic, French, and German. 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. In July, 2001, according to Scott-Clark and Levy, the authors of The Exile, Abu Hafs handed bin Laden his resignation letter. I think he still sees any baby in my family as a future inmate. Brahim Ebety, Salahis Mauritanian lawyer, told me that he is considering a lawsuit against the Mauritanian government. Illustration by Tyler Comrie; source photograph from Stringer/ AFP/ Getty (face). According to interrogation memos, they decorated the walls with photos of genitalia, and set up a baby crib, because he was sensitive about the fact that he had no children. But his guard suspected otherwise. He listed his accomplices and added, thanks to Canadian Intel, the plan was discovered and sentenced to failure. After years of holding out in interrogations, he had become what the classified dossier described as a highly cooperative font of intelligenceone of the most valuable sources in detention. He described Al Qaedas financial involvement in credit-card fraud and drug smuggling, and also the groups investment in unwitting companies in Bosnia, Canada, Chechnya, Denmark, England, Germany, Mauritania, and Spain. He drew organizational charts, with the names and operational roles of key figures, and supplied intelligence on jihadi cells and safe houses all over Europe and West Africa. Because detainees are not in U.S. territory, the government has not allowed them to be tried in U.S. courts. It became fashionable for high-profile corporate-law firms to represent Guantnamo clients, pro bono, but many detainees rejected representation, because they thought it was a ploy to lend legitimacy to an unjust detention. It will look worse.. His was the first guard force that didnt wear masks, that allowed Salahi to pray. . The Corrupt World Behind the Murdaugh Murders. Nevertheless, he spent 14 years of captivity in America's notorious Guantanamo Bay prison,. But he derived immense satisfaction from the work, and saw in it the kind of moral clarity that Guantnamo had lacked. His family moved to the capital of Nouakchott when he was a child, where he excelled in school and earned a scholarship to study electrical engineering at Gerhard-Mercator University in Duisburg, Germany. After lunch, I stood in the reception area, watching Mauritanian politicians and tribal leaders kiss Abu Hafs on both cheeks and thank him for coming. In Nouakchott, Abdellahis men detained Salahi again in the fall of 2001, at the request of the Americans. One of the Algerian jihadis was Ahmed Ressam, a serial thief who was living in Canada under a false identity. I said, No. (Investigators later determined that Ressam had left Montreal for a safe house in Vancouver on November 17thnine days before Salahi arrived in Canada.) Out here, Im probably only drinking seven or eight coffees per day, he told me. Just remember Allah always has a plan. With a movie based on his ordeal. Each government claims that it has come to the rescue of the population, which had been neglected and abused by the previous government, Badre Eddine told me. Soon afterward, Salahis brothers were released with instructions to return to Mauritania. 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. smaller?, One of the F.B.I. Afghanistans civil war entered a new stage, with rival Islamist groups vying for control, and Salahi wanted no part of it. I thought they were going to execute me, Salahi wrote. An elderly white convert warned him to avoid a couple of other white converts, who dressed in religious clothing and talked about wanting to participate in the jihad. Mauritania is much bigger than Guantnamo Bayyou can move around. But I insist on freedom., Another liberty Salahi identified as having been taken from him is that of expressing the full range of human feelings. They were everywhere in the mosque, in the police car, twenty-four hours. Among the targets of the investigation was Mohsen, Salahis friend and host. He grew up measuring political eras by military coups1978, 1979, 1984changes in power that did little to alter the ways in which Mauritanians experienced power. By the second week of December, it was clear that Kandahar would fall. The detainee introduced himself as Mohamedou Salahi, then reached for a handshake, and said, Whats up, dude?. Mohamedou Ould Sah es uno de tantos casos que estn sufriendo en una prisin, acusados de delitos que no cometieron. I want to be able to show bin Ladins head to the President. Black added that he and Bush wanted to avoid the spectacle of a courtroom trial. The first man off the bus had only one leg. In the two and a half years since his return, he has received several professional visitorsSiems, his lawyers, and the filmmaker Michael Bronner, who is adapting Salahis diaryand also personal visits from a lawyer, whom Ill call Amanda. O.K., screw it, it is not a problemthey can watch me, he said. No chairs, no lying down, no more access to his prescription pain medication. The F.B.I. Soon afterward, a jihadi who had attended the same mosqueand who the Americans believed had met Salahiattempted to smuggle explosives in the trunk of a car across the U.S. border; his plan was to detonate suitcases inside Los Angeles International Airport, in what became known as the Millennium Plot. In Kandahar, Abu Hafs felt the Americans closing in. 