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GUANTANAMO DIARY Mohamedou Ould Slahi EDITED Warning Concerning Copyright Restrictions The Copyright Law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code} governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted materials. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the photocopy or reproduction is not to be used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research. If electronic transmission of reserve material is used for purposes in excess of what constitutes "fair use," that user may be liable for copyright infringement. .. GUANTANAMO DIARY Mohamedou Ould Slahi EDITED BY LARRY SIEMS ~ LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY New York Boston London Diary and annotated diary copyright © 2015 by Mohamedou Ould Slahi Mohamedou would Introduction and notes copyright© 2015 by Larry Siems of his late mother, M. All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the like to express that i permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author's colleagues Theresa D intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other m than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author's rights. Little, Brown and Company Hachette Book Group 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104 littlebrown.com First Edition: January 2015 Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc . • The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher. The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591. ISBN 978-0-316-32868-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2014954412 1098765432 RRD-C Printed in the United States of America Mohamedou would like to dedicate his writing to the memory of his late mother, Maryem Mint El Wadia, and he would also like to express that if it weren't for Nancy Hollander and her colleagues Theresa Duncan and Linda Moreno, he couldn't be making that dedication. , UNCLASSIFIED//FOR PUBLIC RELEASE A Timeline of Notes on the 1 Introduction by One Jordan-Afgh~ July 2002-Feb, Two Senegal-Mau: January 21, 20l Three Mauritania September 29, 2 Four Jordan November 29, 21 Five GTMO February 2003-, Six GTMO September 2003- Seven GTMO 2004-2005 Author's Note Editor's Acknow Notes to Introdui About the Autho UNCLASSIFIED//FOR PUBLIC RELEASE ~ ~ -r; Contents J r) A Timeline of Detention lX Notes on the Text, Redactions, and Annotations Xl Introduction by Larry Siems xv ~ • One Jordan-Afghanistan-GTMO 3 July 2002-February 2003 BEFORE Two Senegal-Mauritania 71 January 21, 2000-February 19, 2000 , f- Three Mauritania 107 J- September 29, 2001-November 28, 2001 Four Jordan 150 November 29, 2001-July 19, 2002 GTMO Five GTMO 191 P""" ' February 2003-August 2003 .. _ Six GTMO 264 l' September 2003-December 2003 Seven GTMO 308 2004-2005 Author's Note 373 Editor's Acknowledgments 375 Notes to Introduction 377 About the Authors 381 UNCLASSIFIED//FOR PUBLIC RELEASE A Timel After spendi1 overseas, prh Mohamedou country ofN: the behest of and then by 1 American FE Millennium l no basis to be release him o: Mohamedou cal engineer i Mohamedou. tanian authori about the Mil Mauritanian a Mauritanian I him to accom untarily comp station. A CIA renditi< ritania to a pri gated for sever services. UNCLASSIFIED//FOR PUBLIC RELEASE ATimeline of Detention January After spending twelve years studying, living, and working 2000 overseas, primarily in Germany and briefly in Canada, Mohamedou Ould Slahi decides to return to his home country of Mauritania. En route, he is detained twice at the behest of the United States-first by Senegalese police and then by Mauritanian authorities-and questioned by American FBI agents in connection with the so-called Millennium Plot to bomb LAX. Concluding that there is no basis to believe he was involved in the plot, authorities . I release him on February 19, 2000. 2000-fall 2001 Mohamedou lives with his family and works as an electri­ cal engineer in Nouakchott, Mauritania. September 29, Mohamedou is detained and held for two weeks by Mauri­ 2001 tanian authorities and again questioned by FBI agents about the Millennium Plot. He is again released, with Mauritanian authorities publicly affirming his innocence. November 20, Mauritanian police come to Mohamedou's home and ask ·~ 2001 him to accompany them for further questioning. He vol­ v- untarily complies, driving his own car to the police station. ~ November 28, A CIA rendition plane transports Mohamedou from Mau­ I j<SU 2001 ritania to a prison in Amman, Jordan, where he is interro­ gated for seven and a half months by Jordanian intelligence services. A TIMELINE OF DETENTION July 19, 2002 Another CIA rendition plane retrieves Mohamedou from Amman; he is stripped, blindfolded, diapered, shackled, and flown to the U.S. military's Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The events recounted in Guantanamo Diary begin with this scene. Notes on t August 4, 2002 After two weeks of interrogation in Bagram, Mohamedou is bundled onto a military transport with thirty-four other anc prisoners and flown to Guantanamo. The group arrives and is processed into the facility on August 5, 2002. 