Then, after about three hours, Mr. X and his friend took me back and threw me in my present cell. “I told you not to fuck with me, Motherfucker!” was the last thing I heard from Mr. X. Later on, SSG Mary told me that Mr. X wanted to visit me for friendly purposes, but I didn’t show any eagerness, and so the visit was cancelled. I am still in that same cell, although I no longer have to pretend I don’t know where I am.
They finally allowed doctors to see me around March 2004, and I was able to get psychological assistance for the first time that April. Since then I have been taking the anti-depressant Paxil and Klonopin to help me sleep. The doctors also prescribed a multi-vitamin for a condition that was due to a lack of exposure to the sun. I also got some sessions with some psychologists who were assessing me; they really helped me, though I couldn’t tell them the real reason for my sickness because I was afraid of retaliation.
“My job is to help your rehabilitation,” one of my guards told me in the summer of 2004. The government realized that I was deeply injured and needed some real rehab. I got a new guard team that included a Marine corporal everyone called Marine, a tall, skinny white guard we called Stretch, and an athletic-looking guard I called Big G. From the moment he started to work as my guard in July 2004, the corporal related to me right; in fact, he hardly talked to anybody beside me. He used to put his mattress right in front of my cell door, and we started to talk about all kinds of topics like old friends. We talked about history, culture, politics, religion, women, everything but current events. The guards were taught that I was a detainee who would try to outsmart them and learn current events from them, but the guards are my witnesses, I didn’t try to outsmart anybody, nor was I interested in current events at the time because they only made me sick.
Before Stretch left, he brought me a couple of souvenirs, and with Marine and Big G dedicated a copy of Steve Martin’s The Pleasure of My Company to me.
Marine wrote, “Pill, over the past 10 months I have gotten to know you and we have become friends. I wish you good luck, and I am sure I will think of you often. Take good care of yourself.—Marine”
Stretch wrote, “Pillow, good luck with your situation. Just remember Allah always has a plan. I hope you think of us as more than just guards. I think we all became friends.”
Big G wrote, “19 April 2005. Pillow: For the past 10 months I have done my damnedest to maintain a Detainee–Guard relationship. At times I have failed: it is almost impossible not to like a character like yourself. Keep your faith. I’m sure it will guide you in the right direction.”
I used to debate faith with Marine. The corporal was raised as a conservative Catholic. He was not really religious, but I could tell he was his family’s boy. I kept trying to convince him that the existence of God is a logical necessity.
“I don’t believe in anything unless I see it,” he told me.
“After you’ve seen something, you don’t need to believe it,” I responded. “For instance, if I tell you I have a cold Pepsi in my fridge, either you believe it or you don’t. But after seeing it, you know, and you don’t need to believe me.” Personally, I do have faith. And I picture him, and these other guards, as good friends if we would meet under different circumstances. May God guide them and help them make the right choices in life.
Crisis always brings out the best and worst in people—and in countries, too. Did the Leader of the Free World, the United States, really torture detainees? Or are stories of torture part of a conspiracy to present the U.S. in a horrible way, so the rest of the world will hate it?
I don’t even know how to treat this subject. I have only written what I experienced, what I saw, and what I learned first-hand. I have tried not to exaggerate, nor to understate. I have tried to be as fair as possible, to the U.S. government, to my brothers, and to myself. I don’t expect people who don’t know me to believe me, but I expect them, at least, to give me the benefit of the doubt. And if Americans are willing to stand for what they believe in, I also expect public opinion to compel the U.S. government to open a torture and war crimes investigation. I am more than confident that I can prove every single thing I have written in this book if I am ever given the opportunity to call witnesses in a proper judicial procedure, and if military personnel are not given the advantage of straightening their lies and destroying evidence against them.
Human beings naturally hate to torture other human beings, and Americans are no different. Many of the soldiers were doing the job reluctantly, and were very happy when they were ordered to stop. Of course there are sick people everywhere in the world who enjoy seeing other people suffering, but generally human beings make use of torture when they get chaotic and confused. And Americans certainly got chaotic, vengeful, and confused, after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
At the direction of President Bush, the U.S. began a campaign against the Taliban government in Afghanistan. On September 18, 2001, a joint resolution of Congress authorized President Bush to use force against the “nations, organizations, or persons” that “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.” Then the U.S. government started a secret operation aimed at kidnapping, detaining, torturing, or killing terrorist suspects, an operation that has no legal basis.
I was the victim of such an operation, though I had done no such thing and have never been part of any such crimes. On September 29, 2001, I got a call on my cellphone and was asked to turn myself in, and I immediately did, sure I would be cleared. Instead, Americans interrogated me in my home country, and then the U.S. reached a joint agreement with the Mauritanian government to send me to Jordan to squeeze the last bits of information out of me. I was incarcerated and interrogated under horrible conditions in Jordan for eight months, and then the Americans flew me to Bagram Air Base for two weeks of interrogation, and finally on to the Guantánamo Navy Base, and to Camp Echo Special, where I still am today.10
So has the American democracy passed the test it was subjected to with the 2001 terrorist attacks? I leave this judgment to the reader. As I am writing this, though, the United States and its people are still facing the dilemma of the Cuban detainees.
