Assalaamu alaikum, he said to Mohamedou. I thought there would be a lot of formalities, especially for a terrorist suspect such as myself, but nothing like that happened, Salahi wrote. He was guilty of nothing, Abdellahi told me, and he had not been charged with a crime. 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. Slahi . NEW YORK The U.S. government has transferred Mohamedou Ould Slahi to his native Mauritania, where he is to be reunited with his family.The release comes 14 years after he was first brought by the United States to the prison at Guantnamo Bay. Everyone, including myself, was very nervous, he said. In 1996, when Abu Hafs was twenty-one, he drafted bin Ladens most important fatwa: an eleven-thousand-word document excoriating the Saudi Kingdom and warning the U.S. Secretary of Defense that Al Qaedas adherents have no intention except to enter paradise by killing you. The fatwa was Al Qaedas declaration of war against the United States. Every day, Mariem Mint Elwadia asked God for the same thing: She wanted to see her son, Mohamedou Ould Slahi, just one . By the end of the boat ride, Salahi was bleeding from his ankles, mouth, and wrists. His order for release in 2010 was appealed by the Obama administration, and resulted in another six years in the camp. It was my way of telling him, Man, I trust you. James Mitchell, the C.I.A. At other times, the questions originated from material on his hard drive, which the F.B.I. 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. Another two years passed before Salahis name caught the attention of Deddahi Ould Abdellahi, the head of Mauritanias security-intelligence apparatus. . They prayed together, ate together, and enjoyed a picnic of bread and tea in the dunes of the Sahara. A lot of wise people tell me, Mohamedou, shut the fuck up, dont ask for papers, dont ask. In deliberations with Al Qaeda leaders, he decided that the safest place was Iran. In Nouakchott, Abdellahi waited for updates from the C.I.A. Born on 21 December 1970 in a small town in Mauritania, Ould Slahi received a scholarship to study in Germany in 1988. At that time, Slahi was seen as one of the most important detainees at Guantanamo with allegations that he had helped organise the 9/11 attacks. He couldnt stop talking because he didnt know where he was, nor why, Salahi wrote. No prayers, no information about the direction of Mecca. Seems a little creepy., Sensory deprivation can cause hallucinations, usually visual rather than auditory, but you never know, Zierhoffer replied. You will have a job at the snap of a finger, his friend told him. In the third country, the Mauritanian foreign minister greeted Abu Hafs, and accompanied him on the flight to Nouakchott. He didnt harbor any particular animosity toward Muslims, but he had absorbed his mothers belief: If its not from Jesus then it must be from the Devil. After completing the requirements to become an M.P., Wood enrolled in a criminal-justice program at a nearby community college. Under the new regime, Abdellahi, the spy chief, was demoted, and given the task of investigating corruption and malfeasance within the security services; the standard path for accountability required Abdellahi to investigate himself. Several of his co-workers were missing fingers, and the manager took every opportunity to denigrate the staff. Its so empty, now that Steve left, he said to me. Stand the fuck up! an interrogator said. The cousins had married a pair of sisters, and so they were now also brothers-in-law. In 1998, shortly after Al Qaeda detonated truck bombs outside the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Salahi took a call from a phone number belonging to bin Laden. Case of Mohamedou Ould Slahi. Before leaving Guantnamo, he gave Salahi a novel by Steve Martin, The Pleasure of My Company. Pillow, good luck with your situation, he wrote inside. Government censors redacted names, dates, locations, and other sensitive or embarrassing information. Every other week, when Red Cross representatives visited the prison, Salahi and a handful of other C.I.A. They said I was bringing shame upon the family, and protecting a terrorist, Wood recalled. He began to worry that awareness among his co-workers of his increasingly complex feelings toward Salahi might elicit accusations that he was unpatriotic, or an insider threat. Abu Hafs was back in Afghanistan, living with his family in Kandahar. A couple of years later, he considered visiting Mauritania, to track down Salahis family and apologize for his role in Salahis detention. Like, what is a motherfucker? Mohamedou Ould Slahi was sent to his home country of Mauritania after 14 years of imprisonment. Mohamedou Ould Slahi: Yes, I read the same story, and I was sort of excited. Never turn your back, the sergeant major warned him. In fact, Id say, without you, September 11th would never have happened, one of Salahis interrogators told him. For Wood, the trip became something more complicated than a visit to a friend. Bet youll think twice next time about saying you know me, he said, laughing. Striking horror, panic, and fear in the hearts of the enemies of Allah is a divine commandment. He added that American citizens should blame their law-enforcement and intelligence agencieswith their satellites, ground stations, millions of spies, and huge budgetsfor the fact that the hijackers had found a security breach as big as a whole fleet of hijacked civilian aircraft, and managed to shove Americas nose into the ground.. Mohamedou Ould Slahi Born: December 21, 1970 Birthplace: Rosso, Mauritania Jodie Foster Born: November 19, 1962 Birthplace: Los Angeles, California, USA Nancy Hollander Born: March 10, 1944 Benedict Cumberbatch Born: July 19, 1976 Birthplace: Hammersmith, London, England, UK Lt. Col. Stuart Couch Born: April 20, 1965 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. He stopped praying in public. 