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 Islam, the Quran is considered the transcribed word of God; some Muslims keep the book wrapped in cloth, never letting it touch unclean surfaces. Mohamedou Ould Salahi Net Worth & Basic source of earning is being a successful Mauritanian Writer. One day, Salahi started requesting paper from his guards. 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. There, Schroen contacted the leaders of the Northern Alliance, an armed group that had spent years fighting the Taliban, with little external support. 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. 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. Salahi was no dirt farmer. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. He's a believer. The days of In some versions I saved many lives, in others I was saved, but somehow we all managed to escape, unharmed and free., Wood reconnected with Salahis lawyers, this time using his real name. It had been five years since the Taliban had taken over most of the country, and televisions were banned. According to Fallon, The Northern Alliance would jam so many detainees into Conex shipping containers that they started to die of suffocation. custody, bin al-Shibh named Salahi as the man who had arranged his travel to Afghanistan and his introduction to bin Laden. You must be very tough. I was educating myself on the world. But, because Salahis trailer was a national secret, Wood kept a cordial distance from most of the other guards. came to much the same conclusion.) Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian national, was detained for 14 years at Guantnamo Bay. According to Wood, the guard drafted a note, but he decided not to submit it. 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. He identified himself as Captain Collins, a Navy officer who had been sent to Guantnamo by the White House. I wish you good luck, the agent said. ), 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. Now, in a phone call, Amanda suggested edits for Salahis speechthat he take out lynching, for example, and make his remarks more graciousand Salahi accepted all of them. He was forced to swallow salt water, and, every few minutes, the men packed ice cubes between his clothes and his skin. During a lull in conversation, he turned to Salahi and, gesturing toward Wood and me, said, So, you studied in the United States?. As soon as the prisoner was taken to the hospital, another detainee would be foundhis sheet wound around his neck and tied to his cage wall. A security guard handed him a filthy black turban, to hide his face during the drive to the secret-police headquarters. 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. Its so empty, now that Steve left, he said to me. team left Guantnamo, and the torture began. For 14 years and two months . But a friend helped him find work installing Internet routers for a telecommunications company. Theyd ask me, Whos in there?, and Id say, I dont know, probably somebody famous.. Illustration by Tyler Comrie; source photograph from Stringer/ AFP/ Getty (face). For Wood, the trip became something more complicated than a visit to a friend. Salahi was on a diet of Ensure nutrition shakes and antidepressants. Twenty-hour interrogations. Wood compliedhe felt that it was the least he could do for Salahi. The tape would fall off our uniforms, Wood recalled. It was such a good feeling.. His whole reputation rested on this fiction. Like most countries in West Africa, Mauritania had gained independence from France a decade earlier. Not long afterward, in mid-November, Salahis boss sent him to Mauritanias Presidential palace, to install Internet routers and update the phones. They said I was bringing shame upon the family, and protecting a terrorist, Wood recalled. Only one of the twenty-six interrogators was capable of working without an interpreter. I dont remember whether I hit the floor or was caught by the other 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. ), One night, Salahi awoke to the sound of a tiny hole being drilled into his wall. I am not in Afghanistan, Salahi replied. Seven months later, his deployment ended. In addition to Salahis abdominal pain, and regular migraines, he still suffers from night terrors. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Guantnamo Diary (New York: Little, Brown, 2015). In 1998, he had travelled to Afghanistan, and spent a year in Al Qaeda training camps, where he learned to handle weapons and explosives. Mohamedou Ould Slahi spent 14 years of his life as a detainee in the United States military prison at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Since then, the U.S. military has exposed some lite soldiers to the techniques, to prepare them for the kinds of abuses they might encounter should they be captured by terrorist groups or governments that dont abide by the Geneva Conventions. Something is going on.. But he thought, What the fuck is this? But the call to jihad interrupted his studies. At the beginning, Mohamedou wanted to be docile and sweet, he said. The journey to Nouakchott took roughly an hour, tracing the Mauritanian coastto the left the Atlantic, to the right the Sahara. 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.. I asked Abu Hafs to tell me the name printed in his diplomatic passport, assuming that the identity was no longer valid. You trust the handcuffs and everything, but, no matter what, wed never be with him one on onethere would always be a partner, Wood told me. Id read about Muslim heroes who faced the death penalty, head up, he wrote. His mother was dead, and so was one of his brothers, but there were teen-age nieces and nephews whom he was meeting for the first time. He bolted through the changing room and into the street, dressed in his gym clothes, and hailed a taxi to the Mauritanian Embassy in Tehran. Abdellahis men confiscated his passport, once again citing a request by the Americans. M Despite the Covid pandemic, which postponed its initial release by one year, the biopic "Designated Guilty" (The Mauritanian), adaptation by director Kevin MacDonald of the memoir "Les carnets de Guantanamo" by Mauritanian Mohamedou Ould Slahi, has finally been released. He slept in remote villages, and entrusted his life to Afghan sheepherders who were presumably unaware of the twenty-five-million-dollar bounty on his head. If you say that you are angry, it is understood as an emotion, he said. Over dinner, they explained that they were heading east, for the jihad. His detention at Guantnamo Bay grabbed a lot of attention worldwide. Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Couch truly believed Mohamedou Ould Slahi was guilty. They drove to the airport in silence, in Abdellahis black Mercedes. I really think that he's a good man. The U.S. government concluded that he was the leader of the Montreal-based al-Qaida cell., In Guantnamo, Salahi admitted to this and other allegations. In Nouakchott, Abdellahi waited for updates from the C.I.A. In most movies that dramatize true stories, at the very end, you see the real person. And I knew that the request was justified, because he had connections in this milieu, these Islamo-terrorist circles, and he might be able to give his captors some ideas of how to improve security. (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. Mohamedou Ould Slahi or Salahi (Arabic language: ) (born December 31, 1970) is a Mauritanian who has been detained at Guantnamo Bay detention camp since August 4, 2002. Thirty or forty of Abu Hafss followers filled a small wooden shack next to his home, spilling into the street, while he led prayers through a microphone. Ahmed is a camel herder, as his father was before him and as his young son Abdullahi will be after him. Eventually, Salahi would be allowed access to a small patch of soil outside his trailer, where he tended sunflowers, basil, sage, parsley, and cilantro. And Mohamedou probably thought I was thinking the same thingthat, to me, he was just a job, and nothing more. So, during one of his final shifts, Wood broke protocol and showed Salahi a photo of Summer. With the assistance of German intelligence, Abdellahi told me, we started collecting the maximum amount of information. 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. Before his deployment, he had aspired to become a police officer. 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. Salahi became Slahi. So began a life in which governments treated Salahi in accordance with their own mistakes. Abdellahi had bought him a new outfit, but Salahi had refused to eat, and the fabric was loose on his shoulders. 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. Salahi came to think of his interrogators as acting out a Mauritanian folktale in which a blind man is given the gift of a single, fleeting glimpse of the world. . He grabbed his shortwave radio. But with these people you cannot be likable. The prosecutor assigned to Salahis case was a lieutenant colonel named Stuart Couch, who had retired from the military before 9/11. See what it did to his family., A job posting depicts life as an intelligence officer in Guantnamo Bay as a rewarding challenge with incredible surroundingssunsets, beaches, iguanas, pristine Caribbean blue. 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. He wouldnt take any chances. He spent 14 years imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay after being falsely accused of playing a role in . Bet youll think twice next time about saying you know me, he said, laughing. Not wanting to lose their bounties, the captors sprayed the tops of the boxes with machine guns to open ventilation holes. February 27, 2019. Later, Salahi moved to Germany, where, the Americans assessed, his primary responsibility was to recruit for al-Qaida in Europe. Among his alleged recruits were three of the 9/11 hijackers, all of whom served as pilots on separate planes. 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. But sometimes, after coperating, hed get depressed and anxious, and say, Im a bad Muslim, Wood told me. He also contacted another guard from Echo Special. What if he is, like, I hate these sons of bitches for locking me up? In November of that year, Salahi moved to Montreal, where he began leading prayers at a prominent mosque. It was the spring of 2004. He wanted no part of a system in which he might have control over another persons liberty. As two M.P.s dragged him to the holding area, someone tossed his prosthetic leg out of the bus. 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. Mohamedou Ould Slahi. But the government appealed, and Salahi stayed in Guantnamo. That day, the leader of Salahis interrogation came in. You can receive millions of dollars, one of the flyers said. ), Each detainee was given a number, and, on August 4th, thirty-four of those numbers were called, including Salahis. . Salahi tried to convince the skeptics that their arrival in Cuba was a blessing, and that they would be treated fairly and exonerated by the American justice system. English was his fourth language. Mohamedou Ould Slahi's Guantnamo Diary is at least the fifth autobiography by a Guantnamo prisoner. After the attacks, Cofer Black, the head of the C.I.A.s Counterterrorism Center, who had served as the agencys Khartoum station chief while bin Laden was in Sudan, assured President GeorgeW. Bush that men like Abu Hafs would soon have flies walking across their eyeballs. The next day, he ordered Gary Schroen, the agencys former Kabul station chief, to gather a team for a paramilitary mission. A panel of U.S. national security, intelligence, and other officials cleared Slahi for release in July after determining that he poses He was terrifiedhe wanted to go back to Canada, where interrogators behaved within the bounds of the law. detainees were whisked to the cellar, to be hidden from view. Before dawn, Salahi was taken to an interrogation room. On a Tuesday afternoon in September, 2001, one of bin Ladens messengers sought out Salahis cousin, Abu Hafs, and told him to keep an eye on the news. That December, shortly before his twentieth birthday, Salahi boarded a flight to Pakistan and crossed into Afghanistan, and although he never met bin Laden, he soon pledged his allegiance to the Al Qaeda leadership. I thought they were going to execute me, Salahi wrote. 