Guantánamo Diary
Now a major motion picture called The Mauritanian
'A vision of hell, beyond Orwell, beyond Kafka' JOHN LE CARRÉ
The first and only diary written by a Guantánamo detainee during his imprisonment, now with previous censored material restored.
Mohamedou Ould Slahi was imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay in 2002.
There he suffered the worst of what the prison had to offer, including months of sensory deprivation, torture and sexual assault.
In October 2016 he was released without charge.
This is his extraordinary story.
Mohamedou Ould Slahi was born in a small town in Mauritania in 1970. He won a scholarship to attend college in Germany and worked there for several years as an engineer. He returned to Mauritania in 2000. The following year, at the behest of the United States, he was detained by Mauritanian authorities and rendered to a prison in Jordan; later he was rendered again, first to Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, and finally, on August 5, 2002, to the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where he was subjected to severe torture. In 2010, a federal judge ordered him immediately released, but the government appealed that decision. He was cleared and released on October 16, 2016, and repatriated to his native country of Mauritania. No charges were filed against him during or after this ordeal.
Larry Siems is a writer and human rights activist and for many years directed the Freedom to Write Program at PEN American Center. He is the author, most recently, of The Torture Report: What the Documents Say about America's Post-9/11 Torture Program. He lives in New York.