During the next few months, Wood showed up between prayer times, to avoid any pressure to participate. Out here, Im probably only drinking seven or eight coffees per day, he told me. Two UNM School of Law graduates, Nancy Hollander ('78) and Teri Duncan ('00), represented Mohamedou between 2005 and 2016, when he was finally released. He often wakes up shaking, crying, and grinding his teeth. But, with every day going by, the optimists lost ground, he wrote. In time, he was given back his pain medication. interrogator told him that the military would take over his interrogation. True, you didnt choose this family, nor did you grow up with it, but its a family all the same, he wrote in his diary. The next day, Wood pressed him to talk about the episode, but Salahi wouldnt elaborate. Id read about Muslim heroes who faced the death penalty, head up, he wrote. guard Steve Wood and director Kevin Macdonald. Eventually, one of the interrogators told Salahi that he was going to be sent to Mauritania for more questioning. 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. More detainees have died at Guantnamo than have been convicted of a crime. 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. The guards also brought him books from the library, including the Bible, which he had requested, he wrote, because I wanted to study the book that must more or less have shaped the lives of the Americans.. I was, like, Maybe hes right. (In fact, the 9/11 plot was organized more than a year before bin al-Shibh visited Duisburg.) 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. A Guantanamo bay convict claims he was forced to have sex with female interrogators in his recently published memoir. 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. 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. He had spent the morning of the worst terrorist attack in American history lying on his mothers couch, high on painkillers after a tonsillectomy, but when he emerged from the haze he was angry, focussed, and longing for deployment. The goal was to assess whether inescapable pain could condition an animal into learned helplessness, whereby it simply accepts its fate. No chairs, no lying down, no more access to his prescription pain medication. smaller?, One of the F.B.I. Salahi figured that this was how bin al-Shibh had ended up naming him as a high-level Al Qaeda recruiter. 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. Even if the military believed he was innocent, he figured that he knew too much about classified torture programs to be let out into the world. So far, so good.. On May 22nd, Salahis lead F.B.I. Salahi, I wish I were not part of this shit, he said. Wahrheit macht frei, the officer saidthe truth sets you free. The latter, the actor last seen on our screens playing a serial killer in . He added that, as the worlds most powerful democracy, the United States had the means to uphold and pressure other countries to uphold human rights. Mohamedou Ould Sah es uno de tantos casos que estn sufriendo en una prisin, acusados de delitos que no cometieron. The release comes 14 years after he was first brought by the United States to the prison at Guantanamo Bay. 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. He no longer derived much solace from Islam, and rarely prayed. Case of Mohamedou Ould Slahi. It was my way of telling him, Man, I trust you. The journey to Nouakchott took roughly an hour, tracing the Mauritanian coastto the left the Atlantic, to the right the Sahara. His heavily redacted book about his time in the U.S. facility was published in January 2015. Wood started sporadically attending prayers. A private hospital in Germany has offered to cover the costs of Salahis gallbladder surgery, plus a year of physical and psychological rehabilitation, but without a passport he cannot travel to Europe. On the night of July 19, 2002, the Jordanians transported Mohamedou Salahi, blindfolded and in chains, to the airport in Amman, where a new team took over. Its so empty, now that Steve left, he said to me. I am not in Afghanistan, Salahi replied. For years, Mohamedou Salahi was imprisoned on the grounds of being a suspected collaborator in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. So, when Abu Hafs called Salahi for assistance a third time, in early 1999, Salahi refused, and hung up. We got to the site at sunrise; the sky was a hazy, muted orange, from wildfires burning to the south. Siems was doing an interview about the diary, and in that moment Salahi finally felt as if he was beginning to take back the narrative of his life. had raided a hotel in Khartoum. By now, Wood was no longer dating Summers mother. 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. The interrogations always circled back to the Millennium Plot. The Senegalese did the talking, but the Americans provided the questions and reported back to D.C. Though Salahi was a skilled electrician, he hired Yacoub to fix his TV. I dont remember whether I hit the floor or was caught by the other guards. I just couldnt wait to see who the detainees were, he told me. 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. Herrington later reported that the interrogators were unsure of the real names of more than half the detainees. I just wanted this to be me and God.. Medical records indicate that he weighed a hundred and nine poundsaround thirty per cent less than his normal weight. Bad people always want to blend into a crowd, Salahi explained at the military hearing. He found it almost impossible to reconcile the news coverage of Guantnamo Bay with what he had witnessed there. 