It was the pretty blond interrogator bringing in these disks with footage from Al Qaeda and Taliban training camps in Afghanistan, Wood recalled. Military doctors offered to take care of it, but Salahi declined; his release date was only a couple of months away, and he wanted to get the surgery on his own terms, once he was free. Look up the prison on Robben Island. 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. The examiner described Salahi, whose answers contradicted everything he had confessed to Zuley in the preceding weeks, as eager to prove that he is providing accurate information. The results were decisive: No deception indicated.. There are so many Ahmeds that itll be difficult for them to put him on the no-fly list, Salahi joked. When they asked whether Salahi was involved in any terrorist activities, the friend laughed. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. You very much become a child again.. He began to wonder whether the case against Mohamedou Salahi was as flimsy and politically motivated as that for the invasion had been. Taliban fighters walked the streets, confident in the support they received from Pakistans intelligence service. The interrogations covered the same topics as before: Abu Hafs; Al Qaedas training camps in 1992; the Millennium Plot. 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.. Military-police officers so frequently abused the Quran during cell searches that detainees demanded that the books be kept in the library, where they would be safe. Medical personnel had noted that Salahi had sciatic-nerve issues; now interrogators kept him in stress positions that exacerbated them. (During the layover in Casablanca, he had drunk a Red Bull and twenty-two shots of espresso.) . 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. No showers for weeks. For the first time, he described his experiences without fear of retribution. Wood is six feet three, with a shaved head, a shy, stoic manner, and the musculature of an lite bodybuilder. Everyone on the team was dressed entirely in black, their faces obscured by balaclavas. 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. Mohamedou Ould Slahi was sent to his home country of Mauritania after 14 years of imprisonment. As at Guantnamo, he often worked at night. The guards, who were officially prohibited from interacting with him, began asking questions. That day, Neelys job was to haul captives from a bus to a holding area for processing, and then to small, outdoor cages, where they would spend nearly four months sleeping on rocks, and relieving themselves in buckets, while soldiers constructed more permanent cellblocks. Bin Laden, wary of Al Qaedas fragility, urged him not to speak publicly of his departure. Slahi says his interrogator could not sell his false confessions up the chain of command. That is not appropriate language, man. I was forbidden from seeing the light of the day; every once in a while they gave me a rec-time at night to keep me from seeing or interacting with any detainees. Theyd ask me, Whos in there?, and Id say, I dont know, probably somebody famous.. 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. So, completely different goals in life., Sometimes Wood opened Salahis Quran to a random page and told him the verse number, and Salahi would recite it aloud from memory, first in Arabic, then in English. He liked to rile his guards into debating equality, race, and religion, and he wielded a sophisticated understanding of history and geopolitics to chip away at their beliefs. A week after Salahi began leading prayers at the Al Sunnah mosque, Ressam drove a rental car onto a U.S.-bound ferry in Victoria, British Columbia. Salahi landed in Montreal on November 26, 1999. Salahi had spent the morning reviewing a speech he had prepared for events hosted by Amnesty International and Physicians for Human Rights. 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. He just said, Dude, they fucked me up.. They said I was bringing shame upon the family, and protecting a terrorist, Wood recalled. had raided a hotel in Khartoum. I thought there would be a lot of formalities, especially for a terrorist suspect such as myself, but nothing like that happened, Salahi wrote. One day in the spring of 2012, Abu Hafs slipped out of custody during a visit to the gym. See what it did to his family., A job posting depicts life as an intelligence officer in Guantnamo Bay as a rewarding challenge with incredible surroundingssunsets, beaches, iguanas, pristine Caribbean blue. 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. Salahi withdrew the cash and gave it to friends who were travelling to Nouakchott, and they delivered it to Abu Hafss family. Near the airport parking lot, Salahi stood in a light-blue boubou, the traditional Mauritanian robe, with a turban to obscure his identity. Eventually, Salahi would be allowed access to a small patch of soil outside his trailer, where he tended sunflowers, basil, sage, parsley, and cilantro. Bad people always want to blend into a crowd, Salahi explained at the military hearing. The interrogator added that, if Salahi didnt start talking, he would be buried on Christian, sovereign American soil., On August 2nd, military records show, an interrogator told Salahi that he and his colleagues are sick of hearing the same lies over and over and over and are seriously considering washing their hands of him. He and Abdellahi knelt on the runway, and prayed together. Had Wood remained as a regular guard, in one of the regular cellblocks, he might have finished his deployment with his understanding of the global war on terror more or less intact. Wife: Not Available: Sibling: Not Available: Children: Not Available : Mohamedou Ould Slahi Net Worth. For the next two months, Abu Hafs taught jihadi recruits at a madrassa. Steve Wood was elated when he heard the news. 