The 58-year-old actress, who won the Best Supporting Actress prize for her role in The Mauritanian, appeared on screen for the virtual ceremony with her wife Alexandra Hedison and their dog,. 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. Mohamedou Ould Slahi: Yes, I read the same story, and I was sort of excited. He walked into the morning sunlight in a daze, unable to reconcile his impression of the man in Echo Special with the depiction of the terrorist in the dossier. I hope you think of us as more than just guards. Mohamedou was . (During the layover in Casablanca, he had drunk a Red Bull and twenty-two shots of espresso.) Stand the fuck up! an interrogator said. Once they do, he will disappear and never be heard from again. Salahi was told to imagine the worst possible scenario he could end up in, and that he would soon disappear down a very dark hole. had copied in Nouakchott. He often turned to a verse by the Iraqi poet Ahmed Matar: I stood in my cellWondering about my situationAm I the prisoner, or is it that guard standing nearby?Between me and him stood a wallIn the wall, there was a holeThrough which I see light, and he sees darknessJust like me he has a wife, kids, a houseJust like me he came here on orders from above. When Wood tried to search for 760 in Guantnamos detainee database, he found nothing. 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. Shortly before the first detainees arrived, Robert McFadden, an N.C.I.S. He knew what he expected to hear. Anyway, he said, I know you are part of the Millennium Plot.. Abu Hafs wouldnt say which countries he had travelled throughonly that, in the first two, the Mauritanian Ambassador met him on the tarmac, walked him through the airport, and stayed with him until he got on the next plane. Salahi was horrified. After she converted to Islam, they married in a religious ceremony. One of the Algerian jihadis was Ahmed Ressam, a serial thief who was living in Canada under a false identity. He thought, It must be somebody really importantthe most dangerous person in the world, perhapsto have this special attention, a guard force just for him. For Wood, the trip became something more complicated than a visit to a friend. A lot of these prisoners were actually looking forward to being handed over to the Americans, figuring it would be pretty obvious they werent Al Qaeda. Yet hundreds of them were sent to Guantnamo Bay, which ended up housing seven hundred and eighty people. He and Abdellahi knelt on the runway, and prayed together. Les carnets de Guantanamo, Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Eric Betsch, Michel Lafon. Mitchell argued that, by reverse-engineering this program, interrogators could overwhelm whatever resistance training a detainee might have absorbed from the Manchester manual. -From Guantnamo Diary, by Mohamedou Ould Slahi It was a simple prayer. Based on a misreading of materials in his possession, and the vague aspersions of Islamophobic military officers, prosecutors accused him of treason and aiding the enemy, and threatened to pursue the death penalty. 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. After the attacks, Cofer Black, the head of the C.I.A.s Counterterrorism Center, who had served as the agencys Khartoum station chief while bin Laden was in Sudan, assured President GeorgeW. Bush that men like Abu Hafs would soon have flies walking across their eyeballs. The next day, he ordered Gary Schroen, the agencys former Kabul station chief, to gather a team for a paramilitary mission. . agents visited Salahis cell. By the spring of 2003, Salahi had been visited in Guantnamo by investigators from Canada and Germany, and questioned by various U.S. government agencies. For two weeks, he worked as a guard in the cellblocks, monitoring men who had been captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan. Salahi handed him some leftover ibuprofen from the Guantnamo pharmacy. agents walked into the cell. Salahi withdrew the cash and gave it to friends who were travelling to Nouakchott, and they delivered it to Abu Hafss family. He began to notice surveillance everywhere. . Every time a good member of my present family leaves it feels as if a piece of my heart is being chopped off.. Echo Special was a trailer that had been divided in two. Oh, Allah, help me! He wanted to ask Salahi more about its contents, but he suspected that there were microphones and cameras in the cell. But the Germans saw no reason to detain or question him. That was my thinkingthat he was sufficiently intelligent and well informed to help any intelligence service that might ask him for help.. Some of Mohsens bad friends, as Salahi described them, visited Mohsens apartment while he was hosting Salahi. 