Episode 17: Memories of Gitmo

Mohamedou Ould Slahi on His 14 Years at Guantanamo Bay Prison

Few places in the world symbolize America’s “War On Terror” as poignantly as Guantanamo Bay. Opened in January 2002, the detention center has extrajudicially imprisoned terrorism suspects without due process throughout four presidencies. One such prisoner was Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a man from Mauritania, who was kidnapped, tortured, and detained without charges, for fourteen years. While imprisoned, Mohamedou wrote a memoir about his confinement. After a lengthy review process, the book was published in 2015, quickly became a best-seller, and was adapted into the film The Mauritanian, released last month. This week, Mohamedou speaks with the Eurasia Group Foundation’s Mark Hannah to reflect on his experience, his newfound freedom, and America's role in the world today.

Mohamedou Ould Slahi is a Mauritanian writer. In 2001, Mohemadou was detained through the United States' extraordinary rendition program under suspicion that he was a member of the terrorist group Al Qaeda, and later imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay without charge. While imprisoned, Mohamedou was subjected to what the United States refers to as enhanced integration techniques, described by many as torture. Mohamedou published Guantanamo Diary, a memoir of his imprisonment, and he successfully petitioned for his own release in 2016. He now lives in Nouakchott, Mauritania where he is still waiting to be reunited with his family in Germany. His latest book is The Actual True Story of Ahmed and Zarga (2021).

This podcast episode includes references to the Eurasia Group Foundation, now known as the Institute for Global Affairs.

Show notes:

Guantanamo Diary, by Mohamedou Ould Slahi
An open letter to President Biden about Guantanamo (New York Review of Books, 2021)

Archival audio:

The Mauritanian (2021)
The Golden Girls - Funny Moments (agf740, January 20, 2019)
US Defence Secretary reax to Annan's comment on Guantanamo (AP Archive, July 30, 2015)
Cheney: 'I Have No Problem' With Torture Of Innocents (Secular Talk, December 15, 2014)
Torture Report ‘Full Of Crap’ Growls Dick Cheney (The Young Turks, December 11, 2014)
Is torture effective for gathering intelligence? (PBS, December 10, 2014)
Torture at Guantánamo: Lt. Col. Stuart Couch On His Refusal to Prosecute Abused Prisoner (Democracy Now!, February 22, 2013)
Obama's promise to full close Guantanamo Bay (CGTN, January 18, 2017)
Why Obama failed to close Guantanamo (PBS, January 14, 2017)

Transcript:

March 16, 2021

MARK HANNAH: Before we begin, a warning for our listeners that this episode will contain some violent themes and descriptions of torture, which might be troubling to some listeners.

MOHAMEDOU OULD SLAHI: I mean, this is almost so clear to me: how can America allow itself to disrespect the very foundation of its own country? You cannot put people away in prison without due process. And if you say those are not Americans, this is what fascism is about.

***

HANNAH: Welcome to None of the Above, a podcast from the Eurasia Group Foundation. My name is Mark Hannah.

Last month, the Biden Administration announced it would be conducting a formal review of the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba with the goal of closing the prison before Biden leaves office. This was a promise Barack Obama failed to deliver on during his presidency. The camp now remains active nearly twenty years after it first opened. A new feature film, The Mauritanian, starring Jodie Foster, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Tahar Rahim features the story of one detainee whom the U.S. government suspected of recruiting for al-Qaida.

Interlude featuring archival audio

HANNAH: The subject of that film was imprisoned at Gitmo for fourteen years. He was never charged with a crime, and he joins us today.

OULD SLAHI: My name is Mohamedou Ould Slahi. I was born in 1970. I don't know what day I was born. My father was a camel herder. He died when I was only ten or eleven years of age. I grew up very poor. I was looted by Canadian, American, and Mauritanian intelligence in an operation outside of Canada and kidnapped in January of 2000. Later on, I was stripped of my passport and put under house arrest. Until after 9/11, I was kidnapped and rendered to Jordan, then Afghanistan, and then in Guantanamo Bay. October 17 of 2016, I was released and sent back to Mauritania. I spent, between house arrest and a closed prison, about twenty years of my life,

HANNAH: I know this is a hard question to answer, but what is the most vivid memory you have of your time in Guantanamo Bay?

