The Mauritanian (Guantánamo Diary)

Content Warning: This section references torture, graphic violence, sexual assault, racism, and Islamophobia.

The Guantanamo Bay detention camp had a list of 15 high-priority detainees; Slahi was number one, followed by Mohammed al Qahtani. The author was told that he met all the criteria: “You’re Arab, you’re young, you went to Jihad, you speak foreign languages, you’ve been to many countries, you’re a graduate in a technical discipline” (192). Agent Robert, who previously traveled to Canada and Europe to investigate Slahi, gave him a forged letter from his brother to get him to cooperate: “[T]he forgery was so clumsy and unprofessional that no fool would fall for it” (195). Canadian Security Intelligence Service agent Christian also interrogated Slahi “about some bad people” (204).

Slahi repeatedly asked what incriminating evidence the US government had. Agent Robert showed Slahi a CNN report from March 2002 claiming that he “was the coordinator who facilitated the communication between the September 11 hijackers through the guestbook of [his] homepage” (196). However, these allegations weren’t part of any summaries of evidence at Guantanamo, as he later learned. Other agents, like Michael, were “used to humbled detainees who probably had to cooperate due to torture” (197). Agent Michael told him that Ramzi bin al-Shibh, suspected of involvement in the 9/11 attacks, claimed that Slahi was “a senior recruiter for Osama bin Laden” (201). At the same time, the author was repeatedly told that he wasn’t arrested. Eventually, Slahi concluded that the FBI “had no control over [his] fate” (205) but rather that he was at the mercy of the Department of Defense.

Subsequently, Slahi was interviewed by Navy Lieutenant Ronica and an apparent civilian, Samantha: “There is nothing incriminating, but there are a lot of things that make it impossible not to be involved” (210). The women sought his admission of involvement in the Millennium Plot, in which he didn’t participate. Slahi found Ronica honest and Samantha evil. Ronica brought in Sergeant First Class (SFC) Shally, whom the author nicknamed “I-AM-THE-MAN” (212). Shally told him, “Just looking at you in an orange suit, chains, and being Muslim and Arabic is enough” (217) for a US jury to convict. The author was permitted to send one letter to his mother through the Red Cross. After this, the US barred the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from seeing Slahi for more than a year, citing “military necessity” (216).

The author noticed that fellow detainees were consistently tortured with “loud music and scary pictures, and molested sexually” (212). They were placed in the cold room, and the Koran was smashed on the floor to insult their religion. For example, the India Block of the compound “was designed for torture” (215). Staff Sergeant (SSG) Mary interrogated him about the 9/11 suspects and brought in the “torture squad” (221). The author’s “Special Interrogation Plan” (221) involved shackling him to the floor with heavy chains on his hands and feet. Another technique that the interrogation team used was sexual assault: “What many women don’t realize is that men get hurt the same as women if they’re forced to have sex, maybe more due to the traditional position of the man” (227). He was told that “[h]aving sex with somebody is not considered torture” and that they’d “keep humiliating [him] with American sex” (223). At night, the guards banged on Slahi’s cell to ensure that he was sleep deprived. His doctor diagnosed him with high blood pressure.

Typically, detainees were tortured in Camp Delta of the India Block. If that failed, they were kidnapped to a secret location. In this way, Abdullah Tabarak Ahmad and Mohammed al-Qahtani “were kidnapped and disappeared for good” (241). The “celebrity among the torture squad” was Mr. X, who was always covered and “was aware he was committing heavy war crimes” (230). At this stage, Slahi was on “a 24-hour shift regime” (231) of interrogation and torture. He wasn’t allowed to shower: “The team wanted to humiliate me” (233). Slahi and others were sometimes placed in a cold room where the air conditioning was turned up to its limit. Some detainees developed rheumatism. The interrogators threatened to arrest Slahi’s family in Mauritania.

On August 25, 2003, Slahi was being interrogated in the Gold Building, having spent the weekend alone on Romeo Block. Suddenly, three soldiers, one of whom had a German shepherd, burst into the interrogation room and started violently beating him. They threw him into a truck, where he was beaten again. Slahi was then taken to a boat, where he was forced to drink salt water. He assumed that he was being transported to Camp Echo, which “had a very bad reputation” (250). Earmuffs and goggles prevented him from seeing where he was. Later, Slahi learned that his “Special Interrogation Plan” involved “a staged scene in which ‘military in full riot gear take him from his cell, place him on a watercraft, and drive him around to make him think he had been taken off the island’” (412). On the boat, Slahi was bleeding from multiple body parts; his lips were so swollen from the beating that he had trouble speaking. The interrogators used ice to reduce his bruising and torture him at the same time. A doctor who checked his injuries treated him in an aggressive manner, and Slahi was shocked that a medical professional was part of the torture team. When the ordeal was over, the author “was not in the right state of mind” (259) for weeks.