I am denied my freedom because I was denied my freedom, Salahi said. custody, bin al-Shibh named Salahi as the man who had arranged his travel to Afghanistan and his introduction to bin Laden. ), Each detainee was given a number, and, on August 4th, thirty-four of those numbers were called, including Salahis. If the detainee dies, youre doing it wrong. (Fredman has disputed the accuracy of the meeting minutes. And Jodie Foster, 58, was spotted enjoying some. 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. One day in November, after burying several friends, Abu Hafs sought out an Al Jazeera journalist. He stayed that way for hours. The interrogations covered the same topics as before: Abu Hafs; Al Qaedas training camps in 1992; the Millennium Plot. Mohamedou Ould Salahi, from Mauritania, was born in 1970. 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. Were gonna feed you up your ass, an interrogator said. He liked to rile his guards into debating equality, race, and religion, and he wielded a sophisticated understanding of history and geopolitics to chip away at their beliefs. The governments case, essentially, is that Salahi was so connected to al-Qaida for a decade beginning in 1990 that he must have been part of al-Qaida at the time of his capture, Robertson wrote. I just couldnt wait to see who the detainees were, he told me. He wore handcuffs, leg shackles, earmuffs, blackout goggles, a surgical mask, and a bright-orange jumpsuit. It was a temporary facility, he explained, while he raises money to build a mosque. in the United States on February 12. Soon after 9/11 attacks, a call from Slahi's cousin Mahfouz Ould al-Walid, a friend of Osama bin Laden's son, got him arrested in his motherland Mauritania in West Africa and transported to Guantanamo. Another dissonance was that Salahis eloquent orations on fundamental human rights stopped short of confronting a reality that Wood noticed on the second day: as guests of Mauritanian lites, they were served lavish meals by people who appeared to be slaves. It sucked that I didnt have the freedom to travel, Salahi recalled in the military hearing. He denied involvement with terrorism and was never charged with a crime. Around that time, Abu Hafs explained, it became clear to him that the Mauritanian President would be open to his return from Iran. Abdellahis men confiscated his passport, once again citing a request by the Americans. At an event, I exchanged phone numbers with an extremely submissive server who was dressed in ragged clothes and had a cloudy, damaged eye. 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. According to Wood, the guard drafted a note, but he decided not to submit it. A couple of weeks into his detention, two F.B.I. But he derived immense satisfaction from the work, and saw in it the kind of moral clarity that Guantnamo had lacked. 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. A week after Salahi began leading prayers at the Al Sunnah mosque, Ressam drove a rental car onto a U.S.-bound ferry in Victoria, British Columbia. Salahi underwent daily interrogations. 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. When Wendy saw the post, she was outragedbut also somewhat relieved, since it partly explained his secretive behavior. (For the past sixty years, the Cuban government has sought to nullify the agreement, and it refuses to cash the checks.) Salahi saw a mentally ill old man subjected to this method. Military police officers put blackout goggles over their eyes and mittens on their hands, then hooded them, lined them up, and tied each detainee to the one in front of him and the one behind him. The night shift was twelve hours, and he never saw Salahi shackled or restrained. ECCHR, which represents Mohamedou Ould Slahi together with partner lawyer Matthias Lehnert, calls on the authorities to speed up the procedure for issuing his visa and to conclude it swiftly. But, after Abu Hafs used bin Ladens phone to call a different cousin in Nouakchott, Abdellahis subordinates took the cousin into custody, and tortured him for two months. Illustration by Tyler Comrie; source photograph from Stringer/ AFP/ Getty (face). Summer/Autumn 2015. 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. But Salahi was shackled to the floor, so he could do so only hunched over. Seven or eight of his ribs were broken. Another officer tried to build rapport with Salahi by speaking to him in German. The men were dragged out of their cells. (ge) A man who is widely regarded as the most tortured prisoner in the history . . Allah! For the next seventy days I wouldnt know the sweetness of sleeping. 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. The night terrors kept coming. Mohamedou Ould Slahi: I always told myself, at the end of the day, I didn't do wrong to anyone. In 1988, the Saudi ideologue Osama bin Laden announced the formation of Al Qaeda. 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. Only one of the twenty-six interrogators was capable of working without an interpreter. Over dinner, they explained that they were heading east, for the jihad. But Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who spent almost 14 years at Guantnamo and says he was brutally beaten and threatened with execution without ever being charged with a crime, has some advice for his onetime captors: Come clean about what was done to the detainees there, and transfer those accused of committing the Sept. 11 attacks to the United . One of Salahis friends, who was now living in Canada, suggested that he move to Montreal. 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.. The whole time I was thinking, you know, What does he really think of us? he recalled. Helicopters dropped flyers in remote Afghan villages, offering wealth and power beyond your dreams to anyone who turned in a member of Al Qaeda or the Taliban. Wood stayed with Salahi for four days. My cell expanded, the lights became brighter, colors more colorful, the sun shone warmer and gentler, and everyone around me looked friendlier, he wrote. ), 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. Fmr. In Amman, Jordan, Salahi was hooded and taken to a detention facility in the headquarters of the countrys General Intelligence Directorate. After a time of mourning and injustice, Katja seeks revenge. Bush Administration lawyers had taken the position that enemy combatants could be held indefinitely, without trials, and that in order for something to qualify as torture it must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death. By the end of the following year, Salahi knew more about classified security operations than any private American citizen. 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. The fragmented image of Mohamedou Salahi that United States military, law-enforcement, and intelligence agencies assembled in a classified dossier was that of a highly intelligent Mauritanian electrical engineer, who, as a key al-Qaida member, had played a role in several mass-casualty plots. The Ambassador called Nouakchott, and the foreign minister ordered the Embassy to fabricate a passport, using a fake name. Now, faced with their own incompetence, Fallon wrote, interrogators were quick to blame classic Manchester resistance tactics!. 