Salahi figured that this was how bin al-Shibh had ended up naming him as a high-level Al Qaeda recruiter. Eventually, Salahi understood that bin al-Shibh was one of the three men who had stayed at his apartment in Germany for a night, in October, 1999; the other two had become 9/11 hijackers. In 1988, the Saudi ideologue Osama bin Laden announced the formation of Al Qaeda. Soon afterward, in a room at the same hotel, the U.S. State Department hosted a training session for Mauritanias security-intelligence apparatus, on Interdiction of Terrorist Activities. Salahi suffered night terrors, and Wood suffered a splitting headache from caffeine withdrawal. ), 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. Wife: Not Available: Sibling: Not Available: Children: Not Available : Mohamedou Ould Slahi Net Worth. And then it behaves the same way as the last. When he asked the new regime about Salahi, he said, they just replied, We didnt kidnap himit was the previous government that did it. He began to notice surveillance everywhere. One day, Zuley walked into Salahis cell, carrying a pillow. Mohamedou Ould Slahi fights for freedom after being detained and imprisoned without charge by the U.S. Government for . Shortly before the first detainees arrived, Robert McFadden, an N.C.I.S. Les carnets de Guantanamo, Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Eric Betsch, Michel Lafon. Im now in Canada, attending a mosque where we believe a very dangerous group is attending. And, because it was Ramadan, Salahi was leading prayers. But by then the Soviet Union had collapsed, and, while Salahi was in training, the Afghan government lost its Russian support. 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 . She told me that she thought he was doing something really dangerousthat people might think Steve was sympathetic to someone who was involved in 9/11, and go after him, her, and their baby daughter. In that meeting, Abu Hafs challenged bin Laden on Quranic grounds, arguing that the scale of civilian casualties could not be justified in Islam. But he did not consider himself a member of Al Qaeda, or a facilitator of its operations. Neither of them knew that the United States had asked Mauritanias President to hand over Salahi to a rendition team. Allah! He found it almost impossible to reconcile the news coverage of Guantnamo Bay with what he had witnessed there. Few people worked out at two or three in the morning, so he had plenty of time to continue his self-education on global affairs. 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. They took off from Uzbekistan and flew into northern Afghanistan, over the snow-capped mountains of the Hindu Kush. 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. No, its not looking good at all, Salahi said. . When I visited their house, a real-estate agent had removed all the family photographs and replaced them with catalogue art, to make it easier for prospective buyers to think of the house as a blank slate. 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. Yacoub climbed into the passenger seat. In all this time, his family had had no official confirmation of his whereabouts. The Mauritanian tells the story of Mohamedou Ould Salahi, a man of Mauritanian origin who spent 14 years in the notorious American military detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he. 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. Yee, who had converted to Islam in the early nineties, sent a request up the chain of command, but was rebuffed. He now has two American clients, whom he helps to navigate personal and professional woes through weekly Skype meetings. One night in October, 1999, a friend of Salahis asked him to host three Muslims who were passing through Duisburg. Back on land, Salahi was carried to Echo Special, the trailer, which would be his home for several years. (Abdellahi says that, after Salahi disappeared, the family never contacted him.) . He said he was going to bring in black people, Salahi recalled, in the military hearing. . They were told not to wait for Salahi. His whole reputation rested on this fiction. Mohamedou Ould Slahi was sent to his home country of Mauritania after 14 years of imprisonment. Mohamedou Salahi spent more than fourteen years in detention at Guantnamo Bay, where he was repeatedly tortured. Afghanistans civil war entered a new stage, with rival Islamist groups vying for control, and Salahi wanted no part of it. He said he needs fuel, Salahi explained to Abdellahi. 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. Never turn your back, the sergeant major warned him. It was cheaper to fly to Dakar than to Nouakchott, and his brothers drove three hundred miles to meet him there. 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. As a teen-ager, Salahi memorized the entire Quran. To be honest I can report very little about the next couple of weeks, Salahi wrote, because I was not in the right state of mind., Soon afterward, an interrogator e-mailed Diane Zierhoffer, a military psychologist, with concerns about Salahis mental health. The interrogators head-butted him, and made degrading remarks about his religion and his family. He often wakes up shaking, crying, and grinding his teeth. 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. Not long afterward, in mid-November, Salahis boss sent him to Mauritanias Presidential palace, to install Internet routers and update the phones. How does he behave? 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 Tweeted it. 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. Thank you for a wonderful evening!, Ive done it, Igor! That is not appropriate language, man. When the documents were complete, Abu Hafs said, the Mauritanian government booked him on a commercial route that connected through three countries. I arrived just before the sunset prayers. investigations and was on a no-fly list, and that several men who had attended the Masjid As-Saber had been convicted on terrorism charges. Wed try to cover it back up, real quick, but eventually we were, like, fuck it. 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. Abu Hafs walked into the house ahead of us, and disappeared into the crowd. Anyway, he said, I know you are part of the Millennium Plot.. All rights reserved. It is a fact that they understand this whole concept of terrorism much better than the average American interrogator, Salahi said, in his military hearing. Several of his co-workers were missing fingers, and the manager took every opportunity to denigrate the staff. 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. ), One night, Salahi awoke to the sound of a tiny hole being drilled into his wall. The plane landed at sunset. The men slept on his floor and left for Afghanistan at dawn. . They kept him in alternately hot and cold cells, blasted him with strobe lights and heavy-metal music, and poured ice water on him. Bin Laden, wary of Al Qaedas fragility, urged him not to speak publicly of his departure. 