First-person account of what goes on in Guantanamo

Barack Obama, our Nobel Peace Laureate, has a new plan to shut down the military prison in Guantánamo. If you’re wondering what it is like day-to-day there, Guantánamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi is worth reading.

Gourmets need not fear a diet of rice and beans: “[an interrogator] offered me McDonald’s one day, but I refused because I didn’t want to owe him anything.”

Who is Mr. Slahi? It turns out that he is an admitted Jihadi:

In Germany, Mohamedou pursued a degree in electrical engineering, with an eye toward a career in telecom and computers, but he interrupted his studies to participate in a cause that was drawing young men from around the world: the insurgency against the communist-led government in Afghanistan. There were no restrictions or prohibitions on such activities in those days, and young men like Mohamedou made the trip openly; it was a cause that the West, and the United States in particular, actively supported. To join the fight required training, so in early 1991 Mohamedou attended the al-Farouq training camp near Khost for seven weeks and swore a loyalty oath to al-Qaeda, the camp’s operators. Mohamedou returned to his studies after the training, but in early 1992, with the communist government on the verge of collapsing, he went back to Afghanistan. He joined a unit commanded by Jalaluddin Haqqani that was laying siege to the city of Gardez, which fell with little resistance three weeks after Mohamedou arrived. Kabul fell soon thereafter, and as Mohamedou explained at the CSRT hearing, the cause quickly turned murky:

But he does not want to fight coreligionists:

Right after the break down of [the] Communists, the Mujahiden themselves started to wage Jihad against themselves, to see who would be in power; the different factions began to fight against each other. I decided to go back because I didn’t want to fight against other Muslims, and found no reason why; nor today did I see a reason to fight to see who could be president or vice-president. My goal was solely to fight against the aggressors, mainly the Communists, who forbid my brethren to practice their religion.

And, though many of his friends and associates were Al Qaeda members, he says that he did not take any practical steps to wage Jihad against the U.S. or Americans.

Canadians and Americans are unable to understand or appreciate any of these distinctions:

In 1998, Mohamedou and his wife traveled to Saudi Arabia to perform the hajj. That same year, unable to secure permanent residency in Germany, Mohamedou followed a college friend’s recommendation and applied for landed immigrant status in Canada, and in November 1999 he moved to Montreal. He lived for a time with his former classmate and then at Montreal’s large al Sunnah mosque, where, as a hafiz, or someone who has memorized the Koran, he was invited to lead Ramadan prayers when the imam was traveling. Less than a month after he arrived in Montreal, an Algerian immigrant and al-Qaeda member named Ahmed Ressam was arrested entering the United States with a car laden with explosives and a plan to bomb Los Angeles International Airport on New Year’s Day, as part of what became known as the Millennium Plot.

Ressam’s arrest sparked a major investigation of the Muslim immigrant community in Montreal, and the al Sunnah mosque community in particular, and for the first time in his life, Mohamedou was questioned about possible terrorist connections.

Back in Mauritania, Mohamedou’s family was alarmed. “ ‘What are you doing in Canada?’ ” he recalled them asking. “I said nothing but look[ing] for a job. And my family decided I needed to get back to Mauritania because this guy must be in a very bad environment and we want to save him.” His now ex-wife telephoned on behalf of the family to report that his mother was sick.

I didn’t like this life in Canada, I couldn’t enjoy my freedom and being watched is not very good. I hated Canada and I said the work is very hard here. I took off on Friday, 21 January 2000; I took a flight from Montreal to Brussels, then to Dakar.

Americans spent a lot of time, energy, and tax dollars interrogating this Mauritanian regarding his involvement in Ahmed Ressam’s Millennium Plot, but the dates never made sense since the two hadn’t been in the same place at the same time. The book doesn’t give the government’s side of the story, but a federal judge heard both sides and ordered him freed after nine years. The New York Daily News didn’t have Donald Trump, Candidate to kick around at the time (“I’m with Stupid” cover) and hence turned its attention to this Jihadi:

The lead editorial in the New York Daily News on March 23, 2010, was titled “Keep the Cell Door Shut: Appeal a Judge’s Outrageous Ruling to Free 9/11 Thug.” The editorial began: It is shocking and true: a federal judge has ordered the release of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, one of the top recruiters for the 9/11 attacks—a man once deemed the highest-value detainee in Guantanamo.

A section of the opinion summarizing the government’s arguments for why Mohamedou must remain in Guantánamo included a footnote that might have surprised the newspaper’s readers: The government also argued at first that Salahi was also detainable under the “aided in 9/11” prong of the AUMF, but it has now abandoned that theory, acknowledging that Salahi probably did not even know about the 9/11 attacks.

That certainly would make it a stretch to call Mohamedou a “9/11 thug.” It is also a stretch, by any measure, to call a judgment ordering a man freed nine years after he was taken into custody a “rush to release.” But there is a truth at the heart of that Daily News editorial—and much of the press coverage about Mohamedou’s case—and that truth is confusion. Nine years is now thirteen, and the country seems to be no closer to understanding the U.S. government’s case for holding Mohamedou than when Judge Robertson, the one judge who has thoroughly reviewed his case, ordered him released.

Slahi admitted trying to assist fellow Muslims who wanted to kill Russians, e.g., by offering them advice on where to go for training, but the U.S. seems not to have obtained good evidence of him trying to assist Muslims wanting to attack Americans.