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. He walked into the morning sunlight in a daze, unable to reconcile his impression of the man in Echo Special with the depiction of the terrorist in the dossier. Popularly known as the Writer of Mauritania. One of the arresting agents suggested that Salahi drive his own car to the station, so that he could drive himself home afterward. 2023 Cond Nast. As a teen-ager, Salahi memorized the entire Quran. But, when the new commander asked Stuart Herrington, a retired colonel and Army intelligence officer, to assess operations at the facility, Herrington found that most interrogators lacked the training and the experience required to be effective. It had been five years since the Taliban had taken over most of the country, and televisions were banned. Salahi generally avoids Abu Hafsthey have fundamentally different views of Islam, and he worries that any association could further complicate his life. The night shift was twelve hours, and he never saw Salahi shackled or restrained. When Wood agreed to talk about Salahi for a TV documentary, Wendys parents staged an intervention. It sucked that I didnt have the freedom to travel, Salahi recalled in the military hearing. He was driven around for three hours, to make him think that he was being transported to a different facility. Everyone on the team was dressed entirely in black, their faces obscured by balaclavas. They married in 2010, and had a child six years later. We had done all our investigations, and we found nothing against Salahi, Abdellahi told me. Soon afterward, Canadian investigators came to the apartment and questioned him about the Millennium Plot. For the first time, Salahi was in the custody of uniformed American soldiers. I just kind of shrugged it off, like, What does it matter? They decided to get a divorce. Medical records indicate that he weighed a hundred and nine poundsaround thirty per cent less than his normal weight. In isolated, poor regions of South Carolina, coming from an lite familyoffereda feeling of impunity. One day, German officers questioned one of Salahis friends. Military doctors offered to take care of it, but Salahi declined; his release date was only a couple of months away, and he wanted to get the surgery on his own terms, once he was free. February 27, 2019. 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. Wood compliedhe felt that it was the least he could do for Salahi. From the floor of Parliament, Badre Eddine noted that Mauritania has no extradition treaty with the United States. ; mosques in Duisburg; and his cousin Abu Hafs al-Mauritani. 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. There was a really profound sense of responsibility and ethical risk which came with editing the manuscript of someone who was alive but unable to participate in that process, Siems told me. Youve still got, like, a solid eight inches.. I think we all became friends. But he wasnt sure that Salahi believed him. He wouldnt take any chances. Steve Wood with Salahi, his former prisoner, in Mauritania, in January. (ge) A man who is widely regarded as the most tortured prisoner in the history . Detainee Mohamedou Ould Slahi joined the terrorist organisation Al-. 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. 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. With the assistance of German intelligence, Abdellahi told me, we started collecting the maximum amount of information. Illustration by Tyler Comrie; source photograph from Stringer/ AFP/ Getty (face). The Ambassador called Nouakchott, and the foreign minister ordered the Embassy to fabricate a passport, using a fake name. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who underwent brutal interrogations while he was held at Guantnamo Bay, is a free man in Mauritania after nearly 15 years as a detainee. He also contacted another guard from Echo Special. 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. Wood became secretive about his calls with Salahi; Wendy began to suspect that he was having an affair. Who are these guys? Most of the names were Afghan or Pakistani, and the Arabs who were on the list certainly werent recognizable to me and my colleagues who had been working Al Qaeda for years. A few weeks later, after McFadden visited the detention camp, he concluded that the detainees were essentially nobodies. He told me, There was not anyone approaching even the most liberal interpretation of a high-value detainee., In Afghanistan, the U.S. military was inadvertently presiding over a kidnapping-and-ransom industry. 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. TV crews were present at meals, and an interviewer showed up at Salahis apartment, recorder in hand, and asked Wood, who still hadnt told his brothers that he is a Muslim, to comment on his favorite Quranic passages, and to share his thoughts on the legacy of the Prophet Muhammad. I hope you treasure every minute of strangers telling you to treasure every minute., I ordered my meal more than an hour ago! 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. He refused, saying that he didnt want to jeopardize his future travel. A private jet landed, and out climbed a Jordanian rendition team. When Salahis female interrogators came in for a game of Monopoly, Salahi always threw the match. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Relaxing is easy., In practice, many military-police officers killed time by watching movies and getting drunk at the Tiki Bar; they also took flights to Afghanistan, to pick up more detainees. The men were dragged out of their cells. They took off from Uzbekistan and flew into northern Afghanistan, over the snow-capped mountains of the Hindu Kush. He was held in Guantanamo Bay from. Although Wood had introduced himself to Salahi as Stretch, his nickname from the sawmill, Salahi had quickly learned his real name, as well as those of the other guards. But, when the list of detainees finally arrived, he recalled, my reaction was, What the fuck? Mohamedou Salahi spent more than fourteen years in detention at Guantnamo Bay, where he was repeatedly tortured. 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. lawyer, said, according to the meeting minutes. 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. In 2005, during the military hearing, Salahi had urged the presiding officer not to send him back to Mauritania. His net worth has been growing significantly in 2021-2022 . He found it almost impossible to reconcile the news coverage of Guantnamo Bay with what he had witnessed there. The goal was to assess whether inescapable pain could condition an animal into learned helplessness, whereby it simply accepts its fate. Upon Mohsens arrest, according to a court filing, investigators found pocket litter that included both Salahis name and Ressams phone number. (Mohsen could not be reached for comment. Salahi denied knowing Ahmed Ressam, and added that he thought the entire narrative around the attack had been concocted to unlock the terrorism budget and hurt the Muslims. At the time, he later wrote, I believed excessively in Conspiracy Theoriesthough maybe not as much as the U.S. government does.. Why is standing limited to 4 hours? he wrote in the margin, referring to a proposed stress position. The latter, the actor last seen on our screens playing a serial killer in . For the next seventy days I wouldnt know the sweetness of sleeping. Yacoub had a large family and a small salary, so, when Salahi was released, he started paying Yacoub to do occasional tasks. That day, Neelys job was to haul captives from a bus to a holding area for processing, and then to small, outdoor cages, where they would spend nearly four months sleeping on rocks, and relieving themselves in buckets, while soldiers constructed more permanent cellblocks. 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. Some of Mohsens bad friends, as Salahi described them, visited Mohsens apartment while he was hosting Salahi. They were very jumpy, Salahi recalled at his hearing. (His name was actually Richard Zuley; he was a Chicago police detective, working as a military contractor, who has an extensive record of abusing suspects until they confessed to crimes that they hadnt committed. I want to see photos of their heads on pikes, Black said, according to Schroens memoir, First In, published in 2005. The guards, who were officially prohibited from interacting with him, began asking questions. Salahi became Slahi. So began a life in which governments treated Salahi in accordance with their own mistakes. In a newly published journal he reveals allegations of torture and sexual abuse. There was a famous Mauritanian poet named Taki, the former minister of communications, the current Mauritanian Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. As for his jihadi connections, Robertson continued, the governments classified filings tend to support Salahis submission that he was attempting to find the appropriate balanceavoiding close relationships with al-Qaida members, but also trying to avoid making himself an enemy of the group. Not yet released in France, this film, which tells the story of this man's . Twenty-hour interrogations. Salahi, I wish I were not part of this shit, he said. After that, whenever anybody tried to explain anything to the guy, he always asked, Compare it with the rat: Is it bigger? They drove up to the stairs of an airplane, but, Salahi wrote, he was so exhausted, sick, and tired that I couldnt walk, which compelled the escort to pull me up the steps like a dead body.. Mohamedou Ould Slahi spent 14 years of his life as a detainee in the United States military prison at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. 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. I really have no questions for you, because I know your case, Abdellahi told him. Look him up, dude. We got to the site at sunrise; the sky was a hazy, muted orange, from wildfires burning to the south. I just couldnt wait to see who the detainees were, he told me. The interrogations covered the same topics as before: Abu Hafs; Al Qaedas training camps in 1992; the Millennium Plot. 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.. In Nouakchott, Abdellahi and his subordinates began to map out the network, detaining people close to Abu Hafs and soliciting the names of other jihadis. So look at me, Salahi said. 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?. Have you heard of Nelson Mandela? Wood recalled Salahi saying. On September 26th, Schroen and six other officers loaded an aging Soviet helicopter with weapons, tactical gear, and three million dollars in used, nonconsecutive bills. 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