), The government no longer attempted to prosecute Salahinobody had touched the criminal case since Couch withdrewbut it argued that he should nevertheless be detained indefinitely. . Then one of them shouted, Pillow, you can come out now! A short man in his mid-thirties stepped into the guards area, unshackled. French actor Tahar Rahim is making headlines for his performance in the film The Mauritanian, which chronicles the true life story of Mohamedou Ould Slahi. But he derived immense satisfaction from the work, and saw in it the kind of moral clarity that Guantnamo had lacked. I told him I have no problem with the Jews, either, man. There are so many Ahmeds that itll be difficult for them to put him on the no-fly list, Salahi joked. As they left baggage claim, Salahi later wrote in his diary, my hands were shackled behind my back and I was encircled by a bunch of ghosts who cut me off from the rest of my company. You could always tell when someone got IRFed, as the detainees throughout the camp would start chanting and screaming, Neely recalled. But he subsequently forgot the log-in information, and so he never saw a reply. Soon afterward, Canadian investigators came to the apartment and questioned him about the Millennium Plot. There were no weapons of mass destruction. ), Later that month, a military lawyer named Diane Beaver drafted a legal justificationdescribed later by a congressional inquiry on torture as profoundly in error and legally insufficientfor a set of abusive interrogation techniques. Mohamedou Ould Slahi spent 14 years of his life as a detainee in the United States military prison at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. For the next seventy days I wouldnt know the sweetness of sleeping. Wood told Salahi that he was working for his brothers construction company, repairing bridges. But the C.I.A., which spent the next few years shuffling its high-value detainees among so-called black sites in Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe, had seen fit to transfer him into military custody. By the time Salahi arrived at Guantnamo, on August 5, 2002, Fallons lite interagency criminal-investigation task force had been sidelined, and Lehnert had been replaced. 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.) Salahi was on a diet of Ensure nutrition shakes and antidepressants. Salahi withdrew the cash and gave it to friends who were travelling to Nouakchott, and they delivered it to Abu Hafss family. He was accused of being a part of the Al-Qaeda by the American government. 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. Owing to his expertise as an electrical engineer, the dossier concludes, Salahi was also able to describe Al Qaedas elaborate communications systems, including radio relay, couriers, encryption, phone boutiques, and satellite communication links to laptops. But the U.S. government was sure there was more to be gleaned from him; the dossier says that he still has useful information on a variety of subjects, including the 9/11 attacks, and lists twenty-two additional areas of potential exploitation. Military officials considered him the poster child for the intelligence effort at Guantnamo., As a result of Salahis coperation, his private cell was now stocked with what the government referred to as comfort items. After the pillow came soap, towels, a prayer cap, and prayer beadsby the time Steve Wood arrived, Salahi also had books, a television, a PlayStation, and an old laptop, on which he killed time playing chess and watching DVDs. Later that summer, Abu Hafs wrote a twelve-page dissent, but bin Laden bristled at his defiance, and the objections of other Al Qaeda leaders, and moved forward. By now, Wood was no longer dating Summers mother. Over dinner, they explained that they were heading east, for the jihad. Until recently, the former spy chief Deddahi Ould Abdellahi lived directly across the street. The next day, Abu Hafs invited me to his house, in one of Nouakchotts most expensive neighborhoods. Neuer Kurator des African Book Festival Berlin" wird Mohamedou Ould Slahi Houbeini. His wife and children left first; once they had settled in Nouakchott, Abu Hafs said, the challenge was to transport himself thousands of miles without being detected, arrested, or subjected to rendition. He is seen as one of the most successful Writer of all times. custody, claimed that Salahi had recruited him into Al Qaeda. Although many of the detainees arrived malnourished, with their bodies marked by bullet wounds and broken bones, some IRF teams punched them and slammed their heads into the ground until they were bloody and unconscious. The cousins had married a pair of sisters, and so they were now also brothers-in-law. Bin Laden, wary of Al Qaedas fragility, urged him not to speak publicly of his departure. But, after Salahi returned to Germany, they had scarcely been in touch. . This is my daughter. After a few months, he signed up for the Oregon National Guard, on the military-police track. But because Slahi remains in US custody, unlike the others, his is the only first-person account that the government had the power to redact. He never told Wendy about his conversion. Some of Mohsens bad friends, as Salahi described them, visited Mohsens