The Senegalese did the talking, but the Americans provided the questions and reported back to D.C. In 1967, Martin Seligman, a twenty-four-year-old Ph.D. student in psychology, conducted an experiment that involved delivering electric shocks to dogs in various states of restraint. Torture has been prohibited by international law, but the language of the statutes is written vaguely, Jonathan Fredman, a senior C.I.A. In 1994, as the director of state security, he opened an investigation into Nouakchotts jihadi scene. One of the seven authors was Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian man who was held without charge for 14 years, during which time he was repeatedly tortured, before his release in 2016. I thought it was a new U.S. method to suck intels out of your brain and send them directly to a main computer which analyzes the information, he wrote. The men were dragged out of their cells. As a teen-ager, Salahi memorized the entire Quran. Where is Osama bin Laden? They shouted and threw objects against the wall. 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. It was my way of telling him, Man, I trust you. 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. Oh, Allah, have mercy on me! one of them said, mockingly. One was a self-help book about finding happiness in a hopeless place. He also believed that Slahi's interrogators had broken the law tormenting him physically and sexually, and. By now, he had enough information about the kind of story he had to craft, because, he wrote, through my conversations with the FBI and the DoD, I had a good idea as to what wild theories the government had about me., Zuley walked in, and Salahi started lying. 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. On the other end of the line was a man whose voice he hadnt heard in more than eleven years. Anyway, he said, I know you are part of the Millennium Plot.. By now, Wood was no longer dating Summers mother. They punched Salahi in the face and the ribs, then covered his eyes with blackout goggles, his ears with earmuffs, and his head with a bag. 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. I went back to my tent and laid down to go to sleep. In the restored edition, Salahi added, I want to repeat and affirm this message here, and to say that now that I am home, that dream is also an invitation. The abuse wound down slowlyno more hitting, but no comfort items, either, and no uninterrupted periods of rest. But his guard suspected otherwise. Just remember Allah always has a plan. After roughly three weeks, F.B.I. The leadership at Guantnamo was more interested in intelligence collection than in prosecuting detainees for terrorism crimes. El delito por el que Mohamedou es acusado es haber sido un miembro activo de al Qaeda, haber recibido entrenamiento en Afganistn a principios de los 90, reclutar a tres de los . Salahi figured that this was how bin al-Shibh had ended up naming him as a high-level Al Qaeda recruiter. 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. By the end of the boat ride, Salahi was bleeding from his ankles, mouth, and wrists. Like, what is a motherfucker? In public, the Bush Administration and its military leadership asserted that Guantnamo was filled with men who would stop at nothing to destroy the U.S. This episode was recorded on June 7th 2021.Dr Jordan Peterson's guest Mohamedou Ould Slahi shares his experience with more than a decade of torture, interrog. On August 13th, Donald Rumsfeld authorized the interrogation plan for Salahi. Salahi agreed, and Abu Hafs wired around four thousand dollars to his German account. But, on the base, Fallon and his colleagues referred to most detainees as dirt farmers. Lehnert lamented, It takes an Army captain to send someone to Gitmo, and the President of the United States to get them out.. In September 2003, Couch was assigned to prepare the prosecution of Mohamedou Ould Slahi after he joined the Office of Military Commissions in August 2003. Twelve days later, a group of men charged into Salahis cell with a snarling German shepherd. . Ressam told investigators that he had planned to detonate suitcases in a crowded terminal at Los Angeles International Airport. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. It had been five years since the Taliban had taken over most of the country, and televisions were banned. A fourth was Ramzi bin al-Shibh, the attack cordinator; while in C.I.A. But the climactic descriptions of what it took for him to "break" are almost . When Salahis female interrogators came in for a game of Monopoly, Salahi always threw the match. 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. He no longer derived much solace from Islam, and rarely prayed. 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. Mohamedou Ould Slahi: Yes, I read the same story, and I was sort of excited. The point is to pave, seal, and waterproof it, to preserve its lifespan, he said. In the U.S., it was morning. 