In the spring of 1999, French intelligence officers asked their Canadian counterparts if they could question Ressam about jihadi activities in Europe, but the Canadians couldnt locate him, because he had entered the country on a fake passport. Steve Wood walked into Echo Special in the spring of 2004 unaware of everything that had happened before. Few people worked out at two or three in the morning, so he had plenty of time to continue his self-education on global affairs. We got to the site at sunrise; the sky was a hazy, muted orange, from wildfires burning to the south. Every other week, when Red Cross representatives visited the prison, Salahi and a handful of other C.I.A. Salahi had spent the morning reviewing a speech he had prepared for events hosted by Amnesty International and Physicians for Human Rights. (For the past sixty years, the Cuban government has sought to nullify the agreement, and it refuses to cash the checks.) Their questions were much the same, Salahi wrote, but the whole environmental setup made me very skeptical toward the honesty and humanity of the U.S. interrogators. It was the first time in my thirty-year CIA career that I had ever heard an order to kill someone, Schroen wrote. I think he still sees any baby in my family as a future inmate. Brahim Ebety, Salahis Mauritanian lawyer, told me that he is considering a lawsuit against the Mauritanian government. Seven or eight of his ribs were broken. But the C.I.A., which spent the next few years shuffling its high-value detainees among so-called black sites in Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe, had seen fit to transfer him into military custody. Neely later found out that the elderly detainee had jerked because, when he was forced to his knees, he thought he was about to be shot in the back of the head. Bin Laden, wary of Al Qaedas fragility, urged him not to speak publicly of his departure. Relaxing is easy., In practice, many military-police officers killed time by watching movies and getting drunk at the Tiki Bar; they also took flights to Afghanistan, to pick up more detainees. detainees were whisked to the cellar, to be hidden from view. But the Germans saw no reason to detain or question him. A couple of years later, he considered visiting Mauritania, to track down Salahis family and apologize for his role in Salahis detention. This is the exact opposite of whats supposed to happen. His detention at Guantnamo Bay grabbed a lot of attention worldwide. In time, Wood began to think of everything he had known before meeting Salahi as a narrow-minded myth of American superiority, notable for its omissions of overseas misadventures. Mohamedou Ould Slahi: I always told myself, at the end of the day, I didn't do wrong to anyone. (Back in the 80s, during the Afghanistan insurrection, he unwittingly worked with the group. His was the first guard force that didnt wear masks, that allowed Salahi to pray. How can I render uninterrupted interrogation that has been lasting the last 7 years. When he discovered the forged letter from Zuleys team, saying that the United States had captured Salahis mother, he resigned from the case. The Ambassador called Nouakchott, and the foreign minister ordered the Embassy to fabricate a passport, using a fake name. Nevertheless, he spent 14 years of captivity in America's notorious Guantanamo Bay prison,. agents visited Salahis cell. In November of that year, Salahi moved to Montreal, where he began leading prayers at a prominent mosque. One day, he complained to Wood that the interrogators were demanding information on events that he couldnt possibly know about, because they had taken place while he was in custody. When they asked whether Salahi was involved in any terrorist activities, the friend laughed. As soon as the prisoner was taken to the hospital, another detainee would be foundhis sheet wound around his neck and tied to his cage wall. By the second week of December, it was clear that Kandahar would fall. Defense attorneys have accused the government of denying them access to evidence, leaving secret recording equipment in client meeting rooms, and infiltrating their legal teams; a few years ago, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who may face the death penalty, recognized a linguist on his own defense team from a C.I.A. Most of his incarceration was spent in a cell at a detention camp at. After 9/11, patriotism eclipsed restlessness as Woods primary motivation to serve. When they removed his shackles, the man, who was shaking with fear, suddenly jerked to the left. It was Ramadan again. (His wife returned to Nouakchott.) He wore a broad smile and a white jumpsuit, and moved cautiously toward Wood. Who are these guys? Most of the names were Afghan or Pakistani, and the Arabs who were on the list certainly werent recognizable to me and my colleagues who had been working Al Qaeda for years. A few weeks later, after McFadden visited the detention camp, he concluded that the detainees were essentially nobodies. He told me, There was not anyone approaching even the most liberal interpretation of a high-value detainee., In Afghanistan, the U.S. military was inadvertently presiding over a kidnapping-and-ransom industry. He denied involvement with terrorism and was never charged with a crime. Yacoub climbed into the passenger seat. Before his first shift in Echo Special, Wood was told to place a strip of electrical tape over the name on his uniform, and to use