Mohamedou Ould Slahi completed a 466-page draft about his experiences in American and Jordanian detention in 2006. He had been rendered from his home country of Mauritania to Jordan, then transferred to Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, and finally moved to Guantanamo Bay prison, where he remains today despite being cleared for release by a judge in 2010.
He fought the Soviets in Afghanistan and formally joined al-Qaeda long before the organization turned its eyes on America. He belonged to the same Montreal mosque as the Millennium bomber, Ahmed Ressam, although he arrived there shortly after Ressam left. The most damning evidence against him tied him to the 9/11 plot itself.
In Germany, in 1999, Slahi had met Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, who now stands accused of facilitating the 9/11 hijackings, and two men the U.S. government alleges were among the hijackers, and housed the men for a night; under torture in a CIA black site, Bin al-Shibh claimed Slahi had directed the men to Afghanistan for training.
Slate is publishing a declassified and redacted version of Slahi’s memoir and it makes for some severely depressing and interesting reading. What I don’t understand is why the government is allowing any of it to be published. What kind of government tortures a man and then lets him write a memoir about it while in prison and then allows the publication of this memoir with only the names of the torturers redacted but not the torture itself? Is the Obama administration readying us to come to our milk? Will we also see the declassified version of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on torture? Will we ever hold people accountable?
Personally, I am all for truth and transparency, but only if it comes with accountability. Without accountability, this memoir is just a giant stain on our nation’s reputation and an incitement for payback. It’s like our country is schizophrenic. We set aside all our principles and keep this man in indefinite detention after having tortured him severely, and yet we allow him to publish his version of events with only slight redactions?
Isn’t that insane?
But, once again, it’s our cowardly Congress, led by Republicans and abetted by Democratic bedwetters, that refuses to allow us to close Guantanamo Bay. Maybe the Obama administration is beginning a campaign to humiliate Congress in the hope that they will relent on these injustices. But I just don’t know.