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. Abu Hafs spent the next decade in relative luxury, exercising alongside foreign diplomats in one of Tehrans swankiest gyms, and looking after bin Ladens sons along with his own. Wood walked through the camp to Echo Special proud to be part of a serious national-security operation. (He escaped through a kitchen door.) The days of During the next few months, Wood showed up between prayer times, to avoid any pressure to participate. Though Salahi was a skilled electrician, he hired Yacoub to fix his TV. 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. (They were no longer brothers-in-law, as Salahi and his wife had divorced.) Mauritania is an Islamic republic, with rich traditions in poetry and recitation that belie its dismal rates of literacy and economic growth. were entering a period of self-reflection; during the next several years, internal and congressional investigations would expose many of the worst abuses that had been inflicted on Salahi and other men in custody. One day, Salahi started requesting paper from his guards. Des milliers de livres avec la livraison chez vous en 1 jour ou en magasin avec -5% de rduction ou tlchargez la version eBook. He remains locked inside the notorious naval base. But I changed my mind after Guantnamo, he told me. But by then the Soviet Union had collapsed, and, while Salahi was in training, the Afghan government lost its Russian support. (His wife returned to Nouakchott.) 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. What followed was a period of experimentationoverseen by psychologists, lawyers, and medical personnelat C.I.A. 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. The transcript omits much of his testimony, noting that, at the moment he started to describe the abuse, the recording equipment began to malfunction and that the tapes were distorted. The transcript continues, The Detainee wanted to show the Board his scars and location of injuries, but the board declined the viewing. (By now, the U.S. government was rolling back authorizations for torture techniques, and the military and the C.I.A. 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. No showers for weeks. Have you heard of Nelson Mandela? Wood recalled Salahi saying. The release comes 14 years after he was first brought by the United States to the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Salahi became Slahi. So began a life in which governments treated Salahi in accordance with their own mistakes. 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. I thought they were going to execute me, Salahi wrote. Mohamedou Ould Slahi. In time, he was given back his pain medication. But the Germans saw no reason to detain or question him. So that scared me away, he said. I was scared to hell, Salahi recalled at his hearing. His heavily redacted book about his time in the U.S. facility was published in January 2015. explained to Wood that the current guard force called Detainee 760 Pillow, because when they had arrived, several months earlier, a pillow was the only object in his possession. My interest is not to be tortured, he said. Once every fifteen minutes, a prisoner tried to hang himself by tying his sheet around his neck and fastening it through the mesh of the cage wall, James Yee, an Army captain who served as the Muslim chaplain in Guantnamo, recalled in his memoir, For God and Country, from 2005. Discover Mohamedou Ould Slahi's Biography, Age, Height, Physical Stats, Dating/Affairs, Family and career updates. Zuley read Salahi a letter, later shown to be forged, stating that his mother was in U.S. custody and might soon be transferred to Guantnamo. (Until 2007, a terrorist sanctions list included Salahis name as an alias for Abu Hafs.). He sought structure and disciplinea life of pride, purpose, and clarity of mission. 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. One was a self-help book about finding happiness in a hopeless place. To insure Salahis upkeep, the family regularly gave Abdellahis men money, food, clothes, and gifts. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, 50, has never been convicted of any crime or even charged with any offence. The punishment for talking to another detainee was to be hung by the wrists, feet barely touching the ground. Abu Hafs ascended to Al Qaedas Shura Council, where he served as bin Ladens personal adviser on Sharia law. 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. A fourth was Ramzi bin al-Shibh, the attack cordinator; while in C.I.A. Mohamedou Ould Slahi spent 14 years of his life as a detainee in the United States military prison at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. It didnt take my interrogator a whole lot of time to understand the situation. Another American official arrived, and took Salahis photograph and fingerprints. interrogator told him that the military would take over his interrogation. 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. He was forced to swallow salt water, and, every few minutes, the men packed ice cubes between his clothes and his skin. According to one of Salahis brothers, Abdellahi told the family that Salahi was being kept in a detention facility in the desert, far from Nouakchott. The lead officer couldnt speak Mauritanias Hassaniya Arabic, and Abdellahi hardly understood the Jordanian dialect, so Salahi translated for them. Alicia Florrick has been a good wife to her husband, a former state's attorney . For over 10 years, Mohamedou Ould Slahi, 51, was painted as one of the most dangerous terrorists in the world. In 2006, Wood removed his shoes at the entrance to the Masjid As-Saber, Portlands largest mosque. Wood started sporadically attending prayers. Salahi was led to a small private aircraft. In the eighties, he and a younger cousin, a slender poet named Mahfouz Ould al-Walid, spent their evenings at a local caf, where the owner showed videos of the Palestinian struggle and the jihad in Afghanistan, which the Soviet Union had invaded in 1979. Some guards saw an opportunity to torment the detaineesby tossing the Quran into the toilet, for example, or by breaking the binding under the guise of searching for weapons. Desecration of the Quran provoked riots in the cellblocks, which resulted in IRF teams storming into the cells and beating up detainees. With a movie based on his ordeal. Mohamedou Ould Salahi has a net worth of $5.00 million (Estimated) which he earned from his occupation as Writer. This is my daughter. Until recently, the former spy chief Deddahi Ould Abdellahi lived directly across the street. I dont remember whether I hit the floor or was caught by the other guards. 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