OULD SLAHI: It was a regular torture day. I was getting used to this sleep deprivation, assault, and futility talk, and one day a police officer by the name of Richard Zuli came to me. He was with another officer, and he wore Navy camouflage. I was taken. I was in chains. They sat me in front of him. There was him, another officer on his right, and a female interrogator—Staff Sergeant Mary, they called her. He handed me a letter. I thought to read it, and they start to read it to me, too. It says my mother would be kidnapped and put in a prison for men only, insinuating that she would be raped, and he actually said they couldn't save her if that happened. He told me the only way for me to save my mother was to confess to my crime, including the Millennium Plot. I don't know other crimes he listed. The letter seems to come from the Department of Defense—DOD. I didn't know what to say. My English vocabulary was not very large. I told him, “This is not fair.”

I remember he told me, “We are not looking for fairness or justice. We are looking to save lives.”

I was telling him some something like, “But you need to punish those who are harming you, not me. I'm not part of this.” And then he left. At that moment, I knew there was nothing to lose. I took it upon myself to say everything and anything. And Mark, there was no limit to whatever they want me to admit to. Absolutely none whatsoever. I don't know how to describe in words the feeling, the humiliation, the guilt from where I put my family and my mother.

HANNAH: And you were guilty of nothing. Correct?

OULD SLAHI: Absolutely nothing. Mark, this is not a theory. We know from the official government circuit that in 2005, at least, all the agencies unanimously agreed there was no evidence whatsoever linking me to any attacks against the United States. We know that. I have that report in my hands.

HANNAH: What were your impressions of the United States and how it conducted itself in the world before your capture, before your time in Guantanamo Bay, and obviously before 9/11?

OULD SLAHI: When I moved to Germany as a teenager, I was watching Married with Children, Law and Order, Golden Girls—on and off—and American shows that were translated and ran on German TV.

Interlude featuring archival audio

OULD SLAHI: I was very impressed. America, for better or worse, dominated the entertainment business in Germany, and I had only two extreme frames of reference back then. I grew up in a military dictatorship. So, to me, the government and the police meant terror and insecurity for citizens. Then when I moved to Germany, it was like the flip of the coin. I mean, it was the contrast. Germany is a liberal democracy, very peaceful, always promoting peace in the world. And I thought America was like Germany, even though I was very confused in their engagement in the world. They were very interested in going everywhere and promoting themselves as the so-called leader of the free world. And that stuck with me. It’s not all positive, but America is a democracy, someone who doesn't tread on human rights. That was pretty much a very strong image in my head.

HANNAH: What do you think happened after 9/11? Do you think the United States was always hypocritical in its promotion of human rights, or do you think there was some switch that flipped off or something happened that led to, obviously, a detention program that didn't respect human rights? What do you think happened?

OULD SLAHI: After the horrific attacks of 9/11 that killed so many innocent people from all walks of life and from all backgrounds, George W. Bush said something very beautiful. He said that America was attacked because of its values and lifestyle, but America will not abandon its lifestyle. And I understood that the lifestyle included democracy and the respect of human rights. But ironically, that is exactly what happened after 9/11. America divided people into categories: those who are deserving of human rights and dignity and those who are not, meaning that young Muslims from poor countries, mainly in Africa and the Middle East, are not worthy of being treated with human dignity. And they were picked up in what I call open seasons. So, yes, being suspected of something was enough to kidnap someone and torture them.

Interlude featuring archival audio

HANNAH: Let's talk now for a minute about your case. The government had theories and suspicions and even associations, but no solid evidence tying you to any crime. Talk for a minute about how you were detained and what the circumstances were surrounding that.