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. This is the exact opposite of whats supposed to happen. The whole time I was thinking, you know, What does he really think of us? he recalled. In 1994, as the director of state security, he opened an investigation into Nouakchotts jihadi scene. Id come home and iron my uniform, and my roommates didnt know a thing, he said. Later that day, Neely and his partner brought an elderly detainee to the holding area and forced him to his knees. As they left baggage claim, Salahi later wrote in his diary, my hands were shackled behind my back and I was encircled by a bunch of ghosts who cut me off from the rest of my company. But I wasnt the decider. Seven or eight of his ribs were broken. He is seen as one of the most successful Writer of all times. So much had changed since he had been taken into custody, more than fifty-four hundred days earlier. For the rest of the interrogation session, he was forced to look at photos of corpses from the aftermath of the attacks. Around that time, after a long period without contact, Abu Hafs called Salahi from bin Ladens satellite phone. The Ambassador called Nouakchott, and the foreign minister ordered the Embassy to fabricate a passport, using a fake name. In 2004, Steve Wood was deployed to Guantnamo Bay, as a member of the Oregon National Guard. Where are you from? one of them said. He was driven around for three hours, to make him think that he was being transported to a different facility. I have contact with Osama bin Ladens operative, who was helping launder money. were entering a period of self-reflection; during the next several years, internal and congressional investigations would expose many of the worst abuses that had been inflicted on Salahi and other men in custody. One day, they had coffee at a hotel, by the pool, with the legal team of a current Guantnamo detainee. It was a temporary facility, he explained, while he raises money to build a mosque. English was his fourth language. ), Each detainee was given a number, and, on August 4th, thirty-four of those numbers were called, including Salahis. The guards, who were officially prohibited from interacting with him, began asking questions. Afghanistans civil war entered a new stage, with rival Islamist groups vying for control, and Salahi wanted no part of it. The United States released Mohamedou Ould Slahi, the author of a renowned prison memoir, after he was detained for more than 14 years in Jordan, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo, and returned him. He was terrifiedhe wanted to go back to Canada, where interrogators behaved within the bounds of the law. 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. Several Mauritanians had travelled to battlefields in Afghanistan and Bosnia, and Mahfouz Walid had become an important figure in Al Qaeda; he now went by the nom de guerre Abu Hafs al-Mauritani. But the procedure wasnt carried out properlyhe continued to be in painand by the summer of 2016 it was clear that he required corrective laparoscopic surgery. I really have no questions for you, because I know your case, Abdellahi told him. 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. Having accepted his guards, Salahi wrote, the next phase of captivity was getting used to the prison, and being afraid of the outside world.. Wahrheit macht frei, the officer saidthe truth sets you free. Mohamedou Ould Slahi (em rabe: ) (nascido em 21 de dezembro de 1970) um mauritano que foi detido no campo de deteno de Guantnamo Bay sem acusao de 2002 at sua libertao em 17 de outubro de 2016. 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. Mauritania is an Islamic republic, with rich traditions in poetry and recitation that belie its dismal rates of literacy and economic growth. Then he was prescribed antidepressants. Wood left for the airport at 4 A.M. Salahi spent much of the day watching YouTube compilations of the worst American Idol auditions. ; mosques in Duisburg; and his cousin Abu Hafs al-Mauritani. Out here, Im probably only drinking seven or eight coffees per day, he told me. Have you heard of Nelson Mandela? Wood recalled Salahi saying. 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 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.. . No. Near the airport parking lot, Salahi stood in a light-blue boubou, the traditional Mauritanian robe, with a turban to obscure his identity. In 1998, he had travelled to Afghanistan, and spent a year in Al Qaeda training camps, where he learned to handle weapons and explosives. Its so empty, now that Steve left, he said to me. After a time of mourning and injustice, Katja seeks revenge. 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. It was my way of telling him, Man, I trust you. One of Salahis friends, who was now living in Canada, suggested that he move to Montreal. He just said, Dude, they fucked me up.. The cousins had married a pair of sisters, and so they were now also brothers-in-law. All he saw was a rat, Salahi wrote. You know, when you just fall asleep and the saliva starts to come out of your mouth? Salahi said. Allah! NEW YORK The U.S. government has transferred Mohamedou Ould Slahi to his native Mauritania, where he is to be reunited with his family.The release comes 14 years after he was first brought by the United States to the prison at Guantnamo Bay. He wasnt sure what he wanted out of the visithe knew only that curiosity eclipsed his misgivings. I think we all became friends. But he wasnt sure that Salahi believed him. came to much the same conclusion.) 