The plane landed at sunset. 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. I just couldnt wait to see who the detainees were, he told me. After the failed attack, Canada began to aggressively investigate the Montreal cell. Peace be upon you. They shook hands. In Arabic countries there are oodles, but in Europe and Canada one is very rare.. Neuer Kurator des African Book Festival Berlin" wird Mohamedou Ould Slahi Houbeini. . He wore handcuffs, leg shackles, earmuffs, blackout goggles, a surgical mask, and a bright-orange jumpsuit. He and Abdellahi knelt on the runway, and prayed together. He also believed that Slahi's interrogators had broken the law tormenting him physically and sexually, and. Anyway, he said, I know you are part of the Millennium Plot.. He was accused of being a part of the Al-Qaeda by the American government. English was his fourth language. One day in November, after burying several friends, Abu Hafs sought out an Al Jazeera journalist. According to interrogation memos, they decorated the walls with photos of genitalia, and set up a baby crib, because he was sensitive about the fact that he had no children. Upon Mohsens arrest, according to a court filing, investigators found pocket litter that included both Salahis name and Ressams phone number. (Mohsen could not be reached for comment. When Wood tried to search for 760 in Guantnamos detainee database, he found nothing. It was not every day, the tortureI would say maybe twice a week. While other detainees were mercilessly beaten, strung up by their limbs, and sexually assaulted, he added, all they did was strike me at different times in the face, and hit me against the concrete wall.. 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. 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. On December 19th, Abu Hafs boarded a bus in Quetta, carrying a fake passport and a suitcase full of cash. When he discovered the forged letter from Zuleys team, saying that the United States had captured Salahis mother, he resigned from the case. The Ambassador called Nouakchott, and the foreign minister ordered the Embassy to fabricate a passport, using a fake name. But I give him advice, and he takes it., Mauritania was the site of regular jihadi violence in the second half of the aughts, while Abu Hafs was living in Iran. . They prayed together, ate together, and enjoyed a picnic of bread and tea in the dunes of the Sahara. Just remember Allah always has a plan. The U.S. military prisons leadership considered Mohamedou Salahi to be its highest-value detainee. Thank you for a wonderful evening!, Ive done it, Igor! Salahi was asked about innocuous exchanges from intercepted e-mails and phone calls, as if they had been conducted in code. Sometimes the sessions veer into his own coping mechanismsthe routines he made up to fill his days in Guantnamo, for example, when we had nothing to look forward to except the world we created inside my cell., Earlier this month, Amanda gave birth to a son. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who underwent brutal interrogations while he was held at Guantnamo Bay, is a free man in Mauritania after nearly 15 years as a detainee. He wasnt sure what he wanted out of the visithe knew only that curiosity eclipsed his misgivings. It is basically subject to perception. But two months later, when Salahi returned to Mauritania and described his experience of the jihad, Walid resolved to set off on his own for Afghanistan. Ressam told investigators that he had planned to detonate suitcases in a crowded terminal at Los Angeles International Airport. In Iran, Abu Hafs was greeted by representatives of a secretive and lite Revolutionary Guard Corps unit that is responsible for protecting top officials. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. 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 spent 14 years imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay after being falsely accused of playing a role in . 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. (Until 2007, a terrorist sanctions list included Salahis name as an alias for Abu Hafs.). He alleges Canadian officials made false claims about him that . Wood compliedhe felt that it was the least he could do for Salahi. 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.. 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. I arrived just before the sunset prayers. When the boat reached Port Angeles, near Seattle, customs officers found in the car more than a hundred pounds of explosives, along with four timed detonators, each fashioned from a nine-volt battery, a circuit board, and a Casio watch. The first rumors of a planes operation began circulating among Al Qaeda leaders in 1999. The goal was to assess whether inescapable pain could condition an animal into learned helplessness, whereby it simply accepts its fate. When Wood told the old man that he had worked at Guantnamo Bay, the man suggested that he keep it to himself. Steve Wood was elated when he heard the news. Steve Wood with Salahi, his former prisoner, in Mauritania, in