OULD SLAHI: I want to cut some slack for the American government. I would have suspected myself too. Being an imam of a mosque in Germany, I met all kinds of people. They came to me. They talked to me, and that's how it is. That’s the community. As a community leader, you cannot go around that. But what was very suspicious is when I received a phone call from my cousin at the end of ‘98, early ’99, I think—and this was very innocent on its face, because he asked me to help him wire some money to his sick father. His father was very old, and he needed medical attention. And they did not have the money to give him the proper medical treatment. He asked me, and of course, that's the right thing to do to anyone who asked you to do it, let alone someone from your family. But there was a problem with this phone call, which I did not know. He did this phone call from the personal phone of Osama bin Laden that was being heard by American intelligence. But that said, the phone call was very clear, and the action that followed the phone call was in line with what was said in the phone call. So, that was very clear. But I was simply flat, and the Americans did a very thorough investigation. They came to our imam. They showed him my picture, and when he saw it, he was laughing. He said, “What do you want to know about this guy?”

They told him, “We have reports that he's a bad guy.”

He said, “I know this guy would not hurt a fly,” or something like that.

And they told him, “We don't think he would, but we’re telling you we have a very serious report.”

Mind you, Mark, that my cousin—even as close to bin Laden as he was, it turned out that he was not part of Osama bin Laden's violent acts. But that's beside the point, I guess, for now.

So what happened? I was so scared. I had never had any run-in with the police. And when the imam told me that I freaked out and said, “I need to go to Canada, go away from Germany, because I don't need this kind of suspicion around me.” And this was so naive of me. I did not know how the world was connected, how this spook world was connected. And this was one of the worst decisions I'd ever made in my life. Go to Canada because Canada is very infamous for its condition-less collaboration with the United States intelligence services. When I came to Canada, as luck would have it, one person by the name of Ahmed Ressam decided to cross the U.S. border carrying explosives and killing innocent people.

HANNAH: And that was the Millennium Plot, correct?

OULD SLAHI: Exactly, Mark. Yeah, the infamous Millennium Plot.

Interlude featuring archival audio

OULD SLAHI: The intelligence were looking at it saying, “OK, this guy prayed in the same mosque as Mohamedou, who came from Germany, and Mohamedou has a call from the phone of Osama bin Laden at least once. We know that. So, the equation is very clear. Mohamedou is the mastermind of this attack.” That's what was in their head, but as we know today, this was all baseless. I never met the guy. I don't know him. We never ran into each other. We were never at the same place at the same time, as far as I'm concerned. And this is precisely why we need the rule of law, because even though this was a very strong suspicion, there was no evidence whatsoever because you cannot have evidence when there is no evidence. But what happened was that the Canadians, the Americans, and the Mauritanians agreed to lure me away from any place where there is law and then kidnapped me, tortured me, and have me tell them everything with them “saving lives.”

HANNAH: There was suspicion because in the 1990s you spent two years with al-Qaida in Afghanistan, and the thing that motivated you was to try to kick the communists out of a Muslim majority country. Do you want to talk for a minute about that?

OULD SLAHI: Absolutely. Just for the record, I spent—I don't know—two or three months. I visited them twice, and I spent about two months each time. It was late ‘89, I think—no, no, late ‘90s. Those Afghani ambassadors of the Mujahideen that were recognized and supported by the German government and by your government. They called them freedom fighters. They visited our centers. They visited our mosques, and I participated in demonstrations for Afghanistan, for Palestine, and for Iran. As a young man, I just want to enjoy the freedom I had in Germany, and I just want to make a difference.

I went to the embassy. They invited me to their embassy in Bonn on Théâtre Street 12th, and they encouraged me. They said it's very good to go to Afghanistan to participate. It's very good experience. And I just decided to volunteer. They gave me the visa, very official. This is very official. And then they guided me, and I didn't know what al-Qaida meant. I didn't know what Osama bin Laden—I heard the name, of course, because I listened to cassettes and everything. But I never met him. I never shook his hand. I saw him from afar once. And when I went there, the people who were working with the Americans and with the Saudis to defeat the Soviets and the puppet regime were on the side of the good guys. But what happened? I went there twice in ‘91 and the beginning of ‘92, and then I saw a civil war. It was very ugly. I didn't want to be part of the civil war. It was Afghanis killing each other, and I left. I said goodbye and never came back.