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. Another two years passed before Salahis name caught the attention of Deddahi Ould Abdellahi, the head of Mauritanias security-intelligence apparatus. We met like any decent person these dayson social media, Salahi said. 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. 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. In addition to Salahis abdominal pain, and regular migraines, he still suffers from night terrors. (His wife returned to Nouakchott.) had copied in Nouakchott. guard Steve Wood and director Kevin Macdonald. When Wood agreed to talk about Salahi for a TV documentary, Wendys parents staged an intervention. He wore a broad smile and a white jumpsuit, and moved cautiously toward Wood. Amanda, who lives in Europe, was pregnant, and Salahi would miss the birth of his son. How does he react to world events? It was unclear to Abdellahi whether Salahi was still active within Al Qaeda, but he seemed to be someone whom all the Mauritanian Islamists knew. 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. A close friend of his had been the co-pilot of one of the planes that was flown into the World Trade Center, and Couch told the Wall Street Journal that he had renlisted because he wanted to get a crack at the guys who attacked the United States. When he saw the governments file on Salahi, he considered pursuing the death penalty. It was the first time Wood had encountered the Quran. (He escaped through a kitchen door.) Wahrheit macht frei, the officer saidthe truth sets you free. At a Pakistani Army checkpoint, he slipped a wad of bills into his passport, and went through unquestioned. In all this time, his family had had no official confirmation of his whereabouts. Btihal Remli for The New York. 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. . 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. By the end of the boat ride, Salahi was bleeding from his ankles, mouth, and wrists. There was a famous Mauritanian poet named Taki, the former minister of communications, the current Mauritanian Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. ), Each detainee was given a number, and, on August 4th, thirty-four of those numbers were called, including Salahis. He also believed that Slahi's interrogators had broken the law tormenting him physically and sexually, and. Later that day, Neely and his partner brought an elderly detainee to the holding area and forced him to his knees. Salahi underwent daily interrogations. 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.. The protest lasted for several days as twenty-three prisoners tried to hang themselves.. According to Fallon, The Northern Alliance would jam so many detainees into Conex shipping containers that they started to die of suffocation. The Taliban was rapidly losing ground. How could he possibly know? Although he towered over Salahi, he hesitated before taking his hand, and when he did he noted how delicate Salahi was. But his guard suspected otherwise. It was a grand compound, white stone decorated with lavish carpets and chandeliers. No chairs, no lying down, no more access to his prescription pain medication. Did this license lead Alex Murdaugh to commit fraud after fraudand then kill his wife and son? In 2008, he met a woman named Wendy at a bar. How did they do it?. His electronic files will be deleted from the computer, his paper files will be packed up. The Americans, with their policies, bore the fruit of the events of September 11th, Abu Hafs said on camera. A Guantanamo bay convict claims he was forced to have sex with female interrogators in his recently published memoir. 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 . During the next few months, Wood showed up between prayer times, to avoid any pressure to participate. Mohamedou Ould Slahi: Yes, I read the same story, and I was sort of excited. The whole time I was thinking, you know, What does he really think of us? he recalled. The U.S. military prisons leadership considered Mohamedou Salahi to be its highest-value detainee. . -From Guantnamo Diary, by Mohamedou Ould Slahi It was a simple prayer. One of the men momentarily removed Salahis blindfold, and shined a flashlight into his eyes. 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. "And then what they -- pretty much told him, 'This is a bunch of B.S.'" Slahi's life changed . For Wood, the trip became something more complicated than a visit to a friend. 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 began to notice surveillance everywhere. I think we all became friends. But he wasnt sure that Salahi believed him. The prosecutor assigned to Salahis case was a lieutenant colonel named Stuart Couch, who had retired from the military before 9/11. He sought structure and disciplinea life of pride, purpose, and clarity of mission. A similar phone call, followed by a second transaction, took place in December, 1998. The fragmented image of Mohamedou Salahi that United States military, law-enforcement, and intelligence agencies assembled in a classified dossier was that of a highly intelligent Mauritanian electrical engineer, who, as a key al-Qaida member, had played a role in several mass-casualty plots. Several more days of interrogation followed. 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. 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