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. Government censors redacted names, dates, locations, and other sensitive or embarrassing information. I'm a really big believer in Joe Biden. Salahi was on a diet of Ensure nutrition shakes and antidepressants. Once, he watched an IRF team leader beat a detainee so badly that he had to be sent to the hospital and the floor of his cell was stained with blood; the next time the team leader was in the cellblock, another detainee yelled out, Sergeant, have you come back to finish him off?. By Marisa Egerstrom. Theyd ask me, Whos in there?, and Id say, I dont know, probably somebody famous.. He signed it. It had been five years since the Taliban had taken over most of the country, and televisions were banned. 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. Few people worked out at two or three in the morning, so he had plenty of time to continue his self-education on global affairs. As Michael Lehnert, a Marine Corps major general who briefly served as the detention camps first commander, later testified to Congress, What better way to enrich yourself, while resolving old grudges, than to finger a neighbor who was your enemy, regardless of his support for either Al Qaeda or the Taliban?. Throughout 2002 and 2003, whenever the foreign minister visited the parliamentary chamber, Badre Eddine demanded to know Salahis whereabouts. The point is to pave, seal, and waterproof it, to preserve its lifespan, he said. It is a fact that they understand this whole concept of terrorism much better than the average American interrogator, Salahi said, in his military hearing. 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. During the Amnesty International live stream, someone on Twitter commented that, of the two of them, Wood looked like the detainee. Wood contacted one of Salahis lawyers, using a made-up name and a new e-mail address, to inquire about Salahis well-being and the status of his case. The lack of progress, development, and freedom in Mauritanian society inspired in Salahi a righteous anger toward autocracy and corruption, and a desire to fight for something bigger than himself. In isolated, poor regions of South Carolina, coming from an lite familyoffereda feeling of impunity. I said, No. (Investigators later determined that Ressam had left Montreal for a safe house in Vancouver on November 17thnine days before Salahi arrived in Canada.) 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. [4] Slahi traveled from his home in Germany to Afghanistan in December 1990 "to support the mujahideen." 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. He let you down! An interrogation memo listed plans to shave Salahis head and beard, dress him in a burqa, and make him bark and perform dog tricks, to reduce the detainees ego and establish control.. 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. His was the first guard force that didnt wear masks, that allowed Salahi to pray. By 1990, the Soviets had withdrawn from Afghanistan, but Al Qaeda was still fighting against the Communist Afghan government that the Soviets had installed. Salahi had deleted the contents of his phone. Few locals spoke French, but since the country had been arbitrarily drawn up as a vast, mostly desert territory, populated by numerous ethnic groups who spoke different languages, there was no alternative for official documentation. In 2006, Wood removed his shoes at the entrance to the Masjid As-Saber, Portlands largest mosque. After roughly three weeks, F.B.I. One of Salahis friends, who was now living in Canada, suggested that he move to Montreal. It didnt take my interrogator a whole lot of time to understand the situation. Another American official arrived, and took Salahis photograph and fingerprints. By the time Wood left, he had come to accept his guards and interrogators as family. Never turn your back, the sergeant major warned him. He didnt harbor any particular animosity toward Muslims, but he had absorbed his mothers belief: If its not from Jesus then it must be from the Devil. After completing the requirements to become an M.P., Wood enrolled in a criminal-justice program at a nearby community college. Seems a little creepy., Sensory deprivation can cause hallucinations, usually visual rather than auditory, but you never know, Zierhoffer replied. You trust the handcuffs and everything, but, no matter what, wed never be with him one on onethere would always be a partner, Wood told me. Wood stayed with Salahi for four days. Each government claims that it has come to the rescue of the population, which had been neglected and abused by the previous government, Badre Eddine told me. 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. 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. Everyone, including myself, was very nervous, he said. Where is Mullah Omar? they asked. in the United States on February 12. In 2004, Steve Wood was deployed to Guantnamo Bay, as a member of the Oregon National Guard. The next morning, Salahi was led to the office of the Mauritanian intelligence chief, Deddahi Ould Abdellahi. When Wood agreed to talk about Salahi for a TV documentary, Wendys parents staged an intervention. One day, Zuley walked into Salahis cell, carrying a pillow. The first man off the bus had only one leg. 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. While he was held at Gitmo, Slahi was repeatedly tortured in an . In 2008, he met a woman named Wendy at a bar. But by then the Soviet Union had collapsed, and, while Salahi was in training, the Afghan government lost its Russian support. Abu Hafs ascended to Al Qaedas Shura Council, where he served as bin Ladens personal adviser on Sharia law. 