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. Still, Salahi found his Jordanian interrogators to be highly knowledgeable, and they developed a kind of mutual respect. 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. Like, what is a motherfucker? In the U.S., it was morning. I tried to press the topic with Salahi, but it was as if his transfer from Guantnamo had carried with it a kind of transposition of restraint, from shackles to self-policing. 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. At first, Salahi was relievedhe assumed that the Americans had come to understand his irrelevance to 9/11 and the Millennium Plot, and that he was being sent back to Mauritania. Wood told Salahi that he was working for his brothers construction company, repairing bridges. What would we tell the Mauritanians? the diplomat replied. 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. After roughly three weeks, F.B.I. As he was led away for questioning, he said: "Don't worry mom, I'll be back soon." He has been charged with no crime, but Slahi never returned. The first rumors of a planes operation began circulating among Al Qaeda leaders in 1999. He never told Wendy about his conversion. He was not happyhe didnt want to leave, Abdellahi told me. No adult in Woods life had ever looked so frightened and so vulnerable. One was a self-help book about finding happiness in a hopeless place. They showed him photos of various hijackers, and one of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, the attack cordinator, who had been captured in Pakistan. It was a grand compound, white stone decorated with lavish carpets and chandeliers. In 2004, Steve Wood was deployed to Guantnamo Bay, as a member of the Oregon National Guard. 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. To dispel notions that the United States was at war with Islam, detainees were allowed to have private meetings with a Muslim military chaplain, and were given copies of the Quran. A couple of years later, he considered visiting Mauritania, to track down Salahis family and apologize for his role in Salahis detention. We had done all our investigations, and we found nothing against Salahi, Abdellahi told me. Peace be upon you. They shook hands. Cole, and hoped that some of the men who were being shipped to Guantnamo would have information about the case. 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. That May, U.S. Navy Seals killed bin Laden, and collected more than a million documents from his compound in northern Pakistan; among them was a letter from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, seeking the central leaderships blessing to enter into a secret agreement with the Mauritanian government. Salahi landed in Montreal on November 26, 1999. Although he towered over Salahi, he hesitated before taking his hand, and when he did he noted how delicate Salahi was. 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. Soon afterward, Steve and Wendy separated. He now has two American clients, whom he helps to navigate personal and professional woes through weekly Skype meetings. In 2005, during the military hearing, Salahi had urged the presiding officer not to send him back to Mauritania. 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 stopped praying in public. After all, only the Americans suspect me of terrorism, no other country. Soon afterward, Wood learned that the imam, a Somali immigrant who practiced a conservative strain of Islam known as Salafism, had been the subject of F.B.I. But, when he wanted to engage, he spoke with a worldly, provocative humor that Wood found appealing. Another two years passed before Salahis name caught the attention of Deddahi Ould Abdellahi, the head of Mauritanias security-intelligence apparatus. Guantnamo Diary and the American Slave Narrative. Soon afterward, Salahis brothers were released with instructions to return to Mauritania. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, 44, has been held prisoner inside Guantanomo Bay since 2002. The men were dragged out of their cells. (All charges were later dropped, and Yee was honorably discharged. This is my daughter. 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. He was never charged with a crime, although the U.S. government suspected him of involvement in the September 11th attacks. I was, like, What else have they lied about? he said. With a movie based on his ordeal. . On one page, he recalled the day he got his nickname, when an interrogator brought him a pillow. The interrogations covered the same topics as before: Abu Hafs; Al Qaedas training camps in 1992; the Millennium Plot. Wood contacted one of Salahis lawyers, using a made-up name and a new e-mail address, to inquire about Salahis well-being and the status of his case. Allah! He walked into the sleeping area and found Salahi lying in the fetal position, shaking. One day, they had coffee at a hotel, by the pool, with the legal team of a current Guantnamo detainee. The United States leases the land beneath the Guantnamo Bay detention facility from Cuba, for four thousand and eighty-five dollars a year, under an agreement signed after the Spanish-American War. It takes a lot of prep to start the job, but, when youve done your bit, youre leaving things better than when you arrived, he said. Medical personnel had noted that Salahi had sciatic-nerve issues; now interrogators kept him in stress positions that exacerbated them. 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. Abu Hafs, Salahis cousin and a senior Al Qaeda official, evaded capture.
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