Just as Obama once again raises the question of doing something about Gitmo - mind you, not mentioning that those found not to be liable for anything ought to be released - coincidentally Slate publishes the diary of a former Gitmo inmate detained by the US, without charges laid, for 12 years. Scandalous!
When his pro bono attorneys were allowed to hand me a disk labeled “Unclassified Version” last year, Slahi had been a Guantánamo detainee for more than a decade. I sat down to start reading his manuscript nearly 10 years to the day from the book’s opening scene:
“[Redacted] July 2002, 22:00. The American team takes over. The music was off. The conversations of the guards faded away. The truck emptied.”
We’re in the middle of the action. Slahi’s life in captivity had begun eight months earlier, on Nov. 20, 2001, when Slahi, then 30, was summoned by Mauritanian police for questioning. He had just returned home from work; he was in the shower when police arrived. He dressed, grabbed his car keys—he went voluntarily, driving himself to the police station—and told his mother not to worry, he would be home soon.
Slahi wasn’t alarmed because he had been questioned many times: a résumé that read like success for the eighth child of Saharan camel herders was also full of red flags for intelligence services. At 18, he won a scholarship to study engineering in Germany. He interrupted his studies in 1990 to travel to Afghanistan to join the U.S.-supported fight against the communist government in Kabul, training in an al-Qaida–affiliated camp and formally joining the organization. He saw action a year later, in one of the last battles before the Soviet-backed government fell. He returned to his studies in Germany in March 1992, four years before Osama Bin Laden declared war on the United States, but a cousin stayed in Afghanistan, becoming one of Bin Laden’s spiritual leaders. Slahi lived in Canada for a few months in late 1999 and early 2000, leading prayers at the same Montreal mosque Ahmed Ressam had attended; Ressam, who left Montreal shortly before Slahi arrived, was picked up entering Washington state two weeks before New Year’s Eve with a trunkload of explosives and a plan to bomb Los Angeles International Airport."
Continue reading here.
"Mohamedou Ould Slahi began to tell his story in 2005. Over the course of several months, the Guantánamo prisoner handwrote his memoir, recounting what he calls his “endless world tour” of detention and interrogation. He wrote in English, a language he mastered in prison. His handwriting is relaxed but neat, his narrative, even riddled with redactions, vivid and captivating. In telling his story he tried, as he wrote, “to be as fair as possible to the U.S. government, to my brothers, and to myself.” He finished his 466-page draft in early 2006. For the next six years, the U.S. government held the manuscript as a classified secret.
When his pro bono attorneys were allowed to hand me a disk labeled “Unclassified Version” last year, Slahi had been a Guantánamo detainee for more than a decade. I sat down to start reading his manuscript nearly 10 years to the day from the book’s opening scene:
“[Redacted] July 2002, 22:00. The American team takes over. The music was off. The conversations of the guards faded away. The truck emptied.”
We’re in the middle of the action. Slahi’s life in captivity had begun eight months earlier, on Nov. 20, 2001, when Slahi, then 30, was summoned by Mauritanian police for questioning. He had just returned home from work; he was in the shower when police arrived. He dressed, grabbed his car keys—he went voluntarily, driving himself to the police station—and told his mother not to worry, he would be home soon.
Slahi wasn’t alarmed because he had been questioned many times: a résumé that read like success for the eighth child of Saharan camel herders was also full of red flags for intelligence services. At 18, he won a scholarship to study engineering in Germany. He interrupted his studies in 1990 to travel to Afghanistan to join the U.S.-supported fight against the communist government in Kabul, training in an al-Qaida–affiliated camp and formally joining the organization. He saw action a year later, in one of the last battles before the Soviet-backed government fell. He returned to his studies in Germany in March 1992, four years before Osama Bin Laden declared war on the United States, but a cousin stayed in Afghanistan, becoming one of Bin Laden’s spiritual leaders. Slahi lived in Canada for a few months in late 1999 and early 2000, leading prayers at the same Montreal mosque Ahmed Ressam had attended; Ressam, who left Montreal shortly before Slahi arrived, was picked up entering Washington state two weeks before New Year’s Eve with a trunkload of explosives and a plan to bomb Los Angeles International Airport."
Continue reading here.
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