had copied in Nouakchott. Now bin al-Shibh, who was being tortured in C.I.A. He gently held Salahis shoulder, and said, Everythings O.K. Salahi shook his head, and clicked his tongue in disagreement, but refused to speak. He told me he hated Jews also. But he derived immense satisfaction from the work, and saw in it the kind of moral clarity that Guantnamo had lacked. interrogator told him that the military would take over his interrogation. But, hey, I have to cope with it. was funding and equipping many of the mujahideen groups. Seven or eight of his ribs were broken. One day, Salahi started requesting paper from his guards. It was my way of telling him, Man, I trust you. 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. After roughly three weeks, F.B.I. An elderly white convert warned him to avoid a couple of other white converts, who dressed in religious clothing and talked about wanting to participate in the jihad. 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. special agent, was eager to receive the flight manifest. The next morning, he found two pinhole cameras. Through the window I started to see the sand-covered small villages around Nouakchott, as bleak as their prospects, he wrote. Striking horror, panic, and fear in the hearts of the enemies of Allah is a divine commandment. He added that American citizens should blame their law-enforcement and intelligence agencieswith their satellites, ground stations, millions of spies, and huge budgetsfor the fact that the hijackers had found a security breach as big as a whole fleet of hijacked civilian aircraft, and managed to shove Americas nose into the ground.. 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. I Tweeted it. You will have a job at the snap of a finger, his friend told him. Medical records indicate that he weighed a hundred and nine poundsaround thirty per cent less than his normal weight. In Nouakchott, Abdellahi waited for updates from the C.I.A. The interrogations covered the same topics as before: Abu Hafs; Al Qaedas training camps in 1992; the Millennium Plot. They said I was bringing shame upon the family, and protecting a terrorist, Wood recalled. It was a grand compound, white stone decorated with lavish carpets and chandeliers. Wood stayed with Salahi for four days. How could he possibly know? "And then what they -- pretty much told him, 'This is a bunch of B.S.'" Slahi's life changed . For some thirty hours, Salahi was strapped to a board. I hope you think of us as more than just guards. How does he live? In Arabic countries there are oodles, but in Europe and Canada one is very rare.. I was, like, Maybe hes right. (In fact, the 9/11 plot was organized more than a year before bin al-Shibh visited Duisburg.) One of the arresting agents suggested that Salahi drive his own car to the station, so that he could drive himself home afterward. So much had changed since he had been taken into custody, more than fifty-four hundred days earlier. After a time of mourning and injustice, Katja seeks revenge. 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. 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. Walid, who was thirteen, started reading bin Ladens pamphlets. Mohamedou Ould Salahi was born in late December, 1970, the ninth child of a Mauritanian camel herder and his wife. The Americans, with their policies, bore the fruit of the events of September 11th, Abu Hafs said on camera. 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. 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. Mohamedou was . 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. 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 room was large and well-furnished, Salahi wrote, with a portrait of the President conveying the weakness of the law and the strength of the government. In the course of the next several days, Abdellahi and his men, citing the concerns of the American government, interrogated Salahi about his time in Afghanistan, his contact with his cousin Abu Hafs, and the Millennium Plot. How did they do it?. In mid-November, Salahi voluntarily sat for a polygraph test. 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 is six feet three, with a shaved head, a shy, stoic manner, and the musculature of an lite bodybuilder. They were afraid that I would kill some people.. On October 17, 2001, Abu Hafss madrassa took a direct hit from a missile. No adult in Woods life had ever looked so frightened and so vulnerable. Les carnets de Guantanamo, Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Eric Betsch, Michel Lafon. 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. 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. With a movie based on his ordeal. The lead officer couldnt speak Mauritanias Hassaniya Arabic, and Abdellahi hardly understood the Jordanian dialect, so Salahi translated for them. The Taliban was rapidly losing ground. In time, he became suspicious that Salahis confessions had been elicited through torture, and were therefore tainted evidence. Herrington later reported that the interrogators were unsure of the real names of more than half the detainees. For the rest of the interrogation session, he was forced to look at photos of corpses from the aftermath of the attacks. Salahi told Wood that he had written four more books in detention, but he hadnt been allowed to take them out of Guantnamo. I want to see photos of their heads on pikes, Black said, according to Schroens memoir, First In, published in 2005. Then, he wrote, the plane landed, the doors opened, and the warm Cuban sun hit me gracefully. No. The next morning, Salahi was led to the office of the Mauritanian intelligence chief, Deddahi Ould Abdellahi. After the prayer session, Abu Hafs led me into his living room, and for four hours he detailed his falling-out with bin Laden, his whereabouts and activities in the aftermath of 9/11, and his relationship with Mauritanias President. He had spent much of the past fifteen months in Yemen, investigating Al Qaedas bombing of the U.S.S. Government censors redacted names, dates, locations, and other sensitive or embarrassing information. In his fourth year of U.S. detention, Mohamedou Ould Slahi bonded with one particular Guantnamo guard over prison meals, American TV and the quirky movie, "The Big Lebowski." ), In October, 2004, Woods girlfriend gave birth to a daughter, Summer. Salahi generally avoids Abu Hafsthey have fundamentally different views of Islam, and he worries that any association could further complicate his life. I think we all became friends. But he wasnt sure that Salahi believed him. black sites and military facilities. 