only nicknames inside the cell, so that if 760 were to somehow sneak a message out of the camp he couldnt issue fatwas against his guards or their families. Did you see what Steve brought me? Salahi said, pointing to some baby clothes. In 1996, when Abu Hafs was twenty-one, he drafted bin Ladens most important fatwa: an eleven-thousand-word document excoriating the Saudi Kingdom and warning the U.S. Secretary of Defense that Al Qaedas adherents have no intention except to enter paradise by killing you. The fatwa was Al Qaedas declaration of war against the United States. Sometimes the sessions veer into his own coping mechanismsthe routines he made up to fill his days in Guantnamo, for example, when we had nothing to look forward to except the world we created inside my cell., Earlier this month, Amanda gave birth to a son. It is a fact that they understand this whole concept of terrorism much better than the average American interrogator, Salahi said, in his military hearing. Instead, he began to wonder whether what he was actually protecting at Guantnamo was one of the governments darkest secrets: that its highest-value military detainee was being held essentially by mistake, and that his isolation in Echo Special was intended to cover up the hell that had been inflicted upon him. One day they would deprive him of food, and the next theyd force him to drink water until he vomited. The proceeds from his book were paying for a nieces studies in Dubai and a nephews masters degree in applied mathematics at a university in Kuala Lumpur. They married in 2010, and had a child six years later. (Until 2007, a terrorist sanctions list included Salahis name as an alias for Abu Hafs.). The evidence against him lacked depth, but investigators considered its breadth conclusive. No, its not looking good at all, Salahi said. In 2012, Salahis lawyers won a seven-year legal battle to declassify his diary. Stand the fuck up! an interrogator said. As the result of a recent court ruling, Guantnamo detainees had access to legal representation, and so, during the next several months, Salahi drafted a diary of his detention as a series of harrowing letters to his lawyers, Nancy Hollander, Sylvia Royce, and Theresa Duncanfour hundred and sixty-six pages, sealed in envelopes and mailed to a classified facility near Washington, D.C. No guards or interrogators were allowed to read Salahis work. The techniqueswhich government documents identify as omnipotence tactics, degradation tactics, debilitation tactics, and monopolization of perception tacticshad been developed by Communist forces during the Korean War, to coerce prisoners into making false confessions, for propaganda purposes. He said, Canada is amazingthere is no racism, they speak French, and it is just a very advanced country, Salahi said years later, in a U.S. military hearing. No one will know what happened to him, and eventually, no one will care.. By now, Wood was no longer dating Summers mother. Salahi and I sat on either side of the leader of a political party that has more than a hundred and fifty seats in Parliament. In mid-November, Salahi voluntarily sat for a polygraph test. As for his jihadi connections, Robertson continued, the governments classified filings tend to support Salahis submission that he was attempting to find the appropriate balanceavoiding close relationships with al-Qaida members, but also trying to avoid making himself an enemy of the group. Where are you from? one of them said. When Salahis lawyers wrote to him, asking that he inform them of everything he had told the government, he wrote back, Are you out of your mind! The Mujahideen are committed to not carry out any military activity in Mauritania, the letter saysas long as the Mauritanian government released imprisoned fighters, abstained from attacking Al Qaeda cells abroad, and paid the group between ten and twenty million euros per year, to compensate and prevent the kidnapping of tourists. (The Mauritanian government has denied that it negotiates with terrorist groups.). I just wanted this to be me and God.. But he subsequently forgot the log-in information, and so he never saw a reply. He also believed that Slahi's interrogators had broken the law tormenting him physically and sexually, and. I came to Canada with a plan to blow up the CN Tower in Toronto, Salahi wrote, in one of his many confessions. Several of his co-workers were missing fingers, and the manager took every opportunity to denigrate the staff. Each government claims that it has come to the rescue of the population, which had been neglected and abused by the previous government, Badre Eddine told me. Then, he wrote, the plane landed, the doors opened, and the warm Cuban sun hit me gracefully. The next day, Wood pressed him to talk about the episode, but Salahi wouldnt elaborate. But, after Abu Hafs used bin Ladens phone to call a different cousin in Nouakchott, Abdellahis subordinates took the cousin into custody, and tortured him for two months. In June, 2004, the Supreme Court ruled that Guantnamo detainees could challenge the grounds for their detention. Ive finally found a way to reuse all our wine corks!, If youd like, I can set you up with a bullet I dodged.. He signed it. (In his diary, Salahi wrote, I was eager to let my predator know, I am, I am.) When the conversation was over, the Jordanians blindfolded Salahi and put a set of soundproof earmuffs on him. 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