Mohamedou Ould Slahi

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Mohamedou Ould Slahi

Mohamedou Ould Slahi ( Arabic محمد ولد صلاحي, DMG Muḥammad Walad Ṣalāḥī ; * December 21, 1970 in Rosso , Mauritania ) was a prisoner of the US investigative authorities in Guantánamo from 2002 to 2016 . Excerpts from the diary he began there have been published under the title Guantanamo Diary . Ould Slahi is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union .

The US investigative authorities viewed Mohamedou Ould Slahi as a key figure in al-Qaeda . A US federal judge ordered Ould Slahi to be released in March 2010. However, the appeals court upheld the US government's objection, so the release decision was not final. In October 2016 he was brought to his home country of Mauritania.

Life

The Mauritanian came to Germany at the age of 18 on a scholarship from the Carl Duisberg Society in 1988 to take up studies at Duisburg's Mercator University .

In December 1990, he traveled to Afghanistan to join the mujahideen struggle against the Soviet occupation. He was in an al-Qaida trained -Camp and made al-Qaeda the Pledge of Allegiance . After a second trip to Afghanistan in 1992, he finally returned to Germany to complete his studies as an electrical engineer. At this point, he said he had severed all ties with al-Qaeda. After completing his studies, he lived and worked in Germany; In the late 1990s he spent a few months in Montreal (Canada).

According to the results of the investigation published in the 9/11 Commission Report , the jihadists Binalshibh , Shehhi and Jarrah stayed overnight with him in Duisburg in 1999 . Mohamedou Ould Slahi explained to them that their dream destination, Chechnya, was difficult to reach at the moment and instead recommended that they first get an education in Afghanistan. Jarrah actually left Hamburg , together with Atta , in November 1999 for Karachi .

In 2000 Ould Slahi returned to Mauritania. There he worked in a company that was expanding the Internet connection in Mauritania.

captivity

Due to incriminating statements by suspected al-Qaida members who had been captured, he came into the focus of the secret services, was arrested in Mauritania on November 20, 2001 and, with the consent of the Mauritanian authorities, brought first to Jordan, then to Bagram in Afghanistan and finally to Guantanamo Bay. The US investigative authorities assumed that Ould Slahi had actively supported al-Qaeda until 2001. However, he himself denied these allegations.

The US investigative authorities assumed that Mohamedou Ould Slahi had been logistically involved in the 1998 attacks on two US embassies in East Africa . In 1999, he is said to have been involved in a plot to assassinate the Los Angeles airport .

On July 1, 2003, Joint Intelligence Task Force chief Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller approved an interrogation plan that included sleep deprivation , continuous noise, sexual assault, simulations of killing and threats of violence against his mother. During the interrogation, Mohamedou Ould Slahi confirmed most of the allegations against him, which he later revoked.

At the instigation of his lawyer, Nancy Hollander, US Federal Judge James Robertson ordered Ould Slahi's release from Guantanamo Bay camp on March 22, 2010. This decision is not final; the appeals court upheld the U.S. government's objection to the verdict.

On April 28, 2011, Wikileaks released the Guantanamo files of prisoner Mohamedou Ould Slahi; it says that in 2008 it was still rated as a high risk.

Ould Slahi was released in October 2016 and taken to his home country of Mauritania. However, he was initially not allowed to leave because he was refused travel documents under pressure from the USA. He was only allowed to apply for a passport in October 2019.

Journalism and life after captivity

Mohamedou Ould Slahi wrote a report in 2005 about his time since January 2000, which was initially confiscated, but finally released by the authorities in a censored (“declassified”) form. Excerpts have been published in Slate magazine since April 2013 . In January 2015, the Guantánamo Diary was published simultaneously in English and German. After his release, Slahi published his diary again in uncensored form in 2017, whereby the passages previously blacked out in the text were reconstructed. The author still has no access to the original handwritten version of the original manuscript.

After his imprisonment, Ould Slahi took a correspondence course to become a life coach and then took up this position. In 2020 he was involved in the production of Prisoner 760 , a film adaptation of his life story by Kevin Macdonald .

Publications

  • The Guantanamo Diary. Edited by Larry Siems, from the American by Susanne Held. Tropen Verlag at Klett-Cotta , 2015, ISBN 978-3-608-50330-2 .
  • The Guantanamo Diary Uncensored. Edited by Larry Siems, with a new foreword by the author, from the American by Susanne Held. Tropen Verlag at Klett-Cotta, 2018, ISBN 978-3-608-50358-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Guantanamo Files. ( Memento from April 29, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) In: wikileaks.ch
  2. ^ Guantánamo Diary: An Epic for Our Times
  3. ↑ WDR2 - Traces of the attacks of September 11, 2001 lead to the Ruhr area ( Memento of April 8, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) In: WDR report of September 10, 2007.
  4. ↑ 14 years of US captivity: Inmate from "Guantanamo diary" is free. In: Spiegel online. October 17, 2016. (spiegel.de)
  5. ↑ www.defense.gov: Detainee Transfer Announced
  6. ↑ Ould Slahi's al-Qaida membership at this point in time undisputed according to the release decision of federal judge James Robertson
  7. ↑ Salah (sic) decided to travel back to Germany in March 1992 (...) At this point, he alleges, he “severed all ties with. . . al Qaeda. " ; Salahi vs Obama , appeal proceedings before the United States Court of Appeals, DC on September 17, 2010  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / media.miamiherald.com
  8. ^ 9-11 Commission Report, Section 5: Al Qaeda Aims at the American Homeland
  9. ^ Habeas corpus - decision
  10. ↑ Jack Park: Terrorist on Your Street? - heritage.org, 2010-April-20.
  11. ↑ Judge Orders Release of Gitmo Detainee With Ties to 9/11 Attacks. ( Memento of April 6, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) foxnews.com, March 2010.
  12. ↑ US prison camp: Judge demands release of Guantanamo prisoner . In: Spiegel online. April 10, 2010.
  13. ↑ Salahi v. Obama - DC Circuit Appeals Court Decision , 2010-November-5
  14. ^ Department of Defense memo: Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD) for Guantanamo Detainee, ISN US9MR-000760DP
  15. ↑ 'Most tortured man in Guantanamo Bay' freed without charge. In: Independent . 20th October 2016
  16. ↑ Moritz tree Stieger: Mohamedou Ould Salahi. Retrieved January 6, 2020 .
  17. ↑ Mohamedou Ould Slahi's Guantanamo Memories. Part 1 of 4. (accessed January 21, 2015)
  18. ↑ Hannes Hintermeier : Notes from a house of the dead. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , January 20, 2015, accessed on June 11, 2020.
  19. ↑ Uwe Schmitt : You can reach the author of the book in Guantánomo. In: Die Welt , January 20, 2015, accessed January 20, 2015.
  20. ↑ Christoph Sydow : female guards forced inmates to have sex. In: Spiegel Online , January 20, 2015, accessed January 20, 2015.
  21. ^ Foreword by the editor in the reading sample of the German edition: https://www.klett-cotta.de/media/14/9783608503586.pdf
  22. ^ A b Susanne Koelbl : The story of prisoner number 760. In: Der Spiegel . Retrieved June 8, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Ould Slahi, Mohamedou
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mohamedou Ould Slahi; محمد ولد صلاحي (Arabic)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Mauritanian ex-prisoner in Guantanamo
DATE OF BIRTH December 21, 1970
PLACE OF BIRTH Rosso , Mauritania