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Guantánamo Prisoner's Memoirs Offer Rare First-Person Account of Torture
Guantánamo Prisoner's Memoirs Offer Rare First-Person Account of Torture
By Noa Yachot
A detailed and harrowing first-person narrative of a prisoner's experiences in Guantánamo is available to the public for the first time: Slate today published a three-part series of excerpts from The Guantánamo Memoirs of Mohamedou Ould Slahi. The excerpts were culled from a manuscript hundreds of pages in length, which Slahi provided his attorneys, a pro bono team of ACLU and other lawyers. After being classified for years, Slahi's memoirs – of arrest, rendition, torture, and imprisonment without charge or trial – are finally seeing the light of day, albeit with some redactions.
The excerpts open at the U.S. Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, shortly before Slahi was sent to Guantánamo in August 2002. He describes the course of what he calls his "endless world tour": After reporting voluntarily to the police in his native Mauritania for questioning in November 2001, he was rendered by the United States to Jordan, where he was imprisoned for eight months; and then taken to the U.S. prison in Bagram for two weeks before his final transfer to Guantánamo.
The U.S. government initially suspected Slahi of involvement in the so-called "Millennium Plot," and later claimed it had evidence linking him to the 9/11 attacks. (Both Canada and his own government had already cleared Slahi of involvement in the Millenium Plot; Jordan found no reason to justify his imprisonment.) In 2010, after reviewing all the evidence, Judge James Robertson of the federal District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the government could not prove its allegations, and that much of the evidence presented – Slahi's "confessions" – was obtained under severe abuse. He ordered Slahi released. However, the Obama administration appealed and the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ordered that a new hearing be held. Learn more about Slahi's history and case from from this timeline and this helpful introduction written by Larry Siems, who edited Slahi's manuscript and also authored The Torture Report, an ACLU initiative documenting the Bush administration's torture program.
In the beginning of his story, Slahi describes his relief upon arriving in Cuba because, as he wrote, "I trusted the American justice system... now we are in a U.S.-controlled territory." But in May 2003, the military began, a brutal torture plan called the "Special Project," to break him physically and psychologically. For months, Slahi endured 20+-hour-a-day interrogations, sleep deprivation, physical violence, sexual assault, and other forms of abuse.
- more -
http://www.aclu.org/blog/human-rights-national-security-prisoners-rights-religion-belief/guantanamo-prisoners-memoirs
By Noa Yachot
A detailed and harrowing first-person narrative of a prisoner's experiences in Guantánamo is available to the public for the first time: Slate today published a three-part series of excerpts from The Guantánamo Memoirs of Mohamedou Ould Slahi. The excerpts were culled from a manuscript hundreds of pages in length, which Slahi provided his attorneys, a pro bono team of ACLU and other lawyers. After being classified for years, Slahi's memoirs – of arrest, rendition, torture, and imprisonment without charge or trial – are finally seeing the light of day, albeit with some redactions.
The excerpts open at the U.S. Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, shortly before Slahi was sent to Guantánamo in August 2002. He describes the course of what he calls his "endless world tour": After reporting voluntarily to the police in his native Mauritania for questioning in November 2001, he was rendered by the United States to Jordan, where he was imprisoned for eight months; and then taken to the U.S. prison in Bagram for two weeks before his final transfer to Guantánamo.
The U.S. government initially suspected Slahi of involvement in the so-called "Millennium Plot," and later claimed it had evidence linking him to the 9/11 attacks. (Both Canada and his own government had already cleared Slahi of involvement in the Millenium Plot; Jordan found no reason to justify his imprisonment.) In 2010, after reviewing all the evidence, Judge James Robertson of the federal District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the government could not prove its allegations, and that much of the evidence presented – Slahi's "confessions" – was obtained under severe abuse. He ordered Slahi released. However, the Obama administration appealed and the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ordered that a new hearing be held. Learn more about Slahi's history and case from from this timeline and this helpful introduction written by Larry Siems, who edited Slahi's manuscript and also authored The Torture Report, an ACLU initiative documenting the Bush administration's torture program.
In the beginning of his story, Slahi describes his relief upon arriving in Cuba because, as he wrote, "I trusted the American justice system... now we are in a U.S.-controlled territory." But in May 2003, the military began, a brutal torture plan called the "Special Project," to break him physically and psychologically. For months, Slahi endured 20+-hour-a-day interrogations, sleep deprivation, physical violence, sexual assault, and other forms of abuse.
- more -
http://www.aclu.org/blog/human-rights-national-security-prisoners-rights-religion-belief/guantanamo-prisoners-memoirs
Pressure Mounts On Obama To Investigate Torture
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022752702