Guantánamo Diary: ‘The special agent locked the chain around my hands and we were thrown into a cattle truck’

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/17/-sp-guantanamo-diary-special-agent-arrest-slahi

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In January 2000, Slahi flew from Canada to Senegal, where his brothers met him to take him to their home in Mauritania. As they left the airport, they were seized.

We headed toward the parking lot. I liked the warm night weather that embraced me as soon as I left the gate. We were talking, asking each other excitedly how things were going. As we crossed the road, I honestly cannot describe what happened to me. All I know is that in less than a second my hands were shackled behind my back and I was encircled by a bunch of ghosts who cut me off from the rest of my company. At first I thought it was an armed robbery, but as it turned out it was a robbery of another kind.

“We arrest you in the name of the law,” said the special agent while locking the chains around my hands.

“I’m arrested!” I called to the brothers I couldn’t see anymore. I figured if they missed me all of a sudden it would be painful for them. I didn’t know whether they heard me or not, but as it turned out, they had heard me indeed because my brother ______________ kept mocking me later and claiming that I am not courageous since I called for help. Maybe I’m not, but that’s what happened. What I didn’t know was that my two brothers and their two friends were arrested at the same time.

I started to have nausea, my heart was a feather, and I shrank so small to hold myself together

The local police at the airport intervened when they saw the mêlée – the special forces were dressed in civilian suits, so there really was no differentiating them from a bunch of bandits trying to rob somebody – but the guy behind me flashed a magic badge, which immediately made the policemen retreat. All five of us were thrown in a cattle truck, and soon we got another friend, the guy I had met in Brussels, just because we bid each other farewell at the luggage carousel. The trip took between 15 and 20 minutes, so it was shortly after midnight when we arrived at the Commissariat de Police.

Now we were five persons jailed in the truck. It was very dark outside, but I could tell that people were coming and going. We waited between 40 minutes and an hour in the truck. I grew more nervous and afraid, especially when the guy in the passenger seat said, “I hate working with the whites,” or rather he used the word “Moors”, which made me believe that they were waiting on a Mauritanian team. I started to have nausea, my heart was a feather, and I shrank so small to hold myself together. I thought about all the kinds of torture I had heard of, and how much I could take tonight. I grew blind, a thick cloud built in front of my eyes, I couldn’t see anything. I grew deaf; after that statement all I could hear was indistinct whispers. I lost the feeling of my brothers being with me in the same truck. I figured only God can help my situation. God never fails.

Slahi was suspected of involvement in the Millennium plot, a thwarted attack on Jordanian holy sites and Los Angeles airport. He was subsequently flown to Mauritania by an agent he presumed was American. In February, he was released after Mauritanian authorities concluded that there was no basis for suspecting his involvement in the plot. But shortly after 9/11 he was arrested again.

Redactions marked in the text were made by the US government when Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s diary was cleared for public release

• Listen to live and recorded readings by Brian Eno, Colin Firth and others, as well as a panel discussion with Slahi’s lawyer and brother about this remarkable account of imprisonment. Guardian Live: Guantánamo Diary, Tuesday 20 January, 7pm, London

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