HANNAH: You knew the information that was being taken under duress, under stress, and under torture was bad information. Why do you think the American government—the American military—was blind to the idea that the information they were getting was flat wrong?

OULD SLAHI: I just want to make some points. The only reliable way to get reliable information is for the person to be genuinely and honestly interested in giving you that information. That’s the hundred percent proof way and proven way to get the correct intelligence. No deception, nothing.

Interlude featuring archival audio

OULD SLAHI: The other thing it looks like, at least to me, if I'm an outsider—I had never been in the United States—It looks like America is so impressed by dictatorial regimes, at least what I call the “Securitate.” That is those organizations like the CIA, FBI, NSA—people who see themselves very much above the law and most certainly above the law when they are outside of the United States. They say, “Look at the dictatorial regime. They take people. They get the information out of them in open-and-shut cases.” And we have this bondage of democracy, bondage over human rights. But what they are completely blind to is that America is great and Germany is great because of democracy, precisely because of those limitations set upon them by the rule of law. Countries like in the Middle East and in Africa are backward and full and corrupt because they don't have any limitation in what they could do to people they suspect of any wrongdoing.

There is another third point, Mark. In America, the intelligence service, the interrogation industry is a private industry. I was interrogated by contractors, and a company needs to prove her worth. So, if you are working for the U.S. government, your salary is not going to change whether or not you, quote unquote, “break someone or get some information.” Your salary is the same. But if you are hired as a company, and you succeed in breaking someone and presenting valuable intelligence to the government, that would give you bonus points and will win you a lot of contracts in the future. You have this pressure that you need to deliver, and it cannot work in a democracy. Philosophically, you always have to seek the truth and always have to not harm the innocents, at least while you are protecting the innocents. That's the beauty of a democracy. The government—it's the job of the CIA and the FBI, I would say, to protect human beings, peaceful human beings. And they do the job that we don't need to know about, but those jobs should never, never include torture or kidnapping or harming people, especially innocent people. So, that's all I'm saying. I'm not saying the CIA should not look at someone who received a call from the telephone of Osama bin Laden.

HANNAH: A lot of people listening don't need to be convinced that Guantanamo Bay is bad. They are skeptical and critical of America's so-called war on terror and the overreach and abuses of that war. But most probably associate it with George Bush. And now Barack Obama was arguably no better than his predecessor in reigning in the war on terror.

Interlude featuring archival audio

HANNAH: In fact, you got your writ of habeas corpus, and the courts ordered your release back in 2010. And yet it was the Obama Administration which kept you detained for six more years after that. What are your thoughts and reflections on that?

OULD SLAHI: You know, I don't want to bash anyone, including Barack Obama, because he cannot defend himself in this forum. But I can tell you he did not have the courage to go through with his beliefs. H really believes that Guantanamo Bay did not belong in a democracy and did not promote the interests of the United States inside or outside of the country, because he said that over and over. And in my case was like miscarriage of justice, because I went to court myself. I fought my way to court, and the court said, “This guy needs to go home. There is no evidence against it.” And the government kept me. You know, this is complete disrespect, disrespect on many fronts to the law and to the promise that the United States made to close the prison, because now the judiciary told them.

This whole war on terror and terrorism—this is all because—why do you need to paint anyone with terrorism if murder is a crime, if destroying property is a crime? They do it because it's a political tool to oppress political dissent, and the world and freedom and human dignity suffered a lot after the attacks of 9/11 because America was seen as a champion of human rights and champion of democracy. And with the—don't disrespect them. Why should the dictator or a military regime in Africa or in the Middle East respect human rights?