January. What would we tell the Mauritanians? the diplomat replied. He denied involvement with terrorism and was never charged with a crime. interrogator told him that the military would take over his interrogation. Where is Abu Hafs? one of them asked. Salahi had spent the morning reviewing a speech he had prepared for events hosted by Amnesty International and Physicians for Human Rights. But, with every day going by, the optimists lost ground, he wrote. Mauritanian immigration officials detained him for an hourhere was a giant American, all muscle and veins, saying that he had met Salahi in Guantnamo Baybut eventually one of Salahis nephews persuaded them to let Wood in. . Not long afterward, in mid-November, Salahis boss sent him to Mauritanias Presidential palace, to install Internet routers and update the phones. It was a temporary facility, he explained, while he raises money to build a mosque. Instead, they are tried by secret military commissionsif they are tried at all. Were gonna feed you up your ass, an interrogator said. Slahi's rare contacts with the cousin, and an occasion in which he allowed travelers from near his hometown to stay the night only to learn they were Al Qaeda soldiers were among the . In 2005, during the military hearing, Salahi had urged the presiding officer not to send him back to Mauritania. 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. I have contact with Osama bin Ladens operative, who was helping launder money. 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. 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. Mohamedou Ould Slahi: I always told myself, at the end of the day, I didn't do wrong to anyone. Every time a good member of my present family leaves it feels as if a piece of my heart is being chopped off.. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, author of "Guantanamo Diary," was released after a review board determined that his continued detention was not necessary to protect against a threat to U.S. security . In July, 2001, according to Scott-Clark and Levy, the authors of The Exile, Abu Hafs handed bin Laden his resignation letter. 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." I was living literally in terror. 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 . Soon afterward, a jihadi who had attended the same mosqueand who the Americans believed had met Salahiattempted to smuggle explosives in the trunk of a car across the U.S. border; his plan was to detonate suitcases inside Los Angeles International Airport, in what became known as the Millennium Plot. He gently held Salahis shoulder, and said, Everythings O.K. Salahi shook his head, and clicked his tongue in disagreement, but refused to speak. You can receive millions of dollars, one of the flyers said. Eventually, Salahi would be allowed access to a small patch of soil outside his trailer, where he tended sunflowers, basil, sage, parsley, and cilantro. I just kind of shrugged it off, like, What does it matter? They decided to get a divorce. lawyer, said, according to the meeting minutes. In deliberations with Al Qaeda leaders, he decided that the safest place was Iran. Slahi told me he is hearing voices now, the interrogator wrote. For years, Mohamedou Salahi was imprisoned on the grounds of being a suspected collaborator in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Throughout 2002 and 2003, whenever the foreign minister visited the parliamentary chamber, Badre Eddine demanded to know Salahis whereabouts. In June, 2004, the Supreme Court ruled that Guantnamo detainees could challenge the grounds for their detention. After a few months, he signed up for the Oregon National Guard, on the military-police track. Wed try to cover it back up, real quick, but eventually we were, like, fuck it. How could he possibly know? Wood, then a member of the. 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. Allah! I was an agent of the state. I pictured my family already having prepared the Iftar fast-breaking food, my mom mumbling her prayers while duly working the modest delicacies, everybody looking for the sun to take its last steps and hide beneath the horizon, Salahi wrote. 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. Abu Hafs walked into the house ahead of us, and disappeared into the crowd. had copied in Nouakchott. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. Over a three-way Anglo-French-African video call, Mohamedou Ould Slahi and Tahar Rahim are exchanging hearty greetings. 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. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. 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. In 1998, he had travelled to Afghanistan, and spent a year in Al Qaeda training camps, where he learned to handle weapons and explosives. This is my daughter. The days of Soon afterward, Canadian investigators came to the apartment and questioned him about the Millennium Plot. In isolated, poor regions of South Carolina, coming from an lite familyoffereda feeling of impunity. 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