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. During a lull in conversation, he turned to Salahi and, gesturing toward Wood and me, said, So, you studied in the United States?. English accepts more curses than any other language, and I soon learned to curse with the commoners., As a matter of professionalism, Wood resolved from the outset to bury in the back of his mind what he had heard of Salahis past. 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. 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. The goal was to assess whether inescapable pain could condition an animal into learned helplessness, whereby it simply accepts its fate. Echo Special was a trailer that had been divided in two. It was the pretty blond interrogator bringing in these disks with footage from Al Qaeda and Taliban training camps in Afghanistan, Wood recalled. Abu Hafs, Salahis cousin and a senior Al Qaeda official, evaded capture. In the third country, the Mauritanian foreign minister greeted Abu Hafs, and accompanied him on the flight to Nouakchott. Based on a misreading of materials in his possession, and the vague aspersions of Islamophobic military officers, prosecutors accused him of treason and aiding the enemy, and threatened to pursue the death penalty. Salahi was led to a small private aircraft. During the next few months, Wood showed up between prayer times, to avoid any pressure to participate. This is the exact opposite of whats supposed to happen. 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 knew what he expected to hear. There are so many Ahmeds that itll be difficult for them to put him on the no-fly list, Salahi joked. I was thinking, Those were the worst people the world had to offer?, Investigators had the same question. They were very jumpy, Salahi recalled at his hearing. We knew he wasnt a threat. Where once he had struggled to forgive himself for enjoying Salahis company, he now felt bad about having to lock the door at the end of each shift. On May 22nd, Salahis lead F.B.I. ; mosques in Duisburg; and his cousin Abu Hafs al-Mauritani. Only one of the twenty-six interrogators was capable of working without an interpreter. 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. The journey to Nouakchott took almost three days, with long layovers in New York and Casablanca. Abu Hafs, however, regarded the Pakistanis as duplicitous. On one page, he recalled the day he got his nickname, when an interrogator brought him a pillow. 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 next morning, Salahi was led to the office of the Mauritanian intelligence chief, Deddahi Ould Abdellahi. To insure Salahis upkeep, the family regularly gave Abdellahis men money, food, clothes, and gifts. But the government had abandoned the theory that Salahi knew about 9/11 before it happened. He's a believer. Every day, Mariem Mint Elwadia asked God for the same thing: She wanted to see her son, Mohamedou Ould Slahi, just one . Soon afterward, Salahis brothers were released with instructions to return to Mauritania. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Guantnamo Diary (New York: Little, Brown, 2015). The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. A close friend of his had been the co-pilot of one of the planes that was flown into the World Trade Center, and Couch told the Wall Street Journal that he had renlisted because he wanted to get a crack at the guys who attacked the United States. When he saw the governments file on Salahi, he considered pursuing the death penalty. After that, whenever anybody tried to explain anything to the guy, he always asked, Compare it with the rat: Is it bigger? Through the window I started to see the sand-covered small villages around Nouakchott, as bleak as their prospects, he wrote. 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. But sometimes, after coperating, hed get depressed and anxious, and say, Im a bad Muslim, Wood told me. Neely later found out that the elderly detainee had jerked because, when he was forced to his knees, he thought he was about to be shot in the back of the head. lawyer, said, according to the meeting minutes. The 58-year-old actress, who won the Best Supporting Actress prize for her role in The Mauritanian, appeared on screen for the virtual ceremony with her wife Alexandra Hedison and their dog,. 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. In 1994, as the director of state security, he opened an investigation into Nouakchotts jihadi scene. I dont like power, he said. 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. At an event, I exchanged phone numbers with an extremely submissive server who was dressed in ragged clothes and had a cloudy, damaged eye. 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. 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. When a nurse, who spoke only Hassaniya Arabic, filled out Mohamedous birth certificate in the Latin alphabet, she omitted a syllable from his last name. I had started to lose feeling and it would have made no difference anyway.. The Ambassador called Nouakchott, and the foreign minister ordered the Embassy to fabricate a passport, using a fake name. Nice to meet you, Wood said. Mohamedou Ould Sah es uno de tantos casos que estn sufriendo en una prisin, acusados de delitos que no cometieron. Force-feeding during the daylight hours of Ramadan, when Muslims are supposed to fast. For years, Mohamedou Salahi was imprisoned on the grounds of being a suspected collaborator in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. For seventy-six days, he lived in solitary confinement, in a cold cell with surveillance cameras and the lights always on. Salahi was asked about innocuous exchanges from intercepted e-mails and phone calls, as if they had been conducted in code. One day, they had coffee at a hotel, by the pool, with the legal team of a current Guantnamo detainee. February 27, 2019. In 2006, Wood removed his shoes at the entrance to the Masjid As-Saber, Portlands largest mosque. In time, Wood began to think of everything he had known before meeting Salahi as a narrow-minded myth of American superiority, notable for its omissions of overseas misadventures. I was living literally in terror. ), In October, 2004, Woods girlfriend gave birth to a daughter, Summer. When the ice melted, they punched him, then repacked the ice to freeze him again. Couch never met Salahi, but, while Zuley was torturing him, Couch received summaries of each new confession. And in. He stayed that way for hours. For 14 years and two months . 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