In 2006, Wood removed his shoes at the entrance to the Masjid As-Saber, Portlands largest mosque. He grabbed his shortwave radio. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Salahis detainee dossier lists his reasons for transfer to Guantnamo: to provide information on the Al Qaeda training camp he had attended in 1992; a separate Afghan militia, which had received substantial backing from the C.I.A. Abu Hafs was back in Afghanistan, living with his family in Kandahar. All I had were some numbers of business partners in Mauritania and Germany, he later wrote, but I didnt want the U.S. government harassing those peaceful people just because I had their numbers in my phone. One of the contacts was listed as P.C. 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. According to an investigation by Der Spiegel, he preached in gloomy back-yard mosques, and remained in occasional contact with jihadismen whose names and cell-phone numbers would turn up in investigations spanning Africa, Europe, North America, and the Middle East. Another officer tried to build rapport with Salahi by speaking to him in German. 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. Salahi, who hadnt been home since 1993, was filled with nostalgia and dread. He was forced to swallow salt water, and, every few minutes, the men packed ice cubes between his clothes and his skin. In Kandahar, Abu Hafs felt the Americans closing in. If the detainee dies, youre doing it wrong. (Fredman has disputed the accuracy of the meeting minutes. He and his family had spent almost ten years under the protection of the Revolutionary Guard, but, with talk of the Obama Administrations thaw in relations with Iran, Abu Hafs began to worry that he could be traded into U.S. custody. Salahi had been living in a cell practically since the beginning of the invasion, nine months earlier. was funding and equipping many of the mujahideen groups. One night in October, 1999, a friend of Salahis asked him to host three Muslims who were passing through Duisburg. One day, German officers questioned one of Salahis friends. Everyone on the team was dressed entirely in black, their faces obscured by balaclavas. ; mosques in Duisburg; and his cousin Abu Hafs al-Mauritani. In Arabic countries there are oodles, but in Europe and Canada one is very rare.. 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. 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. By Ben Taub April 15, 2019 Mohamedou Salahi spent more. For some thirty hours, Salahi was strapped to a board. The decision to keep his conversion a secret from everyone in his life made him feel at times as if being Muslim were wrong, even though, in his heart, he still believed. 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. I was, like, What else have they lied about? he said. Until recently, the former spy chief Deddahi Ould Abdellahi lived directly across the street. 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. He refused, saying that he didnt want to jeopardize his future travel. He did not respond to requests for comment.) One day in the spring of 2012, Abu Hafs slipped out of custody during a visit to the gym. Later that summer, Abu Hafs wrote a twelve-page dissent, but bin Laden bristled at his defiance, and the objections of other Al Qaeda leaders, and moved forward. Last May, one of Salahis cousins posted a note on Facebook that referred to Woods conversion. Her wife was on hand to support her last month, as she scooped the coveted Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe for her efforts in The Mauritanian. For years, Mohamedou Salahi was imprisoned on the grounds of being a suspected collaborator in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. For the first time, he described his experiences without fear of retribution. During interrogations, an intelligence officer, known among the detainees as William the Torturer, forced Salahi into stress positions that exacerbated his sciatic-nerve issues. By the time Salahi arrived at Guantnamo, on August 5, 2002, Fallons lite interagency criminal-investigation task force had been sidelined, and Lehnert had been replaced. The men were dragged out of their cells. I came to Canada with a plan to blow up the CN Tower in Toronto, Salahi wrote, in one of his many confessions. He's a believer. . 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. Have you heard of Nelson Mandela? Wood recalled Salahi saying. I want to see photos of their heads on pikes, Black said, according to Schroens memoir, First In, published in 2005. Now bin al-Shibh, who was being tortured in C.I.A. It was kind of like, We aint gonna beat you ourselves, but you know where you are! So I knew the FBI wanted to interrogate me under the pressure and threat of a non-democratic country., On February 19, 2000, Abdellahi let him go home. The 2021 legal drama follows the true story of the aforementioned protagonist (played by Tahar Rahim), a man who was arrested, taken from his . Echo Special was a trailer that had been divided in two. I told him I have no problem with the Jews, either, man. Nice to meet you, Wood said. . Mohamedou Ould Slahi fights for freedom after being detained and imprisoned without charge by the U.S. Government for . But, hey, I have to cope with 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. 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. To insure Salahis upkeep, the family regularly gave Abdellahis men money, food, clothes, and gifts. Other men carried box cutters and explosives; Salahi was a ghost on the periphery. 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. 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. But it wasnt enough; the government wanted him to link other people in Canada to various plots. What followed was a period of experimentationoverseen by psychologists, lawyers, and medical personnelat C.I.A. Before leaving Guantnamo, he gave Salahi a novel by Steve Martin, The Pleasure of My Company. Pillow, good luck with your situation, he wrote inside. And Steves interest is to impress the girls. His father died in a plane crash when he was three years old, and his mother brought him and his brothers up in Molalla, Oregon, a lumber town about an hour south of Portland. You can receive millions of dollars, one of the flyers said. 