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. So empty., In recent months, the push for Salahis passport has taken on new urgency. Salahi also pushed him to research Western foreign-policy blundersfor example, that in 1953 the American and the British intelligence services had orchestrated a coup in Iran, overthrowing a popular Prime Minister in order to prop up a tyrannical, pro-Western Shah. They must no longer be denied the right to family. 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. For many years, Mohamedou Slahi was considered one of the most dangerous terrorists in the world. They went through checklists of questions that had been developed by their superiors, and seemed impervious to nuance, or to the notion that some detainees may have been sent there in error. One of Salahis friends, who was now living in Canada, suggested that he move to Montreal. No prayers, no information about the direction of Mecca. The point is to pave, seal, and waterproof it, to preserve its lifespan, he said. According to The Exile, a comprehensive account of post-9/11 Al Qaeda, by the investigative journalists Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy, who gained access to Abu Hafss diaries, he ghostwrote most of Osamas speeches, religious judgments, and press releases. In 1998, bin Laden wrote Abu Hafs into his will. 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 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 the government had abandoned the theory that Salahi knew about 9/11 before it happened. 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. I thought there would be a lot of formalities, especially for a terrorist suspect such as myself, but nothing like that happened, Salahi wrote. There is no Allah. In time, Yee came to believe that Islam was systematically used as a weapon against the prisoners. Guards mocked the call to prayer, and manipulated Islamic principles of modestyby having female guards watch naked detainees in the showers, for exampleto create tension as an excuse to exact violence. Mohamedou Ould Slahi spent 14 years of his life as a detainee in the United States military prison at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Until recently, the former spy chief Deddahi Ould Abdellahi lived directly across the street. But a friend helped him find work installing Internet routers for a telecommunications company. 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. Echo Special was a trailer that had been divided in two. Notably absent is any mention of the Millennium Plot, or any allegation that Salahi had committed a crime. The Mauritanian is stunningly tragic and leaves audiences with a host of questions about how its events were allowed to take place, but another notable issue is why the Obama administration blocked Mohamedou Ould Slahi's release from Guantanamo Bay. The first man off the bus had only one leg. He was held in Guantanamo Bay from. In a newly published journal he reveals allegations of torture and sexual abuse. Ahmed is a camel herder, as his father was before him and as his young son Abdullahi will be after him. (His wife returned to Nouakchott.) Mauritania is an Islamic republic, with rich traditions in poetry and recitation that belie its dismal rates of literacy and economic growth. In 1988, Salahi graduated from high school and won a scholarship to study engineering in Duisburg, Germany. But the call to jihad interrupted his studies. Everyone, including myself, was very nervous, he said. In 1996, when Abu Hafs was twenty-one, he drafted bin Ladens most important fatwa: an eleven-thousand-word document excoriating the Saudi Kingdom and warning the U.S. Secretary of Defense that Al Qaedas adherents have no intention except to enter paradise by killing you. The fatwa was Al Qaedas declaration of war against the United States. Over dinner, they explained that they were heading east, for the jihad. Wood walked into the main area, which housed the guards; through a door was the prisoners sleeping space. According to Wood, the guard drafted a note, but he decided not to submit it. Oh, Allah, have mercy on me! one of them said, mockingly. Slahi says his interrogator could not sell his false confessions up the chain of command. Mohamedou Ould Slahi. I'm a really big believer in Joe Biden. NOUAKCHOTT - Mohamedou Salahi is beaming.His welcoming smile is a sign that our conversation, delving into his recent past, may not be so excruciating after all. Wood became secretive about his calls with Salahi; Wendy began to suspect that he was having an affair. At an event, I exchanged phone numbers with an extremely submissive server who was dressed in ragged clothes and had a cloudy, damaged eye. They asked me do I know Ahmed Ressam. Every other week, when Red Cross representatives visited the prison, Salahi and a handful of other C.I.A. The plane landed at sunset. 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. You must forget your fear to achieve anything., Last summer, Salahi completed an online course to become a certified life coach. Wood told Salahi that he was working for his brothers construction company, repairing bridges. team and their Afghan counterparts travelled through much of northern Afghanistan, laying the groundwork for the U.S. military invasion. Slahi . Walid, who was sixteen, stayed behind. That day, the leader of Salahis interrogation came in. Every day, Mariem Mint Elwadia asked God for the same thing: She wanted to see her son, Mohamedou Ould Slahi, just one . They married in 2010, and had a child six years later. He was the first person in his family to attend university. Couch never met Salahi, but, while Zuley was torturing him, Couch received summaries of each new confession. On the other end of the line was a man whose voice he hadnt heard in more than eleven years. Salahi was terrified. Since he had learned it in captivity, some of his earliest phrases were I aint done nothing, cavity search, fuck this, and fuck that. My problem is that I had been picking the language from the wrong peoplenamely, U.S. Another two years passed before Salahis name caught the attention of Deddahi Ould Abdellahi, the head of Mauritanias security-intelligence apparatus. Before his first shift in Echo Special, Wood was told to place a strip of electrical tape over the name on his uniform, and to use only nicknames inside the cell, so that if 760 were to somehow sneak a message out of the camp he couldnt issue fatwas against his guards or their families. After she converted to Islam, they married in a religious ceremony. On his third visit, he told two Saudi students that he wanted to become a Muslim. Salahis family wasnt notified of his rendition, and so they were surprised that Abdellahi refused to let them see him. But his guard suspected otherwise. The interrogators head-butted him, and made degrading remarks about his religion and his family. 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