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 was on a publicity campaign, to draw attention to the injustice of his withheld passport, and at times it seemed to Wood as if he were a propthe former guard who recognized Salahis innocence. Back on land, Salahi was carried to Echo Special, the trailer, which would be his home for several years. The Ambassador called Nouakchott, and the foreign minister ordered the Embassy to fabricate a passport, using a fake name. The techniqueswhich government documents identify as omnipotence tactics, degradation tactics, debilitation tactics, and monopolization of perception tacticshad been developed by Communist forces during the Korean War, to coerce prisoners into making false confessions, for propaganda purposes. One day they would deprive him of food, and the next theyd force him to drink water until he vomited. The Taliban was rapidly losing ground. How does he live? 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. Neely jumped on top of him, and forced his face into the concrete floor. Walid was a prodigious poetin Nouakchott, he had won several awardsand when bin Laden met him he was impressed by his eloquence and conviction. He wanted to ask Salahi more about its contents, but he suspected that there were microphones and cameras in the cell. Not long afterward, in mid-November, Salahis boss sent him to Mauritanias Presidential palace, to install Internet routers and update the phones. When I shared Abu Hafss account of his return with the senior U.S. diplomat, she replied, Its the first Im hearing any of it. The Mauritanians didnt inform the United States of his return until probably weeks later, she said. The man confined there was referred to by his detainee number, 760. 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. Soon afterward, in Guantnamo Bay, Salahi saw his own face on a TV screen. Wahrheit macht frei, the officer saidthe truth sets you free. 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. agents visited Salahis cell. A former leader of several provinces explained to me that Abu Hafs, bin Ladens former Sharia adviser, is now an adviser to the President. The U.S. military prisons leadership considered Mohamedou Salahi to be its highest-value detainee. 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. No, Im an ex-prisoner of Guantnamo Bay, Salahi replied, instantly ending the conversation. It was January 11, 2002. -From Guantnamo Diary, by Mohamedou Ould Slahi It was a simple prayer. Born on 21 December 1970 in a small town in Mauritania, Ould Slahi received a scholarship to study in Germany in 1988. For Wood, the trip became something more complicated than a visit to a friend. What if he is, like, I hate these sons of bitches for locking me up? Then, he wrote, the plane landed, the doors opened, and the warm Cuban sun hit me gracefully. For the next month, he was kept in total darkness; his only way of knowing day from night was to look into the toilet and see if there was brightness at the end of the drain. No prayers, no information about the direction of Mecca. 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.. But by then the Soviet Union had collapsed, and, while Salahi was in training, the Afghan government lost its Russian support. Oct. 17, 2016. They married in 2010, and had a child six years later. 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. Abdellahi called Salahis boss at the telecommunications company, to assure him that Salahi should be allowed to resume work. The protest lasted for several days as twenty-three prisoners tried to hang themselves.. I Tweeted it. Guantanamo Bay prisoner Mohamedou Ould Slahi discusses his story being adapted as "The Mauritanian", alongside fmr. Eventually, Salahi would be allowed access to a small patch of soil outside his trailer, where he tended sunflowers, basil, sage, parsley, and cilantro. 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. Its their citizen, and its their country.. Instead, they are tried by secret military commissionsif they are tried at all. When I heard him say that, I knew the truth wouldnt set me free, because Arbeit didnt set the Jews free, Salahi recalled. After 14 years. But it stopped abruptly after a failed assassination attempt against the President, in 2011, which raised questions about whether he was cutting deals with Al Qaeda. Seven months later, his deployment ended. I am denied my freedom because I was denied my freedom, Salahi said. Salahi told Wood that he had written four more books in detention, but he hadnt been allowed to take them out of Guantnamo. He said he was going to bring in black people, Salahi recalled, in the military hearing. The plane landed at sunset. While he was held at Gitmo, Slahi was repeatedly tortured in an . Mohamedou Ould Slahi, 50, has never been convicted of any crime or even charged with any offence. Their questions were much the same, Salahi wrote, but the whole environmental setup made me very skeptical toward the honesty and humanity of the U.S. interrogators. 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. 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