apartment while he was hosting Salahi. No one will know what happened to him, and eventually, no one will care.. with you, and that is to tell me five things that you are grateful for today, he told one of them. I was forbidden from seeing the light of the day; every once in a while they gave me a rec-time at night to keep me from seeing or interacting with any detainees. Like, really stressful. They slept under mosquito nets in Salahis bedroom, and woke up to the sound of a bleating sheep. Meanwhile, his subordinates continued to collect bribes from Salahis family. Is this something that happens to people who have little external stimulus such as daylight, human interaction etc???? Mitchell argued that, by reverse-engineering this program, interrogators could overwhelm whatever resistance training a detainee might have absorbed from the Manchester manual. The whole time I was thinking, you know, What does he really think of us? he recalled. But sometimes, after coperating, hed get depressed and anxious, and say, Im a bad Muslim, Wood told me. It sucked that I didnt have the freedom to travel, Salahi recalled in the military hearing. He is being held under the authority of Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF), alleged by the US government to be "part of" al Qaeda at the time of his arrest. Pendant des mois, il a crit ses mmoires . 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. Born on 21 December 1970 in a small town in Mauritania, Ould Slahi received a scholarship to study in Germany in 1988. Salahi was terrified. True, you didnt choose this family, nor did you grow up with it, but its a family all the same, he wrote in his diary. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, 45, was subjected in 2003 to a special interrogation at Guantnamo Bay. Cole, and hoped that some of the men who were being shipped to Guantnamo would have information about the case. In July, 2001, according to Scott-Clark and Levy, the authors of The Exile, Abu Hafs handed bin Laden his resignation letter. 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. The Ambassador called Nouakchott, and the foreign minister ordered the Embassy to fabricate a passport, using a fake name. 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. He was driven around for three hours, to make him think that he was being transported to a different facility. 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. Larry Siems visited Salahi in Mauritania, and they set about filling in the redactions in the book. The lesson seemed to be that the right mix of atonement and seniority in a terrorist organization can give the kind of leverage that is unavailable to men like Salahi. For seventy-six days, he lived in solitary confinement, in a cold cell with surveillance cameras and the lights always on. On February 14, 2004, Salahi received a short letter from his mother in Mauritania, informing him that her health situation is OK. It had been eight hundred and fifteen days since he had seen heran ailing woman in the rearview mirror, waving from the street as he drove to Deddahi Abdellahis intelligence headquarters. Wife: Not Available: Sibling: Not Available: Children: Not Available : Mohamedou Ould Slahi Net Worth. He was never charged with a crime, although the U.S. government suspected him of involvement in the September 11th attacks. Salahi noted that Steve snores likehow do you call it?a steam train.. 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. Mohamedou Ould Salahi Net Worth & Basic source of earning is being a successful Mauritanian Writer. 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. Just remember Allah always has a plan. in the United States on February 12. 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. A former leader of several provinces explained to me that Abu Hafs, bin Ladens former Sharia adviser, is now an adviser to the President. Forces recruits who speak grammatically incorrectly, he wrote on a scrap of paper inside his cell. 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. Ive finally found a way to reuse all our wine corks!, If youd like, I can set you up with a bullet I dodged.. 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. Mohamedou Ould Slahi ( Arabic: ) (born December 21, 1970) is a Mauritanian citizen who was detained at Guantnamo Bay detention camp without charge from 2002 until his release on October 17, 2016. In September, 2002, Army officers started referring to Guantnamo as Americas Battle Lab., Early in the afternoon of October 2, 2002, a group of interagency lawyers and psychologists met to come up with a framework that used psychological stressors and environmental manipulation to foster dependence and compliance. The C.I.A. Man, youve had a really tough time of it, he said. ), Each detainee was given a number, and, on August 4th, thirty-four of those numbers were called, including Salahis. In Mauritania, Abdellahis men detained Salahis wife and brothers and interrogated them about the Millennium Plot. Seven months later, his deployment ended. 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.. The plane landed at sunset. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. His very existence will become erased. (Abdellahi says that, after Salahi disappeared, the family never contacted him.) In 2006, Wood removed his shoes at the entrance to the Masjid As-Saber, Portlands largest mosque. He refused, saying that he didnt want to jeopardize his future travel. 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. smaller?, One of the F.B.I. For the next two months, Abu Hafs taught jihadi recruits at a madrassa. He also contacted another guard from Echo Special. He thought, It must be somebody really importantthe most dangerous person in the world, perhapsto have this special attention, a guard force just for him. He also believed that Slahi's interrogators had broken the law tormenting him physically and sexually, and. When I visited Wood, last August, he and his team were layering the surface of a bridge near Dayton, Oregon, with epoxy, rocks, and primer. He gently held Salahis shoulder, and said, Everythings O.K. Salahi shook his head, and clicked his tongue in disagreement, but refused to speak. 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. The Ambassador drove him to Tehrans international airport in a diplomatic vehicle, and accompanied him through the diplomatic channel, through airport security and immigration, right up until the moment he got on the plane. After that, whenever anybody tried to explain anything to the guy, he always asked, Compare it with the rat: Is it bigger? And I didnt confirm or deny anything, Wood told me. A Guantanamo bay convict claims he was forced to have sex with female interrogators in his recently published memoir. Through the window I started to see the sand-covered small villages around Nouakchott, as bleak as their prospects, he wrote. His heavily redacted book about his time in the U.S. facility was published in January 2015. Several of his co-workers were missing fingers, and the manager took every opportunity to denigrate the staff. A private hospital in Germany has offered to cover the costs of Salahis gallbladder surgery, plus a year of physical and psychological rehabilitation, but without a passport he cannot travel to Europe. The first rumors of a planes operation began circulating among Al Qaeda leaders in 1999. So empty., In recent months, the push for Salahis passport has taken on new urgency. So look at me, Salahi said. Neither of them knew that the United States had asked Mauritanias President to hand over Salahi to a rendition team. Another two years passed before Salahis name caught the attention of Deddahi Ould Abdellahi, the head of Mauritanias security-intelligence apparatus. The abuse wound down slowlyno more hitting, but no comfort items, either, and no uninterrupted periods of rest. I was happy because the one-ton stack of paper the U.S. government had provided the Senegalese about me didnt seem to impress them, Salahi wrote. The students acted as Woods witnesses. He said he was going to bring in black people, Salahi recalled, in the military hearing. In that meeting, Abu Hafs challenged bin Laden on Quranic grounds, arguing that the scale of civilian casualties could not be justified in Islam. Out here, Im probably only drinking seven or eight coffees per day, he told me. I really have no questions for you, because I know your case, Abdellahi told him. 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 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. He was belted so tightly that he struggled to breathe, but he didnt have the English vocabulary to tell the guards. was funding and equipping many of the mujahideen groups. 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.. I was scared to hell, Salahi recalled at his hearing. (During the layover in Casablanca, he had drunk a Red Bull and twenty-two shots of espresso.) . Wood had come to see Islam in much the same way that many of the detainees did: as the only thing that couldnt be stripped from them. Because he had no experience with weapons, Al Qaeda personnel sent him to the Al Farouq training camp, near Khost, where he learned how to use a Kalashnikov rifle and launch rocket-propelled grenades. I am not in Afghanistan, Salahi replied. Nevertheless, he spent 14 years of captivity in America's notorious Guantanamo Bay prison,. But Wood spent his days in the base library, researching topics that Salahi had brought up in the cell. 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. How does he live? detainees were whisked to the cellar, to be hidden from view. Soon afterward, Steve and Wendy separated. But two months later, when Salahi returned to Mauritania and described his experience of the jihad, Walid resolved to set off on his own for Afghanistan. But I changed my mind after Guantnamo, he told me. 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. I arrived just before the sunset prayers. Salahi became Slahi. So began a life in which governments treated Salahi in accordance with their own mistakes. We had done all our investigations, and we found nothing against Salahi, Abdellahi told me. He had spent the morning of the worst terrorist attack in American history lying on his mothers couch, high on painkillers after a tonsillectomy, but when he emerged from the haze he was angry, focussed, and longing for deployment. For 14 years and two months . 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