Гуантанамо тұтқынының тағдыры: Мавританиялық автордың әңгімесі

Mauritanian author and former Guantanamo Bay detainee
Slahi traveled from his home in Germany to Afghanistan in December 1990 "to support the mujahideen." Slahi trained in an al Qaeda camp and swore allegiance to the organization in March 1991. He returned to Germany soon after, but traveled back to Afghanistan for two months in early 1992. Slahi said that, after leaving Afghanistan the second time, he "severed all ties with al Qaeda." The CIA then transported Slahi to a Jordanian prison through its extraordinary rendition program; he was held for eight months. Slahi said he was tortured by the Jordanians. After being flown to Afghanistan and held for two weeks, he was transferred to military custody and the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba on August 4, 2002, under the authority of the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). Slahi was subjected to sleep deprivation, isolation, temperature extremes, beatings and sexual humiliation at Guantánamo. In one documented incident, he was blindfolded and taken out to sea in a boat for a mock execution. Lt. Col Stuart Couch refused to prosecute Slahi in a Military Commission in 2003. He said that "Salahi's incriminating statements—the core of the government's case—had been taken through torture, rendering them inadmissible under U. S. and international law." In 2005, the internationally recognized criminal defense lawyer Nancy Hollander got involved in Slahi’s case, together with lawyer Theresa Duncan. They argued Slahi’s rights to a fair trial, despite criticism for defending a terrorist suspect. In 2010, Judge James Robertson granted a writ of habeas corpus, ordering Slahi to be released on March 22. In his unclassified opinion, Judge Robertson wrote: " associations alone are not enough, of course, to make detention lawful." The Department of Justice appealed the decision. The D. C. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the ruling and remanded the case to the District Court on November 5, 2010, for further factual findings. The District Court never held the second habeas hearing. On July 14, 2016, Slahi was approved by a Periodic Review Board for release from detention. Slahi was freed and returned to Mauritania on October 17, 2016; he had been imprisoned at Guantánamo for over fourteen years. Slahi wrote a memoir in 2005 while imprisoned, which the U. S. government declassified in 2012 with numerous redactions. The memoir was published as Guantánamo Diary in January 2015 and became an international bestseller. Slahi wrote four other books while in detention, but he has not been allowed to access these books since being removed from Guantanamo.

Slahi was an exceptional student in high school in Mauritania. In 1988, he received a scholarship from the Carl Duisberg Society to study in West Germany, where he earned an electrical engineering degree from the University of Duisburg. In 1991, Slahi travelled to Afghanistan to join the Mujahideen fighting against the communist central government. After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, there was a civil war between Mohammad Najibullah's government and the Mujahideen. Slahi trained for several weeks at the al Farouq training camp near Khost, which was run by al Qaeda, one of many Mujahideen groups in the civil war. At the end of his training in March 1991, he swore bayat to al Qaeda and was given the kunya (nom de guerre) of "Abu Musab." In fact, he was fighting on the same side as the United States, which in 1992 supported the Mujahideen fight against the communist government in Afghanistan. Two months before the attacks, al Walid, along with several other al Qaeda members, wrote a letter to bin Laden opposing the planned attacks. Al Walid left al Qaeda after the attacks. While al Walid was in Sudan, where al Qaeda was based in the mid 1990s, he twice asked Slahi to help him get money to his family in Mauritania, about $4,000 in December 1997 and another $4,000 in December 1998. In the 2010 habeas corpus opinion for Slahi, the judge wrote: "the government relies on nothing but Slahi's uncorroborated, coerced statements to conclude that the money transfers were done on behalf of and in support of al Qa'ida." The federal District Court in 2010 that reviewed Slahi's case found that Slahi "provided lodging for three men for one night at his home in Germany [in November 1999], that one of them was Ramzi bin al Shibh and that there was discussion of jihad and Afghanistan."