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. His net worth has been growing significantly in 2021-2022 . Only one of the twenty-six interrogators was capable of working without an interpreter. Like, really stressful. They slept under mosquito nets in Salahis bedroom, and woke up to the sound of a bleating sheep. The guards would rush in to save him and the chaos would start again. On December 19th, Abu Hafs boarded a bus in Quetta, carrying a fake passport and a suitcase full of cash. Now, faced with their own incompetence, Fallon wrote, interrogators were quick to blame classic Manchester resistance tactics!. All afternoon, guards screamed at the detainees to shut up and walk faster, called them sand niggers, and said that their family members and countries had been obliterated by nuclear bombs. An American woman, who he assumed was an intelligence officer, entered the room, and stood by as a Senegalese officer questioned him about the Millennium Plot. The host, who was a government official, grew agitated, pulled me aside, and urged me not to mention that I had ever been to his house. He remains locked inside the notorious naval base. detainees were whisked to the cellar, to be hidden from view. The decision to simultaneously protect and detain Al Qaeda members was apparently made by Irans spy chief, Qassem Suleimani. It was the first time Wood had encountered the Quran. Bad people always want to blend into a crowd, Salahi explained at the military hearing. You will have a job at the snap of a finger, his friend told him. A lot of wise people tell me, Mohamedou, shut the fuck up, dont ask for papers, dont ask. I dont have a problem with black peoplehalf my country is black people! But the agent kept using racial slurs. Mohamedou Ould Slahi and Steve Wood met in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2004. 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. 2023 Cond Nast. I took the pillow as a sign of the end of the physical torture.. Thats like asking Charlie Sheen how many women he dated. The important stuff was in his diary, he said, which they could read only inside a secure facility near Washington, D.C. You could always tell when someone got IRFed, as the detainees throughout the camp would start chanting and screaming, Neely recalled. Salahi underwent daily interrogations. He often wakes up shaking, crying, and grinding his teeth. But Wood spent his days in the base library, researching topics that Salahi had brought up in the cell. He wanted no part of a system in which he might have control over another persons liberty. The sessions Wood witnessed were calm and courteous, with Salahi attempting to answer everything asked of him. Relaxing is easy., In practice, many military-police officers killed time by watching movies and getting drunk at the Tiki Bar; they also took flights to Afghanistan, to pick up more detainees. He wasnt sure what he wanted out of the visithe knew only that curiosity eclipsed his misgivings. No, its not looking good at all, Salahi said. In July, 2001, according to Scott-Clark and Levy, the authors of The Exile, Abu Hafs handed bin Laden his resignation letter. Everything that happened to meeverything I witnessed in Guantnamo Bayhappened in the name of democracy, in the name of security, in the name of the American people, Salahi told the audience at the Amnesty event. But his guard suspected otherwise. Since he had learned it in captivity, some of his earliest phrases were I aint done nothing, cavity search, fuck this, and fuck that. My problem is that I had been picking the language from the wrong peoplenamely, U.S. Guantnamo Diary and the American Slave Narrative. Among such methods as forced nakedness, dietary manipulation, daily twenty-hour interrogations, waterboarding, exposure to freezing temperatures, and the withholding of medical care, Beaver endorsed the use of scenarios designed to convince the detainee that death was imminent. (She later expressed surprise that her legal opinion had become the final word on interrogation policies and practices within the Department of Defense.) An accompanying memo, drafted by a military psychologist and a psychiatrist, explained that all aspects of the environment should enhance capture shock, dislocate expectations, foster dependence, and support exploitation to the fullest extent possible., In November, 2002, the set of proposed techniques landed on Donald Rumsfelds desk. 17k Followers, 1,031 Following, 371 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Mohamedou Ould Salahi (@mohamedououldsalahi) He is being held under the authority of Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF), alleged by the US government to be "part of" al Qaeda at the time of his arrest. It was the spring of 2004. Thirty-five years later, the United States government drew inspiration from this experiment in its approach to interrogating terror suspects. Its not just, Yes, I did! No, it doesnt work that way: you have to make up a complete story that makes sense to the dumbest dummies. 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. Mr Slahi was release on Monday 17 October after being held in Guantanamo Bay for 14 years without charge. Instead, he began to wonder whether what he was actually protecting at Guantnamo was one of the governments darkest secrets: that its highest-value military detainee was being held essentially by mistake, and that his isolation in Echo Special was intended to cover up the hell that had been inflicted upon him. I was living literally in terror. For two weeks, he worked as a guard in the cellblocks, monitoring men who had been captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan. Salahi denied knowing Ahmed Ressam, and added that he thought the entire narrative around the attack had been concocted to unlock the terrorism budget and hurt the Muslims. At the time, he later wrote, I believed excessively in Conspiracy Theoriesthough maybe not as much as the U.S. government does.. When Wendy saw the post, she was outragedbut also somewhat relieved, since it partly explained his secretive behavior. Shortly before the first detainees arrived, Robert McFadden, an N.C.I.S. On September 26th, Schroen and six other officers loaded an aging Soviet helicopter with weapons, tactical gear, and three million dollars in used, nonconsecutive bills. So empty., In recent months, the push for Salahis passport has taken on new urgency. Until recently, the former spy chief Deddahi Ould Abdellahi lived directly across the street. Two UNM School of Law graduates, Nancy Hollander ('78) and Teri Duncan ('00), represented Mohamedou between 2005 and 2016, when he was finally released. custody, claimed that Salahi had recruited him into Al Qaeda. In a newly published journal he reveals allegations of torture and sexual abuse. 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