2003-2004 U.S. military interrogators subject Mohamedou to a "special interrogation plan" that is personally approved by This book is an edite Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Mohamedou's torture includes months of extreme isolation; a litany of Mohamedou Ould Sfa physical, psychological, and sexual humiliations; death prison cell in the sumi threats; threats to his family; and a mock kidnapping and twice: first by the Unit< rendition. than 2,500 black-bar r1 March 3, 2005 Mohamedou handwrites his petition for a writ of habeas and then by me. Mohai corpus. respond to, either one i Summer 2005 Mohamedou handwrites the 466 pages that would become He has, however, a1' this book in his segregation cell in Guantanamo. reach the reading publi, June 12, 2008 The U.S. Supreme Court rules 5-4 in Boumediene v. Bush American readers in p~ that Guantanamo detainees have a right to challenge their rized this publication in detention through habeas corpus. and expressed wish tha1 August- U.S. District Court Judge James Robertson hears Moham- a way that faithfully con December 2009 edou's habeas corpus petition. of the original. He ent1 March 22, 2010 Judge Robertson grants Mohamedou's habeas corpus peti­ what I have tried to do tion and orders his release. Mohamedou Ould S: March 26, 2010 The Obama administration files a notice of appeal. fourth language and a November 5, The DC Circuit Court of Appeals sends Mohamedou's custody, as he describes, 2010 habeas corpus case back to U.S. district court for rehear­ This is both a significa11 ing. That case is still pending. itsel£ It is also a choice Present Mohamedou remains in Guantanamo, in the same cell the work's most impor1 where many of the events recounted in this book took deploys a vocabulary oft: place. about the size of the 011 x Notes on the Text, Redactions, r and Annotations This book is an edited version of the 466-page manuscript Mohamedou Ould Slahi wrote by hand in his Guantanamo prison cell in the summer and fall of 2005. It has been edited twice: first by the United States government, which added more than 2,500 black-bar redactions censoring Mohamedou's text, and then by me. Mohamedou was not able to participate in, or respond to, either one of these edits. ,me He has, however, always hoped that his m~nuscript would reach the reading public-it is addressed directly to us, and to American readers in particular-and he has explicitly autho­ rized this publication in its edited form, with the understanding and expressed wish that the editorial process be carried out in a way that faithfully conveys the content and fulfills the promise of the original. He entrusted me to do this work, and that is what I have tried to do in preparing this manuscript for print. Mohamedou Ould Slahi wrote his memoir in English, his fourth language and a language he acquired largely in U.S. custody, as he describes, often amusingly, throughout the book. This is both a significant act and a remarkable achievement in itself. It is also a choice that creates or contributes to some of the work's most important literary effects. By my count, he deploys a vocabulary of under seven thousand words - a lexicon about the size of the one that powers the Homeric epics. He NOTES ON THE TEXT, REDACTIONS, AND ANNOTATIONS NOTES ON THE TEX does so in ways that sometimes echo those epics, as when he editing process: the gc repeats formulaic phrases for recurrent phenomena and events. are changes that have And he does so, like the creators of the epics, in ways that man­ age to deliver an enormous range of action and emotion. In the used secrecy as an essc editing process, I have tried above all to preserve this feel and thirteen years. As such, honor this accomplishment. visual reminders of the At the same time, the manuscript that Mohamedou managed · time, deliberately or n to compose in his cell in 2005 is an incomplete and at times ~ sense of narrative fragmentary draft.
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