Slahi moved to Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in November 1999 because German immigration authorities would not extend his visa for residence in Germany. Since he was a hafiz, he was invited by the imam of a large mosque to lead Ramadan prayers. Ahmed Ressam, who was caught with explosives crossing the Canada–U. S. border in December 1999 as part of the 2000 millennium attack plot, had attended the same mosque. According to a classified report of German intelligence, "there is not only no evidence of any involvement by Ould Slahi in the planning and preparation of the attacks, but also no indication that Ressam and Slahi knew each other." Slahi left Canada on January 21, 2000, where he was arrested in Senegal at the request of United States authorities and questioned about the millennium plot. He was transferred to Mauritania to be interrogated by local authorities and United States FBI agents. After the September 11 attacks, the U. S. renewed scrutiny of everyone suspected of having ties to al Qaeda. On September 29, he was again detained by the Mauritanian authorities for questioning. Slahi claims he was tortured and forced to confess to involvement with the millennium plot. On July 19, 2002, the CIA transported Slahi to Bagram, Afghanistan, where he was transferred to military custody and held at the detention facility. The US military flew Slahi to Guantanamo Bay detention camp on August 4, 2002. He was among 14 men classified as high value detainees, for whom United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld authorized use of what were called enhanced interrogation methods, which have since been classified as torture. By January 2003, US military interrogators pressed to make Slahi their second "Special Project," drawing up an interrogation plan like that used against Mohammed al Qahtani. Declassified documents show that Slahi was transferred to an isolation cell near the end of May and abusive interrogation started. He was subjected to extreme cold and noise, extended sleeplessness, forced standing or other postures for extended periods of time, threats against his family, sexual humiliation and other abuses. In September 2003, Slahi was moved to Camp Echo. Lt. Col V. Stuart Couch, a Marine Corps lawyer, was appointed as Slahi's prosecutor at Guantanamo. He withdrew from the case in May 2004 after reviewing it in depth. Couch said that he believed that Slahi "had blood on his hands," but he "could no longer continue the case in good conscience" because of the alleged torture, which tainted all confessions Slahi had made. In the letter, Slahi said all his confessions of crimes were the result of torture. He laughed at being asked to recount "everything" that he had said during interrogations, joking that it was "like asking Charlie Sheen how many women he dated." On May 1, 2013, Slate also published a related interview with Col. Morris Davis, the military's chief prosecutor at Guantánamo from September 2005 to October 2007. The book is the first work by a still imprisoned detainee at Guantánamo. It provides details of Slahi's harsh interrogations and torture, It has become an international bestseller. Prison officials prevented Slahi from receiving a copy of his published book.

When he assumed office in January 2009, President Barack Obama repeated his commitment to close Guantanamo. He convened a six agency task force to review the detainees and recommend those who could be released. In its 2010 report, the Guantánamo Review Task Force recommended Salahi be considered for prosecution in a military commission. The task force recommended that detainees deemed too dangerous to release, but without sufficient evidence for prosecution, receive a Periodic Review Board hearing. In 2013, Slahi was listed as one of 71 detainees eligible for a review. In March 2016, Slahi was granted a hearing before the Board in June.

U. S. district court James Robertson had issued an order to the Department of Defense barring them from interrogating Slahi while his habeas corpus case was under consideration. Guantánamo authorities in October 2014 seized all of Slahi's privileged legal papers and all his personal belongings, including a computer.</blockquote>

In the summer of 2003, Slahi was repeatedly subjected to the use of an interrogation technique which the Schmidt Furlow Report stated had been prohibited by the Secretary of Defense on December 2, 2002. What was not revealed until 2008 was that in a March 14, 2003, legal opinion memo issued by John Yoo of the Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice, to the General Counsel of the Department of Defense, Yoo advised that federal laws related to torture and other abuses did not apply to interrogations overseas. Also, by 2005, The New York Times reported that by an April 2003 memo from Rumsfeld to General James T. Hill, commander of United States Southern Command, responsible for Guantanamo Bay, Rumsfeld authorized 24 specific permitted interrogation techniques to be used. Jack Goldsmith, head of the Office of Legal Counsel, withdrew the Yoo Torture Memos in June 2004 and advised federal agencies not to rely on them. The United States Senate Committee on Armed Services produced a report titled Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U. S. Custody on November 20, 2008. It contains information about the treatment of Slahi and others at Guantanamo before 2005.

As of 2019 Slahi's passport had not been returned to him as was promised during his release. He was not able to leave Mauritania to treat his health condition or see his newborn son in Germany. After his academic graduation in Germany in 1999 Slahi had registered himself as unemployed while also being involved in commercial activities which he failed to declare to the authorities, resulting in a suspended sentence for social fraud and an unlimited entry ban.