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. He and his comrades were told that many of the detainees were responsible for 9/11 and, given the opportunity, would strike again. He wore a broad smile and a white jumpsuit, and moved cautiously toward Wood. For years, Mohamedou Salahi was imprisoned on the grounds of being a suspected collaborator in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. guard Steve Wood and director Kevin Macdonald. Theyd ask me, Whos in there?, and Id say, I dont know, probably somebody famous.. The sessions Wood witnessed were calm and courteous, with Salahi attempting to answer everything asked of him. A panel of U.S. national security, intelligence, and other officials cleared Slahi for release in . 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. 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. An officer shouted Code Red! into a radio, and the Internal Reaction Force team raced to the scene and hog-tied him. While Abu Hafs was handling Al Qaedas affairs in East Africa, his father became ill, and so, as both men remember it, Abu Hafs requested Salahis help in transferring money to care for his family in Mauritania. The U.S. had fired cruise missiles at Al Qaeda-linked targets in Sudan and Afghanistan, and, in a bid to capture Abu Hafs, the C.I.A. By the end of the boat ride, Salahi was bleeding from his ankles, mouth, and wrists. He sought structure and disciplinea life of pride, purpose, and clarity of mission. But, after Salahi returned to Germany, they had scarcely been in touch. Around that time, Abu Hafs explained, it became clear to him that the Mauritanian President would be open to his return from Iran. It sucked that I didnt have the freedom to travel, Salahi recalled in the military hearing. The hours were unpredictable, with long drives and arduous shifts. Instead, they are tried by secret military commissionsif they are tried at all. The point is to pave, seal, and waterproof it, to preserve its lifespan, he said. But I give him advice, and he takes it., Mauritania was the site of regular jihadi violence in the second half of the aughts, while Abu Hafs was living in Iran. The release comes 14 years after he was first brought by the United States to the prison at Guantanamo Bay. I just remember being super excited, because I thought, Im going to be doing something important, Wood told me. 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. Never turn your back, the sergeant major warned him. The anteroom was filled with Mauritanian dignitaries and lites, all men, sitting on couches that lined the perimeter. 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. They punched Salahi in the face and the ribs, then covered his eyes with blackout goggles, his ears with earmuffs, and his head with a bag. 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. 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. How does he live? 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. And, by the way, I pay my boy, he added, unprompted. 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. Case of Mohamedou Ould Slahi. They asked me do I know Ahmed Ressam. His specialty was in brutalizing detainees who were considered important, but not valuable enough to get them tickets to the secret CIA prisons, Salahi wrote. He was guilty of nothing, Abdellahi told me, and he had not been charged with a crime. The journey to Nouakchott took roughly an hour, tracing the Mauritanian coastto the left the Atlantic, to the right the Sahara. How can I render uninterrupted interrogation that has been lasting the last 7 years. He grabbed his shortwave radio. A couple of weeks into his detention, two F.B.I. A panel of U.S. national security, intelligence, and other officials cleared Slahi for release in July after determining that he poses On the other end of the line was a man whose voice he hadnt heard in more than eleven years. Summer/Autumn 2015. When the ice melted, they punched him, then repacked the ice to freeze him again. The next time the Red Cross delegation visited Guantnamo, a representative reported that medical files are being used by interrogators to gain information in developing an interrogation plan., Female interrogators groped him. He was forced to swallow salt water, and, every few minutes, the men packed ice cubes between his clothes and his skin. Did this license lead Alex Murdaugh to commit fraud after fraudand then kill his wife and son? Ive finally found a way to reuse all our wine corks!, If youd like, I can set you up with a bullet I dodged.. (For the first several weeks of the invasion, Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, believed that everyone spoke Afghan.) In a rush to leave Kandahar, two dozen senior Al Qaeda officials boarded a bus, but Abu Hafs, fearful that a single air strike could decapitate the jihadi movement, urged them to disperse. I was thinking, Those were the worst people the world had to offer?, Investigators had the same question. Larry Siems visited Salahi in Mauritania, and they set about filling in the redactions in the book. It was a grand compound, white stone decorated with lavish carpets and chandeliers. For the next month, he was kept in total darkness; his only way of knowing day from night was to look into the toilet and see if there was brightness at the end of the drain. 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. 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