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. 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. Mohamedou Ould Slahi. No showers for weeks. In Nouakchott, Abdellahi waited for updates from the C.I.A. I was scared to ask too many questions, I was scared to read a book on Islam while I was in there, or show too much interest., Woods concerns were not unjustified. A security guard handed him a filthy black turban, to hide his face during the drive to the secret-police headquarters. A government report describes the facility as having been modified in such a way as to reduce as much outside stimuli as possible, with doors that had been sealed to a point that allows no light to enter the room. Inside, the walls were covered with white paint or paper to further eliminate objects the detainee may concentrate on. There was an eyebolt for shackling him to the floor, and speakers for bombarding him with sound. But he derived immense satisfaction from the work, and saw in it the kind of moral clarity that Guantnamo had lacked. Allah! All he saw was a rat, Salahi wrote. He was driven around for three hours, to make him think that he was being transported to a different facility. In July, 2001, according to Scott-Clark and Levy, the authors of The Exile, Abu Hafs handed bin Laden his resignation letter. Man, youve had a really tough time of it, he said. O.K., screw it, it is not a problemthey can watch me, he said. Soon afterward, they travelled together to Sudan, where bin Laden ran a construction company and a jihadi training camp, and sped around Khartoum in bin Ladens white Mercedes. And I didnt confirm or deny anything, Wood told me. In 1998, he had travelled to Afghanistan, and spent a year in Al Qaeda training camps, where he learned to handle weapons and explosives. In his home country, Neely said, this man had seen some of his friends and family members executed on their knees. The mans response was hardly unique; a military document, drafted ten days later for the base commander, noted that the detainees think they are being taken to be shot., Officially, the job of the Internal Reaction Force was to restrain unruly detainees, to prevent them from injuring themselves or the guards. His order for release in 2010 was appealed by the Obama administration, and resulted in another six years in the camp. He is seen as one of the most successful Writer of all times. Before meeting Salahi, Wood had never heard of Mauritania; Salahi told him that, to his great embarrassment, slavery was still practiced there, even among people close to him. Because detainees are not in U.S. territory, the government has not allowed them to be tried in U.S. courts. How did they do it?. Comments. 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. by Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Larry Siems ( 32 ) $17.49 An epic story of a Bedouin family's survival and legacy amid their changing world in the unforgiving Sahara Desert. 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.. One of Salahis friends, who was now living in Canada, suggested that he move to Montreal. 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. It was the spring of 2004. He tried to sleep, but his mind was racing with the expectation of torture at dawn. Never turn your back, the sergeant major warned him. But, in practice, IRFing was often done as a form of revenge, initiated liberallyfor example, when a detainee was found to have two plastic cups instead of one, or refused to drink a bottle of Ensure, because he thought that he was being given poison. In 2006, Wood removed his shoes at the entrance to the Masjid As-Saber, Portlands largest mosque. ), 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. Mohamedou Salahi spent more than fourteen years in detention at Guantnamo Bay, where he was repeatedly tortured. It was the pretty blond interrogator bringing in these disks with footage from Al Qaeda and Taliban training camps in Afghanistan, Wood recalled. In November of that year, Salahi moved to Montreal, where he began leading prayers at a prominent mosque. There, Schroen contacted the leaders of the Northern Alliance, an armed group that had spent years fighting the Taliban, with little external support. Amanda, who lives in Europe, was pregnant, and Salahi would miss the birth of his son. Salahi was terrified. In a newly published journal he reveals allegations of torture and sexual abuse. All afternoon, guards screamed at the detainees to shut up and walk faster, called them sand niggers, and said that their family members and countries had been obliterated by nuclear bombs. By now, Salahi was under surveillance by German intelligence. 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. But by then the Soviet Union had collapsed, and, while Salahi was in training, the Afghan government lost its Russian support. 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. (ge) A man who is widely regarded as the most tortured prisoner in the history . Few locals spoke French, but since the country had been arbitrarily drawn up as a vast, mostly desert territory, populated by numerous ethnic groups who spoke different languages, there was no alternative for official documentation. Under surveillance by German intelligence him that the military hearing clarity that Guantnamo had lacked detainees are not U.S.. Right the Sahara back, the sergeant major warned him the government has not allowed to. Site at sunrise ; the sky was a hazy, muted orange from. 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