Mohamedou Ould Slahi was born in Mauritania in 1970. He won a scholarship to attend a college in Germany and worked there as an engineer. In 2000 he returned to Mauritania, and in 2001 the U.S. government asked authorities in Mauritania to arrest him. He was then taken to a prison in Jordan, than to Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, and then Guantanamo in 2005.
In 2010 a federal judge ordered his immediate release. Our government appealed, and Mr. Slahi is still in prison, although he is no longer being tortured. He was never tried, never even charged with a crime.
In 2005 he began to keep a diary. It was published in January, and it details some of the torture Mr. Slahi endured. The diary is heavily redacted; for example, the names of the torturers, whom we pay for with our tax dollars, are blacked out. At one point seven pages are completely obliterated.
Take a look at page 234. He asks some guards why they don’t refuse to carry out illegal orders. The answers are pathetic. They were worried about their work assignments and their careers.
I have a number of reactions to the book. I am ashamed that my fellow citizens could torture prisoners for years, and that their actions were approved at the highest levels of government. Secondly, I am proud to be a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is working tirelessly to see that detainees are given better treatment.
Finally, I googled Mr. Slahi’s name to see if he was still in Guantanamo. He is, and it occurred to me that the N.S.A. probably put me on some kind of list for that action. That is the America we live in today.
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