In the beginning, the U.S. government was happy with its secret operations, since it thought it had managed to gather all the evils of the world in GTMO, and had circumvented U.S. law and international treaties so that it could perform its revenge. But then it realized, after a lot of painful work, that it had gathered a bunch of non-combatants. Now the U.S. government is stuck with the problem, but it is not willing to be forthcoming and disclose the truth about the whole operation.
Everybody makes mistakes. I believe the U.S. government owes it to the American people to tell them the truth about what is happening in Guantánamo. So far, I have personally cost American taxpayers at least one million dollars, and the counter is ticking higher every day. The other detainees are costing more or less the same. Under these circumstances, Americans need and have the right to know what the hell is going on.
Many of my brothers here are losing their minds, especially the younger detainees, because of the conditions of detention. As I write these words, many brothers are hunger-striking and are determined to carry on, no matter what.11 I am very worried about these brothers I am helplessly watching, who are practically dying and who are sure to suffer irreparable damage even if they eventually decide to eat. It is not the first time we have had a hunger strike; I personally participated in the hunger strike in September 2002, but the government did not seem to be impressed. And so the brothers keep striking, for the same old, and new, reasons. And there seems to be no solution in the air. The government expects the U.S. forces in GTMO to pull magic solutions out of their sleeves. But the U.S. forces in GTMO understand the situation here more than any bureaucrat in Washington, DC, and they know that the only solution is for the government to be forthcoming and release people.
What do the American people think? I am
eager to know. I would like to believe the majority of Americans want to see justice done, and they are not interested in financing the detention of innocent people. I know there is a small extremist minority that believes that everybody in this Cuban prison is evil, and that we are treated better than we deserve. But this opinion has no basis but ignorance. I am amazed that somebody can build such an incriminating opinion about people he or she doesn’t even know.
1 KSM is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He remains imprisoned in Guantánamo and is on trial before a military commission as the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
2 MOS adds a note here in the margin of the handwritten original: “Phase four: getting used to the prison, and being afraid of the outside world.”
3 The book is Edward Rutherfurd’s historical novel The Forest, which was published in 2000.
4 Earlier in the manuscript, MOS indicates that he received the first letter from his family on February 14, 2004.
5 Three Guantánamo-based personnel who were practicing Muslims were arrested in September 2003 and accused of carrying classified information out of the prison. MOS may be referring here specifically to army chaplain Captain James Yee, who was charged with five offenses including sedition and espionage, and Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi, an Arabic-language translator who was charged with thirty-two counts ranging from espionage and aiding the enemy to delivering unauthorized food, including the dessert baklava, to detainees. The sedition and spying cases collapsed. All charges against Yee were eventually dropped, and he received an honorable discharge; al-Halabi pled guilty to four counts, including lying to investigators and disobeying orders, and received a “bad conduct” discharge. See, e.g., http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-05-16-yee-cover_x.htm; and http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-09-23-gitmo-airman_x.htm.
6 In April 2004, General Miller left Guantánamo to assume command of prison and interrogation operations in Iraq.
The previous year, at the end of August 2003, Miller had traveled to Iraq with a team charged with assessing intelligence operations in the wake of the American invasion. The Senate Armed Services Committee reported that during that tour, Miller told an officer of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), the unit charged with gathering intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, that the ISG “was ‘running a country club’ and suggested that they were too lenient with detainees.” The committee reported that another officer “said that the GTMO Commander had told him about techniques like temperature manipulation and sleep deprivation.” After the trip, Miller submitted a report recommending an approach similar to the one he was presiding over in Guantánamo, which concluded: “To achieve rapid exploitation of internees it is necessary to integrate detention operations, interrogation operations, and collection management under one command authority.” Several officers, including Janis Karpinski, commandant of prison operations in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, reported that Miller described this approach as “GTMO-izing” interrogation operations in Iraq.
Numerous reports, including the Senate Armed Services Committee report and the report by Major General Antonio Taguba on the abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 and early 2004, trace the Abu Ghraib abuses to these recommendations. Nevertheless, when Karpinski was suspended after the publication of the Abu Ghraib photos, Miller was appointed deputy commanding general for detainee operations in Iraq, a position he held from April to November 2004. SASC 190-223. The Taguba report, “Article 15-6 Investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade,” is available at https://fas.org/irp/agency/dod/taguba.pdf. A Frontline interview with Janis Karpinski is available at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/torture/interviews/karpinski.html.
7 A 2010 Washington Post article indicated that MOS and Tariq al-Sawah occupied “a little fenced-in compound at the military prison, where they live a life of relative privilege—gardening, writing and painting.” In a 2013 interview with Slate, Col. Morris Davis, who served as chief prosecutor of the Guantánamo military commissions in 2005 and 2006, described meetings with both MOS and Sawah in the summer of 2006. “They’re in a unique environment: They’re inside the detention perimeter, there’s a big fence around the facility, and then they’re inside what they call the wire, which is another layer within that, so it’s a manpower-intensive effort to deal with two guys,” he said. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/24/AR2010032403135_pf.html; and http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2013/04/mohamedou_ould_slahi_s_guant_namo_memoirs_an_interview_with_colonel_morris.html.
8 The original handwritten manuscript included the poem MOS composed imitating Schwitters’s “An Anna Blume.” It was censored in its entirety. The U.S. government still controls that manuscript, and it is not possible to reconstruct the original text of MOS’s poem. In addition to the complete, uncensored handwritten manuscript of Guantánamo Diary, several other written texts and manuscripts that MOS wrote in Guantánamo remained under the control of the United States government when MOS was released in October 2016. MOS and his attorneys continue to request that these materials be returned to him and cleared for public release.
9 The Schmidt-Furlow report records that on December 11, 2004, “after months of cooperation with interrogators,” “the subject of the second special interrogation notified his interrogator that he had been ‘subject to torture’ by past interrogators during the months of July to October 2003.” A footnote elaborates: “He reported these allegations to an interrogator. The interrogator was a member of the interrogation team at the time of the report. The interrogator reported the allegations to her supervisor. Shortly after being advised of the alleged abuse, the supervisor interviewed the subject of the second special interrogation, with the interrogator present, regarding the allegations. Based on this interview, and notes taken by the interrogator, the supervisor prepared an 11 Dec 04 MFR addressed to JTF-GTMO JIG and ICE. The supervisor forwarded his MFR to the JTF-GTMO JIG. The JIG then forwarded the complaint to the JAG for processing IAW normal GTMO procedures for investigating allegations of abuse. The JAG by email on 22 Dec 04 tasked the JDOG, the JIG, and the JMG with a review of the complaint summarized in the Dec 04 MFR and directed them to provide any relevant information. The internal GTMO investigation was never completed.” Schmidt-Furlow, 22.
10 MOS remained in the isolation hut in the classified zone of Camp Echo for nine years after the manuscript was completed. He was finally moved out of Camp Echo Special and into a nonsecret section of Camp Echo in October 2014, about three months before Guantánamo Diary was published in the United States, the United Kingdom, and seven other countries. On October 16, 2016, he was escorted onto a military transport jet and flown to Mauritania. He arrived in Mauritania, a free man, on October 17, 2016.
11 MOS completed this manuscript in the fall of 2005; the last page is signed and dated September 28, 2005. One of the largest Guantánamo hunger strikes started in August 2005 and extended through the end of the year. See, e.g., http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/18/politics/18gitmo.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0; and http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/multimedia/guantanamo-hungerstriketimeline.html.
Author’s Note
When this book was first published, when I was still in prison, I sent a message through my lawyers that appeared as an Author’s Note in that edition. That note said:
In a recent conversation with one of his lawyers, Mohamedou said that he holds no grudge against any of the people he mentions in this book, that he appeals to them to read it and correct it if they think it contains any errors, and that he dreams to one day sit with all of them around a cup of tea, after having learned so much from one another.
I want to repeat and affirm this message here, and to say that now that I am home, that dream is also an invitation. The doors of my house are open.
Editor’s Introduction to
the First Edition
In the summer and early fall of 2005, Mohamedou Ould Slahi handwrote a 466-page, 12
2, 000-word draft of this book in his single-cell segregation hut in Camp Echo, Guantánamo.
He wrote it in installments, starting not long after he was finally allowed to meet with Nancy Hollander and Sylvia Royce, two attorneys from his pro bono legal team. Under the strict protocols of Guantánamo’s sweeping censorship regime, every page he wrote was considered classified from the moment of its creation, and each new section was surrendered to the United States government for review.
On December 15, 2005, three months after he signed and dated the manuscript’s last page, Mohamedou interrupted his testimony during an Administrative Review Board hearing in Guantánamo to tell the presiding officers:
I just want to mention here that I wrote a book recently while in jail here recently about my whole story, okay? I sent it for release to the District [of] Columbia, and when it is released I advise you guys to read it. A little advertisement. It is a very interesting book, I think.1
But Mohamedou’s manuscript was not released. It was stamped “SECRET,” a classification level for information that could cause serious damage to national security if it becomes public, and “NOFORN,” meaning it can’t be shared with any foreign nationals or intelligence services. It was deposited in a secure facility near Washington, DC, accessible only to those with a full security clearance and an official “need to know.” For more than six years, Mohamedou’s attorneys carried out litigation and negotiations to have the manuscript cleared for public release.
The Mauritanian Page 38