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. When he refused to back out of the interview, Wendy insisted that he wear an on-camera disguise. They asked me do I know Ahmed Ressam. He was a tall, regal businessman, and wore Ted Baker sunglasses and a Rolex. Salahi told him that he was now home. Then one of them shouted, Pillow, you can come out now! A short man in his mid-thirties stepped into the guards area, unshackled. 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. 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. Until recently, the guards and the interrogators had worn Halloween masks inside the cell. Schroen recalled, When I began to distribute moneytwo hundred thousand dollars here, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for thisI think that they were convinced that we were sincere. In the next few weeks, Schroens C.I.A. Eventually, Salahi would be allowed access to a small patch of soil outside his trailer, where he tended sunflowers, basil, sage, parsley, and cilantro. 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. (All charges were later dropped, and Yee was honorably discharged. The International Committee of the Red Crosswhich has access to many of the worlds most notorious detention sites, some of them in countries where there is no rule of lawhad recently sent representatives to Guantnamo, but the base commander, citing military necessity, had refused to allow them into Echo Special. T ahar Rahim plays Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who is arrested in 2001 in his native Mauritania with the connivance of his own government, and eventually spirited to the US prison camp on the Cuban . On paper, Salahi is not listed as the father. In 2012, Salahis lawyers won a seven-year legal battle to declassify his diary. 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. Wed try to cover it back up, real quick, but eventually we were, like, fuck it. Oh, Allah, have mercy on me! one of them said, mockingly. Taliban fighters walked the streets, confident in the support they received from Pakistans intelligence service. 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. He wanted to ask Salahi more about its contents, but he suspected that there were microphones and cameras in the cell. He wanted no part of a system in which he might have control over another persons liberty. International . It was the first time Wood had encountered the Quran. Seven months later, his deployment ended. 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. Salahi, I wish I were not part of this shit, he said. And I didnt confirm or deny anything, Wood told me. One day, Zuley walked into Salahis cell, carrying a pillow. His was the first guard force that didnt wear masks, that allowed Salahi to pray. By the following day, the lead Senegalese officer was convinced that there was no reason to hold Salahi. The punishment for talking to another detainee was to be hung by the wrists, feet barely touching the ground. On March 22, 2010, a U.S. district-court judge named James Robertson ruled on Salahis petition to be released. Salahi was a precocious student; after school, he used to steal chalk from the classroom and return to Bouhdida, a dusty, unplanned neighborhood in Mauritanias capital, Nouakchott, to re-create the days lessons for kids who couldnt afford an education. Salahi was no dirt farmer. Mohamedou was . (He escaped through a kitchen door.) [4] Slahi traveled from his home in Germany to Afghanistan in December 1990 "to support the mujahideen." ), In October, 2004, Woods girlfriend gave birth to a daughter, Summer. In Mauritania, Abdellahis men detained Salahis wife and brothers and interrogated them about the Millennium Plot. In mid-November, Salahi voluntarily sat for a polygraph test. The interrogations covered the same topics as before: Abu Hafs; Al Qaedas training camps in 1992; the Millennium Plot. Assalaamu alaikum, he said to Mohamedou. His turban was still damp from where his wife had cleaned off other peoples blood. Finally, when Slahi and his wife moved to Montreal, in 1999, they attended the al Sunnah mosquethe same mosque attended by Ahmed Ressam, a member of Al Qaeda who had been arrested, shortly. Another year passed. All he saw was a rat, Salahi wrote. Steve Wood was elated when he heard the news. No, its not looking good at all, Salahi said. 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. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Then a sergeant major pulled him aside for a brief interview, and assigned him to work the night shift in Echo Special, a secret, single-occupancy unit that had been built to house the United States militarys highest-value detainee. It is basically subject to perception. Neely jumped on top of him, and forced his face into the concrete floor. Soon afterward, Steve and Wendy separated. (The C.I.A. He recalled, I took the pen and paper and wrote all kinds of incriminating lies about a poor person who was just seeking refuge in Canada and trying to make some money so he could start a family. LadenGerman for computer shopand he figured that, to the Americans, Laden would be a red flag. Notably absent is any mention of the Millennium Plot, or any allegation that Salahi had committed a crime. It was Ramadan again. 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. He wore handcuffs, leg shackles, earmuffs, blackout goggles, a surgical mask, and a bright-orange jumpsuit. Salahi saw a mentally ill old man subjected to this method. Instead, the men stripped him naked, strapped a diaper on him, and swapped out his shackles for a heavier set. 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