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. 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. 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. 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. Steve Wood was elated when he heard the news. You can receive millions of dollars, one of the flyers said. I want to go to a country where I can enjoy my freedom, he said. Two UNM School of Law graduates, Nancy Hollander ('78) and Teri Duncan ('00), represented Mohamedou between 2005 and 2016, when he was finally released. The first man off the bus had only one leg. And Jodie Foster, 58, was spotted enjoying some. Salahis freedom became a strain on Woods marriage. Salahi became Slahi. So began a life in which governments treated Salahi in accordance with their own mistakes. Then Abu Hafs greeted Wood, who, appearing paralyzed by confusion, coldly took his hand. The Mauritanian tells the story of Mohamedou Ould Salahi, a man of Mauritanian origin who spent 14 years in the notorious American military detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he. By the time Wood left, he had come to accept his guards and interrogators as family. As a teen-ager, Salahi memorized the entire Quran. His heavily redacted book about his time in the U.S. facility was published in January 2015. 2023 Cond Nast. On February 14, 2004, Salahi received a short letter from his mother in Mauritania, informing him that her health situation is OK. It had been eight hundred and fifteen days since he had seen heran ailing woman in the rearview mirror, waving from the street as he drove to Deddahi Abdellahis intelligence headquarters. Like most countries in West Africa, Mauritania had gained independence from France a decade earlier. When they removed his shackles, the man, who was shaking with fear, suddenly jerked to the left. Wood, who was twenty-three, had recently learned that his girlfriend was pregnant. Before his deployment, he had aspired to become a police officer. Neuer Kurator des African Book Festival Berlin" wird Mohamedou Ould Slahi Houbeini. By now, Salahi was under surveillance by German intelligence. Walid was a prodigious poetin Nouakchott, he had won several awardsand when bin Laden met him he was impressed by his eloquence and conviction. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, 44, has been held prisoner inside Guantanomo Bay since 2002. 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. You could always tell when someone got IRFed, as the detainees throughout the camp would start chanting and screaming, Neely recalled. Outside Echo Special, Wood started reading about Guantnamo on activist Web sites, but a colleague warned him that Internet traffic was monitored on the base. Wife: Not Available: Sibling: Not Available: Children: Not Available : Mohamedou Ould Slahi Net Worth. They named him Ahmed, and Salahi asked Wood to be the godfather. Salahi, who hadnt been home since 1993, was filled with nostalgia and dread. One day they would deprive him of food, and the next theyd force him to drink water until he vomited. The plane landed at sunset. 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. The U.S. military prisons leadership considered Mohamedou Salahi to be its highest-value detainee. 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. February 27, 2019. Salahi saw a mentally ill old man subjected to this method. In all this time, his family had had no official confirmation of his whereabouts. I was, like, Maybe hes right. (In fact, the 9/11 plot was organized more than a year before bin al-Shibh visited Duisburg.) Salahi told Wood that he had written four more books in detention, but he hadnt been allowed to take them out of Guantnamo. She is my life. . Bin Ladens family was en route to Pakistan, and Abu Hafs needed to make arrangements for their protection. The Americans supplied the questions, and the Jordanians extracted the responses, often through coercive means. 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. Government censors redacted names, dates, locations, and other sensitive or embarrassing information. 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.. They married in 2010, and had a child six years later. Salahis brother, who is a German citizen, had read in Der Spiegel that he was in Guantnamo, but Abdellahi insisted that it wasnt truethat he was looking after Salahi in a Mauritanian prison. with you, and that is to tell me five things that you are grateful for today, he told one of them. 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. For many years, Mohamedou Slahi was considered one of the most dangerous terrorists in the world. Now, as he read, I saw how beautiful the religion was, he said. Once, on a technical assignment, Salahi had been photographed near the President of Mauritania; now the lead interrogator accused Salahi of having plotted to kill him. In mid-November, Salahi voluntarily sat for a polygraph test. Abu Hafs called Salahi from bin Ladens satellite phone was elated when he heard the news France. 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