HANNAH: President Biden and his aides launched a formal review of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, and they revived the goal of closing the prison there. Do you have any hope that this prison will be closed by President Biden? Do you have any advice for President Biden?

OULD SLAHI: I believe in Biden. I truly think Mr. Biden is a good person. Biden suffered in his life. He lost his wife a very young age, and he lost his son at a very young age. I cannot imagine. I think any father would understand that I cannot imagine how it feels to lose your own son and some of this pain that you went through. I'm sure he would understand the pain that innocent people had to endure when they were tortured, when they were wrongfully kidnaped and put in prison for so many years. He would also understand that this prison at Guantanamo Bay says a lot more about those who created it, who dragged people around them in it, than those people who are in the prison themselves. I mean, this is almost so clear to me. How can America allow itself to disrespect the very foundation of its own country? You cannot put people away in a prison without due process. And if you say those are not Americans, this is what fascism is about. As a global citizen, I don't believe only in the security and safety of American citizens. I believe in the security and safety of all human beings. It’s the only guarantee that also American people are safe because the world is so intertwined and so connected that you cannot guarantee the safety of any part of the world without guaranteeing the safety of the other part of the world. Because when you have war in Syria, you have violence erupting in Paris or in Pasadena or wherever.

What they call the Bush Doctrine said that we should not wait on people to commit crime and take them to court. It says that you should take people to prison before they commit the crime, like Minority Report, if you saw that movie with Tom Cruise. This cannot work in a democracy. You cannot punish people because you suspect them. This disproportionately targeted a certain type of people, like Muslims, Arabs, Middle Eastern people, and this only causes more violence and more chaos. I can tell you for sure, Mark, that extremists, people who want violence and who want to enforce their ideas through violence, like al-Qaida and other organizations—they thrive in chaos. They love for America to drop bombs anywhere because that's where they can recruit their people and nurture them and get smuggling of weapons and get to attack territories. I do believe that the best way to keep the world safe is with freedom, democracy, the rule of law, and maintaining human rights. And no country in the world has more power and more tools to champion human rights than the United States of America.

HANNAH: Now your story and the book you wrote about your experience, Guantanamo Diary, has been made into a major Hollywood film, and you are played by the famous actor Tahar Rahim. This has to be somewhat of an amazing development for you personally, having gone from being a prisoner in Guantanamo Bay for fourteen years to now being portrayed on the big screen. How does that feel having your story told like this?

OULD SLAHI: This book and the movie are just a testament that the pen wins against the sword. It takes a very long time, but in the end it does. The pen always wins. This was another way to share my story with the rest of the world, and it's up to people like you, Mark, and other people to scrutinize me, scrutinize my story, and scrutinize the government version, because I'm only interested in the truth, because truth is my friend.

HANNAH: At the end of the movie, it mentions you and your wife are now living in different countries. You have a son, Ahmed.

OULD SLAHI: Germany is still denying me the visa to join my family in Berlin, and we know this is coming from Washington mainly. I just want them to let me live my life. I just want to live my life in peace, promote my movie, and promote my books, because I have new a book in just a month, Ahmed and Zarga, about Bedouin life. I just want them to leave me alone and let me be.

HANNAH: Thank you, Mohamedou Ould Salahi, for spending time with None of the Above. It's been a real privilege.

OULD SLAHI: Thank you so much, Mark, for having me on None of the Above, and good luck to you and to your coworkers.

HANNAH: This has been another episode of None of the Above, a podcast from the Eurasia Group Foundation. I'm Mark Hannah, and I want to give a special thanks to our None of the Above team who make all of this possible: our producer Caroline Gray, our editor Luke Taylor, sound engineer Zubin Hensler, and EGF’s graduate research assistant Adam Pontius. If you enjoyed what you've heard today, do subscribe to us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or anywhere else you find podcasts. Rate and review us, and if there's a topic you want us to cover, send us an email at info@noneoftheabovepodcast.org. Thanks for joining us. Stay safe out there, and we'll catch you next time.

(END.)

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