Americans’ attempts to understand the enemy are portrayed as comically inept. Slahi was spirited out of Mauritania, imprisoned in Jordan, and then flown to an interrogation prison in Afghanistan. Shortly after arrival he was asked about the whereabouts of top Al Qaeda leaders. He hadn’t even known about the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, much less the locations of any Afghanis:

The escort team pulled me blindfolded to a neighboring interrogation room. As soon as I entered the room, several people started to shout and throw heavy things against the wall. In the melee, I could distinguish the following questions: “Where is Mullah Omar?” “Where is Usama Bin Laden?” “Where is Jalaluddin Haqqani?” A very quick analysis went through my brain: the individuals in those questions were leading a country, and now they’re a bunch of fugitives! The interrogators missed a couple of things. First, they had just briefed me about the latest news: Afghanistan is taken over, but the high level people have not been captured. Second, I turned myself in about the time when the war against terrorism started, and since then I have been in a Jordanian prison, literally cut off from the rest of the world. So how am I supposed to know about the U.S. taking over Afghanistan, let alone about its leaders having fled? Not to mention where they are now. I humbly replied, “I don’t know!” “You’re a liar!” shouted one of them in broken Arabic. “No, I’m not lying, I was captured so and so, and I only know Abu Hafs…” I said, in a quick summary of my whole story.

Slahi dug a deep hole for himself by pretending not to recognize Jihadis whom he actually had met.

The next day ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​ reserved me in the ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​ and showed me two pictures. The first one turned out to be that of ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​, who was suspected of having participated in the September 11 attack and who was captured ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​. The second picture was of ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​ one of the September 11 hijackers. As to ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​, I had never heard of him or saw him, and as to ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​, I figured I’ve seen the guy, but where and when? I had no clue! But I also figured that the guy must be very important because ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​ were running fast together to find my link with him.* Under the circumstances, I denied having seen the guy. Look at it, how would it have looked had I said I’d seen this guy, but I don’t know when and where?

If we accept all of Slahi’s story at face value, the conclusion is that once American interrogators knew that he was lying but were unable to determine the extent of the lies, they went into the “lock him up and throw away the key until we have some time to figure this out” mode. Slahi attributes his continued imprisonment, however, to malice against Muslims. To an interpreter: “Aren’t you ashamed to work for these evil people, who arrest your brothers in faith for no reason than being Muslim?”

The book is a good illustration of the costs to American taxpayers of trying to sort out Jihadis and non-Jihadis from a group of people who grew up in cultures that we don’t understand. It also highlights that it isn’t enough simply to sort out those have waged Jihad from those who have not. Americans have set for themselves the task of trying to figure out if a Jihadi was set on fighting Americans or not. How much can this cost and how long can it take? There doesn’t seem to be a limit:

… has there ever, in all of recorded human history, been an interrogation that has gone on, day in and day out, for more than six years? There is nothing an interrogator could say to me that would be new; I’ve heard every variation. Each new interrogator would come up with the most ridiculous theories and lies, but you could tell they were all graduates of the same school: before an interrogator’s mouth opened I knew what he ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​ was going to say and why he ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​ was saying it.* “I am your new interrogator. I have very long experience doing this job. I was sent especially from Washington D.C. to assess your case.”

(As Slahi is still in Gitmo, the interrogation has now lasted a lot longer than six years.)

No American workplace is complete without motivational signs:

I used to make fun of the signs they put up for the interrogators and the guards to raise their morale, “Honor bound to defend freedom.” I once cited that big sign to ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​. “I hate that sign,” ■​■​■​■​ said. “How could you possibly be defending freedom, if you’re taking it away?” I would say.

Slahi sees Americans in close quarters:

the movie Black Hawk Down; … The guards almost went crazy emotionally because they saw many Americans getting shot to death. But they missed that the number of U.S. casualties is negligible compared to the Somalis who were attacked in their own homes. I was just wondering at how narrow-minded human beings can be.

[a guard] used to play video games all the time. I’m terrible when it comes to video games; it’s just not for me. I always told the guards, “Americans are just big babies. In my country it’s not appropriate for somebody my age to sit in front of a console and waste his time playing games.” Indeed, one of the punishments of their civilization is that Americans are addicted to video games.

When I was delivered to Bagram Air Base, I was like, What the heck is going on, these soldiers never stop chewing on something. And yet, though God blessed Americans with a huge amount of healthy food, they are the biggest food wasters I ever knew: if every country lived as Americans do, our planet could not absorb the amount of waste we produce.

I really had never heard any other group of mortals speaking about the next workout plan. “Is that a homosexual magazine?” I asked one of the guards who was holding a man fitness magazine with those oversized guys. You know, those guys who keep working out until their necks disappear, and their heads barely fit between their overgrown shoulders. “What the fuck are you talking about? This is a workout magazine,” he responded.

Many young men and women join the U.S. forces under the misleading propaganda of the U.S. government, which makes people believe that the Armed Forces are nothing but a big Battle of Honor: if you join the Army, you are a living martyr; you’re defending not only your family, your country, and American democracy but also freedom and oppressed people all around the world. … the reality of the U.S. forces is a little tiny bit different. … But the U.S. government bets its last penny on violence as the magic solution for every problem, and so the country is losing friends every day and doesn’t seem to give a damn about it

It’s very funny how false the picture is that western people have about Arabs: savage, violent, insensitive, and cold-hearted. I can tell you with confidence is that Arabs are peaceful, sensitive, civilized, and big lovers, among other qualities. “■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​, you guys claim that we are violent, but if you listen to the Arabic music or read Arabic poetry, it is all about love. On the other hand, American music is about violence and hatred, for the most part.”

The book is interesting even if you think that Slahi might not be exactly the person in the picture that he paints.

More: Read Guantánamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi