* A Council of Europe investigation confirms that a CIA-leased Gulfstream jet with the tail number N379P departed Amman, Jordan, at 11:15 p.m. on July 19, 2002, for Kabul, Afghanistan. An addendum to that 2006 report listing the flight records is available at http://assembly.coe.int/CommitteeDocs/2006/20060614_Ejdoc162006PartII-Appendix.pdf.

EDITOR’S NOTE ON THE FOOTNOTES: None of Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s attorneys holding security clearances has reviewed the footnotes in this book, contributed to them in any way, or confirmed or denied my speculations contained in them. Nor has anyone else with access to the unredacted manuscript reviewed the footnotes, contributed to them in any way, or confirmed or denied my speculations contained in them.

* Abu Hafs is MOS’s cousin and former brother in law. His full name is Mahfouz Ould al Walid, and he is also known as Abu Hafs al Mauritani. Abu Hafs married the sister of MOS’s former wife. He was a prominent member of al Qaeda’s Shura Council, the group’s main advisory body, in the 1990s and up until the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States. It has been widely reported that Abu Hafs opposed those attacks; the 9/11 Commission recorded that “Abu Hafs the Mauritanian reportedly even wrote Bin Ladin a message basing opposition to the attacks on the Qur’an.” Abu Hafs left Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks and spent the next decade under house arrest in Iran. In April 2012 he was extradited to Mauritania, where he was held briefly and then released. He is now a free man. The relevant section of the 9/11 Commission report is available at http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch7.pdf.

* At his December 15, 2005, Administrative Review Board (ARB) hearing, MOS described a U.S. interrogator in Bagram who was Japanese American and whom Bagram prisoners referred to as “William the Torturer.” ARB transcript, 23. MOS’s 2005 ARB hearing transcript is available at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/guantanamo/detainees/760-mohamedou-ould-slahi/documents/2.

* Omar Deghayes was released and returned to the United Kingdom, his country of residence, on December 18, 2007.

* At his 2005 ARB hearing, MOS indicated that an interrogator nicknamed “William the Torturer” made him kneel for “very long hours” to aggravate his sciatic nerve pain and later threatened him. ARB transcript, 23.

* Department of Justice. This is not true, of course. The Guantánamo Bay detention camp is located on the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base and is run by a U.S. military joint task force under the command of the U.S. Southern Command.

† Press accounts indicate that MOS was eventually interrogated by both German and Canadian intelligence agents in Guantánamo; later in the manuscript, in the scene where he meets with what appear to be BND interrogators in GTMO, MOS specifically references such a prohibition on external interrogations. See footnote on page 49; see also http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/from-germany to guantanamo-the-career of prisoner no 760 a 583193 3.html; and http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2008/07/27/csis_grilled_trio_in_cuba.html.

* In processing height and weight records indicate that thirty-five detainees arrived in Guantánamo on August 5, 2002. The records of that group are available at http://humanrights.ucdavis.edu/reports/heights-and-weights-files/ISN_680-ISN_838.pdf. An official list of Guantánamo detainees that the Pentagon released in May 2006 is available at http://archive.defense.gov/news/May2006/d20060515%20List.pdf.

* Ibrahim Mahdi Achmed Zeidan was released from Guantánamo on November 7, 2007.

* A 2008 investigation by the British human rights organization Reprieve found that transfers of prisoners from Bagram to Guantánamo typically involved a stop at the U.S. air base in Incirlik, Turkey, and the Rendition Project has found that a C 17 military transport plane, flight number RCH233Y, flew from Incirlik to Guantánamo on August 5, 2002, carrying thirty-five prisoners. See http://humanrights.ucdavis.edu/projects/the-guantanamo-testimonials-project/testimonies/testimony of other-physicians/journey_of_death.pdf; and http://www.therenditionproject.org.uk/pdf/PDF%20154%20[Flight%20data.%20Portuguese%20flight%20logs%20to%20GTMO,%20collected%20by%20Ana%20Gomes].pdf.

* The FBI led MOS’s interrogations for his first several months in Guantánamo, waging a well-documented struggle to keep him out of the hands of military interrogators. The protracted interagency conflict between the FBI and the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency over the military’s interrogation methods has been widely documented and reported, most notably in a May 2008 report by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Inspector General titled A Review of the FBI’s Involvement in and Observations of Detainee Interrogations in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq (hereafter cited as DOJ IG). The report, which is available at http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/s0805/final.pdf, includes substantial sections devoted specifically to MOS’s interrogation. “The FBI sought to interview Slahi immediately after he arrived at GTMO,” the DOJ Inspector General reported in one of those sections. “FBI and task force agents interviewed Slahi over the next few months, utilizing rapport building techniques.” At his 2005 ARB hearing, MOS described an “FBI guy” who interrogated him shortly after his arrival and told him, “We don’t beat people, we don’t torture people, it’s not allowed.” DOJ IG, 122, ARB transcript 23.

* The March 3, 2003, Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures instructed that arriving prisoners be processed and held for four weeks in a maximum security isolation block “to enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganization felt by a newly arrived detainee in the interrogation process” and “to [foster] dependence of the detainee on his interrogator.” The document is available at http://www.comw.org/warreport/fulltext/gitmo-sop.pdf (hereafter cited as SOP).

* Mohammed al Amin was born in Mauritania but moved to Saudi Arabia for religious studies. He was released and transferred to Mauritania on September 26, 2007. Ibrahim Fauzee, who is from the Maldives, was released on March 11, 2005.

* Around this time, FBI-led interrogation teams often included members of the military’s Criminal Investigation Task Force (CITF) and military intelligence agents. The DOJ Inspector General’s report records that “in May 2002, the military and the FBI adopted the ‘Tiger Team’ concept for interrogating detainees. According to the first GTMO case agent, these teams consisted of an FBI agent, an analyst, a contract linguist, two CITF investigators, and a military intelligence interrogator.” The IG found that “the FBI withdrew from participation in the Tiger Teams in the fall of 2002 after disagreements arose between the FBI and military intelligence over interrogation tactics. Several FBI agents told the OIG that while they continued to have a good relationship with CITF, their relationship with the military intelligence entities greatly deteriorated over the course of time, primarily due to the FBI’s opposition to the military intelligence approach to interrogating detainees.” DOJ IG, 34.

* As the DOJ IG report makes clear, the FBI maintained overall control of the interrogation of MOS throughout 2002 and early 2003. DOJ IG, 122.

* Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef was the Afghan ambassador to Pakistan before the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. After the invasion he was seized by Pakistani authorities and turned over to the U.S. He was held in Guantanámo until his release in 2005. Abu Huzaifa, known formally as Ahmed Hassan Jamil Suleyman, was released from Guantanámo on December 2, 2007.

* In 2013, the Associated Press reported that between 2002 and 2005, CIA agents in GTMO sought to recruit detainees to serve as informants and double agents for the United States. The CIA also helped facilitate interrogations by foreign intelligence agents in Guantánamo. Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo, “Penny Lane, GITMO’s Other Secret CIA Facility,” Associated Press, November 26, 2013, http://bigstory.ap.org/article/penny-lane-gitmos-other-secret-cia-facility.

† The interrogations of ethnic Uighur detainees by Chinese intelligence agents in GTMO, which were reportedly preceded by periods of sleep deprivation and temperature manipulation, were first revealed in the May 2008 DOJ Inspector General’s report, A Review of the FBI’s Involvement in and Observations of Detainee Interrogations in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq. McClatchy Newspapers reported that the interrogations took place over a day and a half in September 2002. See http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/07/16/72000/uighur-detainees us helped-chinese.html.

* In 2008, Der Spiegel reported that in September 2002, two members of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) and one member of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s foreign and domestic intelligence agencies, interviewed MOS for ninety minutes in Guantánamo. John Goetz, Marcel Rosenbach, Britta Sandberg, and Holger Stark, “From Germany to Guantanamo: The Career of Prisoner No. 760,” Der Spiegel, October 9, 2008, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/from-germany to guantanamo-the-career of prisoner no 760 a 583193.html.

* “Salahi” is a variant spelling of MOS’s last name that is generally used in court documents in the United States.

* Karim Mehdi was born in Morocco and lived in Germany, and traveled with MOS to Afghanistan in 1992. Mehdi was arrested at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris on June 3, 2003. Christian Ganczarski, a Polish-born German citizen, was arrested at the same airport the following day. Mehdi was tried and sentenced to nine years in prison for plotting a bombing on Reunion Island, and Ganczarski was tried and sentenced to eighteen years in prison in connection with the bombing of a tourist bus in Tunisia in April 2002. Both are discussed in Judge James Robertson’s habeas corpus opinion. See https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/2010 4 9 Slahi-Order.pdf. See also http://articles.latimes.com/print/2003/jun/07/world/fg terror7; and http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6088540.stm.

* Ramzi bin al Shibh was captured in a shoot-out in a suburb of Karachi, Pakistan on September 11, 2002. At his 2005 ARB hearing, MOS told the panel, “September 11th, 2002, America arrested a man by the name of Ramzi Bin al Shibh, who is said to be the key guy in the September 11th attacks. It was exactly one year after 9/11, and since his capture my life has changed drastically.” ARB transcript, 23.

* Mustafa Ait Idir won his habeas corpus petition in U.S. federal court and was released from Guantánamo on December 16, 2008.

* At his 2005 ARB hearing, as he is describing his FBI interrogations through the winter of 2002, MOS said, “Then I took a polygraph and [Ramzi bin al Shibh] refused to take a polygraph for many reasons. It turns out he is very contradictory and he lies. They said that to me themselves. They said my credibility is high because I took the polygraph.” After his capture on September 11, 2002, Ramzi bin al Shibh was held and interrogated at several CIA black sites. News reports suggest that bin al Shibh was interrogated in a CIA-run facility near Rabat, Morocco, in late September and through the fall of 2002, and in 2010 the U.S. government acknowledged it possessed videotapes of bin al Shibh’s 2002 interrogation in Morocco. See, e.g., http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/18/world/18tapes.html; and http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/wdc/binalshibh/content.swf.

* Jabir Jubran Al Fayfi was released from Guantánamo and repatriated to Saudi Arabia in December 2006.

* Abu Zubaydah is Zayn al Abidin Muhammad Husayn, the first man to be detained in a secret CIA prison and subjected to its so called Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. Abu Zubaydah was wounded and captured in a shootout in Faisalabad, Pakistan, on March 28, 2002, and transferred to a secret CIA interrogation facility in Thailand. There, FBI agents and CIA personnel clashed over how Abu Zubaydah was to be interrogated. The CIA prevailed, winning Bush administration approval to subject him to ten abusive interrogation techniques including confinement in small boxes and waterboarding. In December 2002, the CIA closed the secret facility in Thailand and transferred Abu Zubaydah to another black site in Poland. He was held there and in other secret prisons until he was transferred, along with thirteen other so called high value detainees who had been held and interrogated in CIA black sites, to Guantánamo on September 6, 2006. A full, if partially redacted, account of Abu Zubaydah’s torture in CIA custody is provided in the Executive Summary of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s 2014 Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program, available at https://fas.org/irp/congress/2014_rpt/ssci-rdi.pdf. He remains in Guantánamo.

* In November 2002, two military Joint Task Forces, JTF 160, which ran the prison operations of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, and JTF-170, which handled interrogation operations, were merged to form Joint Task Force Guantánamo (JTF-GTMO), under the command of General Geoffrey Miller. The Joint Detention Group (JDG) is the component of the JTF-GTMO responsible for guarding prisoners and maintaining camp security. Guantánamo’s Initial Response Force (IRF) teams are described in the 2003 Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures as five-man units equipped with riot gear and “specializing in the extraction of a detainee who is combative, resistive, or if the possibility of a weapon is in the cell at the time of the extraction.” SOP 24.2.

† Later in the manuscript, MOS writes that he participated in a hunger strike in September 2002, and news reports document a hunger strike in late September and October of that year (see, e.g., http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/multimedia/guantanamo-hungerstriketimeline.html, quoting an FBI document attributing that protest to anger over treatment by guards and the ongoing detention without trial or legal process). That hunger strike occurred toward the end of the tenure of Major General Michael E. Dunlavey, who was the commander of JTF-170, the intelligence operations in Guantánamo, from February through October 2002. He was succeeded by Major General Geoffrey D. Miller, who became commander of JTF-GTMO, which encompassed all Guantánamo operations, in November 2002.The Senate Armed Services Committee has documented at length the trend toward more abusive interrogations in October and November 2002, which included the development of the military’s first “Special Interrogation Plan” for Mohammed al Qahtani. On December 2, 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld signed a memo authorizing interrogation methods including nudity, forced standing and stress positions, and twenty-hour interrogations. U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, “Inquiry in the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody,” November 20, 2008, http://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Detainee-Report-Final_April 22 2009.pdf (hereafter cited as SASC).

* The 2008 DOJ Inspector General’s report identifies the two FBI agents who interview MOS from this point until he is turned over to the JTF-GTMO task force in May 2003 by the pseudonyms “Poulson” and “Santiago.” According to the DOJ IG report, the team at this time also included a detective from the New York Police Department’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, who interrogated Slahi with “Poulson” in January 2003. DOJ IG, 295–99.

† Raouf Hannachi is a Tunisian-born Canadian citizen who lived in Montreal in 2000. See footnote on page 290.

* Ahmed Ressam was arrested as he tried to enter the United States from Canada in a car laden with explosives on December 14, 2000; he was convicted the following year of planning to bomb Los Angeles International Airport on New Year’s Day 2001 as part of what became known as the Millennium Plot. In May 2001, after entering a guilty plea and before sentencing, Ressam began cooperating with U.S. authorities in exchange for assurances of a reduced sentence. A U.S. Court of Appeals later wrote that “Ressam continued cooperating until early 2003. Over the course of his two-year cooperation, he provided 65 hours of trial and deposition testimony, and 205 hours of proffers and debriefings. Ressam provided information to the governments of seven different countries and testified in two trials, both of which ended in convictions of the defendants. He provided names of at least 150 people involved in terrorism and described many others. He also provided information about explosives that potentially saved the lives of law enforcement agents, and extensive information about the mechanics of global terrorism operations.” As MOS indicates here, Ressam never named or implicated him in any way in all those sessions. Ressam later recanted some of his testimony implicating others in the Millennium Plot. He originally received a twenty-two-year sentence with five years’ supervision after his release. In 2010 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that that sentence was too lenient and violated mandatory sentencing guidelines, and remanded the case to a federal judge for resentencing. The court’s opinion is available at http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2010/02/02/09 30000.pdf.

* Mishal Awad Sayaf Alhabiri suffered a significant brain injury while in Guantánamo. The U.S. government asserted that the injury was the result of oxygen loss during a suicide attempt, but other prisoners have alleged the injury occurred during a beating by an Initial Reaction Force (IRF) team. Alhabiri was repatriated to Saudi Arabia on July 20, 2005.

* Because redactions sometimes obscured the chronology of scenes, these eight paragraphs (beginning here with “‘I am gonna show you the evidence bit by bit’” and continuing through “when it comes to the harsh justice of the U.S. during war”) appeared in Chapter Five, pages 196–198, of the original redacted edition. They have been moved here to their correct position.

* The DOJ’s Inspector General reported that MOS told investigators that an agent identified in the report by the pseudonym “Santiago,” whom MOS described “as a ‘nice guy,’” “told Slahi he would be sent to Iraq or Afghanistan if the charges against him were proved.” DOJ IG, 296.

* Mamdouh Habib, a dual citizen of Egypt and Australia, was arrested in Pakistan in October 2001, interrogated by Pakistani and American intelligence, and then subjected to extraordinary rendition to Egypt for interrogation by Egyptian intelligence services. He was renditioned again from Egypt to Guantánamo in 2002 and held there until his release on January 27, 2005. Mohamed Saad Iqbal is a Pakistani national who was detained in January 2002 in Jakarta, Indonesia. He was questioned briefly by Indonesian officials and then renditioned to Egypt, where he was interrogated for four months by Egyptian intelligence. In April 2002 he was renditioned to Bagram, where he was held until he was transferred to Guantánamo in March 2003. He was released from Guantánamo on August 31, 2008.

* The DOJ IG report indicates that the NYPD detective who was part of the interrogation team in January 2003 “told Slahi that if he did not explain certain phone calls he would be sent to a ‘very bad place.’” DOJ IG, 299.

* The Directeur de la Sûreté de l’État, abbreviated as DSE, is the director of the Mauritanian intelligence service.

* MOS’s cousin and former brother in law, Mahfouz Ould al Walid, also known as Abu Hafs al Mauritani, was wanted in connection with al Qaeda attacks in the 1990s, with a $5 million reward under the FBI’s Rewards for Justice Program. The reward for senior al Qaeda figures increased to $25 million after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. See, e.g., U.S. State Department, “Patterns of Global Terrorism,” appendix D, May 21, 2002, http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/20121.pdf.

* Mauritanian President Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya came to power in a military coup in 1984 and became president in 1992. During his long tenure as head of state, Ould Taya carried out several waves of arrests of political opponents and Islamists like the one described here, in which more than ninety people, including a former government minister and ten religious leaders, were arrested and then amnestied after publicly confessing to membership in illegal organizations. A crackdown on Islamists in the army and education system led to a failed coup attempt in 2003, and Ould Taya was ultimately deposed in a successful coup in 2005. By that time, in part because of his close cooperation with U.S. antiterrorism policies, which included allowing the rendition of MOS, and his aggressive campaign against Islamists in Mauritania, Ould Taya had lost much of his public support. See http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/international/africa/08mauritania.html?fta=y&_r=0; http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0809/p07s02-woaf.html; and http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/23ab7cfc-0e0f-11da-aa67-00000e2511c8.html#axzz2vwtOwdNb.

* MOS told the Administrative Review Board panel in 2005 that an American team consisting of two FBI agents and a third man from the Justice Department interrogated him over a two-day period near the end of his detention in Mauritania. His detention for questioning at the behest of the United States in early 2000 was widely reported in the local and international press; in a BBC report, Mauritanian officials confirmed that he was questioned in mid-February 2000 by the FBI. The New York Times reported that MOS was released from Mauritanian custody on February 19, 2000. ARB transcript, 17; http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/649672.stm; http://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/21/world/terrorist-suspect-is-released-by-mauritania.html.

* The FBI lists body language among possible deception clues in material posted on its website, and former FBI agents have written and spoken publicly on the subject. See, e.g., https://leb.fbi.gov/2011/june/evaluating-truthfulness-and-detecting-deception; and http://cjonline.com/news/local/2010 11 26/no_lie_ex_fbi_agent_spots_fibbers.

* The reference is to a pre-Islamic proverb about a cursed woman who is expelled from her tribe; the sense is of an unwanted person who goes away and is not seen again.

* MOS left Mauritania in 1988 to study in Germany. He testified at his 2004 Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) hearing that he visited his family in Mauritania for two or three weeks in 1993. The CSRT transcript is available at http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/couch-slahihearing-03312007.pdf. CSRT transcript, 5.

* Trarza is the region of southern Mauritania that extends from the Senegalese border north to the capital. It was also the name of a precolonial emirate in the same region. The Cadres of Trarza is a community organization.

* When MOS returned to Mauritania in 2000 he worked as an electronics and computer specialist, first for a medical equipment supply company and then, starting in July 2001, for a company named Aman Pêche in Nouakchott. “This is a French word for fish,” he explained at his CSRT hearing. “This company was a company of people from my tribe, and they gave me more money to join them. They wanted to develop the business and to use me; I was just setting up at my office, because they didn’t know what to do with me at first. They had many electronic devices they wanted me to take care of. I had just set up my office and installed the AC, and September 11th happened. Then America went crazy looking for leads; and I was the cousin of the right hand of Osama bin Laden, and oh, get him.” CSRT transcript, 8; ARB transcript, 18.

* In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Mahfouz Ould al Walid (Abu Hafs) was now the subject of a $25 million bounty (see footnote on p. 96).

* In his 2005 ARB testimony, MOS dates this interrogation as October 13, 2001, and speculates that these two interrogators are FBI, though “they are American, they may be anything.” ARB transcript, 18.

* “Noumane” is Noumane Ould Ahmed Ould Boullahy. A footnote to Judge James Robertson’s opinion granting MOS’s habeas corpus petition notes, “The government asserts that Salahi swore the oath to Osama bin Laden, and did so at the same time as Noumane Ould Ahmed Ould Boullahy, who went on to become one of bin Laden’s bodyguards. There is no evidence that Salahi maintained, or that he ever had, any relationship with Boullahy.” The opinion is available at https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/2010 4 9 Slahi-Order.pdf.

* Mokhtar Hauoari, an Algerian-Canadian, was convicted and sentenced to twenty-four years in prison in connection with the Millennium Plot.

* The Sûreté Nationale is the Mauritanian national police force; the Directeur Général de la Direction Générale de la Sûreté Nationale, abbreviated as DG, is the country’s top law enforcement official.

* In the manuscript, this is abbreviated PDG, short for the French title président-directeur général, the equivalent of president and CEO.

* Ramadan 4th was Tuesday, November 20, in 2001.

* Seyloum is the nickname of MOS’s older brother Mohamed Salem.

* Mauritania’s Directeur Général de la Sûreté Nationale in 2001 was Ely Ould Mohamed Vall. Vall, who served as director of the national police under President Maaouya Ould Taya, seized power himself in a bloodless coup when Ould Taya was out of the country on August 3, 2005.

* In its 2008 report “Double Jeopardy: CIA Renditions to Jordan,” Human Rights Watch recorded that “from 2001 until at least 2004, Jordan’s General Intelligence Department (GID) served as a proxy jailer for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), holding prisoners that the CIA apparently wanted kept out of circulation, and later handing some of them back to the CIA.” Human Rights Watch reported that MOS and at least thirteen others were sent to Jordan during this period, where they were “held at the GID’s main headquarters in Amman, located in the Jandawil district in Wadi Sir. The headquarters, which appear to cover nearly an acre of land, contain a large four-story detention facility that Human Rights Watch visited in August 2007.”

Researchers who carried out that visit recorded that “the administrative offices and interrogation rooms are on the second floor of the building, while visiting rooms are on the ground floor. During the period that Human Rights Watch inspected the facility, all of the detainees in custody were held on the second floor. There are also many cells on the ground floor and third floor, however, as well as a small number of cells on the fourth floor, which includes a few collective cells and what the director called the ‘women’s section’ of the facility. In addition, the facility has a basement where many prisoners have claimed that they were brought for the most violent treatment. Prisoners in GID detention at Wadi Sir are kept in single-person cells and are prohibited from speaking with one another, but some have managed to communicate via the back window of their cells. (Each cell faces onto the central courtyard, and has a window looking out on the yard.)” Double Jeopardy, 1, 10–11. The Human Rights Watch report is available at http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/jordan0408webwcover.pdf.

* In fact, it would be almost a year before MOS’s family learned where he was—and only because a brother in Germany saw an article in Der Spiegel in October 2002 that reported MOS was in Guantánamo. See Editor’s Introduction to the First Edition, page 384, and “From Germany to Guantanamo: The Career of Prisoner No. 760,” Der Spiegel, October 29, 2008.

* MOS arrived in Jordan on Thursday, November 29, so it is now the evening of Saturday, December 1, 2001.

* The ICRC is the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has a mandate under the Geneva Conventions to visit prisoners of war, civilians interned during conflicts, and others detained in situations of violence around the world. An internationally acknowledged purpose of these visits is to ensure humane treatment and deter and prevent abuse.

* MOS trained at the al Farouq training camp near Khost, Afghanistan, for six weeks in late 1990 and early 1991. At the time, both the al Farouq and Khalden camps were training al Qaeda fighters for the conflict with the Soviet-backed government in Kabul. As the appellate court reviewing MOS’s habeas case wrote, “When Salahi took his oath of allegiance in March 1991, al Qaida and the United States shared a common objective: they both sought to topple Afghanistan’s Communist government.” See http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/2010 4 9 Slahi-Order.pdf; and http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us dc circuit/1543844.html.

* At his 2005 ARB hearing, MOS said that his main interrogator in Jordan was “young” and “a very bright guy.” He testified that this particular interrogator “struck me twice in the face on different occasions and pushed me against concrete many times because I refused to talk to him,” and “threatened me with a lot of torture and… took me to the one room where they torture and there was this guy who was beaten so much he was crying, crying like a child.” ARB transcript, 21.

* Press reports document an assassination attempt like the one described here, aimed at General Ali Bourjaq, head of Jordan’s antiterrorism unit, on February 20, 2002, in Amman. See, e.g., http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=20580.

* At his 2005 ARB hearing, MOS told the panel, “Then the FBI at GTMO Bay during the time era of General Miller, they released a list of the highest priority detainees here at GTMO. It was a list of 15 people and I was, guess which number, number ONE. Then they sent a special FBI team and the leader was [redacted] and I worked with him especially for my case.… I thought he was just making fun of me when he said I was number ONE in the camp, but he was not lying; he was telling the truth, as future events would prove. He stayed with me until May 22, 2003.” ARB transcript, 24.

* People were indeed “working behind the scene.” Though the FBI was still leading MOS’s interrogation, the DOJ IG found that through the spring of 2003, “Military Intelligence personnel observed many of Slahi’s interviews by Poulson and Santiago from an observation booth,” and that MI agents were complaining about the FBI’s rapport-building approach. The Senate Armed Services Committee reported that military interrogators started circulating a draft “Special Interrogation Plan” for MOS in January 2003. DOJ IG, 298, SASC, 135.

* On March 6, 2002, CNN aired a story titled “Al Qaeda Online for Terrorism.” As MOS indicates here, the story suggested that he was “running a seemingly innocuous website” where al Qaeda was secretly exchanging messages through the website’s guestbook. The allegation that MOS ran a website that facilitated al Qaeda communications does not appear in any of the summaries of evidence against MOS from Guantánamo. See http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0203/06/lt.15.html.

* David Hicks, an Australian citizen, was detained in Afghanistan in December 2001 and held in Guantánamo until April 2007. Bisher al Rawi, a resident of the United Kingdom at the time he was detained in Banjul, Gambia, in November 2002, was transferred to Guantánamo in March 2003. He was released and transferred to the United Kingdom in March 2007.

* A 1956 CIA study titled “Communist Control Techniques: An Analysis of the Methods Used by Communist State Police in the Arrest, Interrogation, and Indoctrination of Persons Regarded as ‘Enemies of the State’” had this to say about the effects of sleep deprivation and temperature manipulation as coercive interrogation methods: “The officer in charge has other simple and highly effective ways of applying pressure. Two of the most effective of these are fatigue and lack of sleep. The constant light in the cell and the necessity of maintaining a rigid position in bed compound the effects of anxiety and nightmares in producing sleep disturbances. If these are not enough, it is easy to have the guards awaken the prisoners at intervals. This is especially effective if the prisoner is always awakened as soon as he drops off to sleep. The guards can also shorten the hours available for sleep, or deny sleep altogether. Continued loss of sleep produces clouding of consciousness and a loss of alertness, both of which impair the victim’s ability to sustain isolation. It also produces profound fatigue.

“Another simple and effective type of pressure is that of maintaining the temperature of the cell at a level which is either too hot or too cold for comfort. Continuous heat, at a level at which constant sweating is necessary in order to maintain body temperature, is enervating and fatigue producing. Sustained cold is uncomfortable and poorly tolerated.…

“The Communists do not look upon these methods as ‘torture.’ Undoubtedly, they use the methods which they do in order to conform, in a typical legalistic manner to overt Communist principles which demand that ‘no force or torture be used in extracting information from prisoners.’ But these methods do, of course, constitute torture and physical coercion. All of them lead to serious disturbances of many bodily processes.”

Sleep deprivation has been used specifically in the service of conditioning prisoners to make false confessions. A study by the U.S. Air Force sociologist Albert Biderman of the means by which North Korean interrogators were able to coerce captured U.S. airmen into falsely confessing to war crimes found that sleep deprivation, as a form of induced debilitation, “weakens mental and physical ability to resist.” See http://www.theblackvault.com/documents/mindcontrol/comcont.pdf; and http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/torturingdemocracy/documents/19570900.pdf.

* The Toronto Star reported that CSIS agents interviewed detainees with ties to Canada in Guantánamo, including MOS, in February 2003. See Michelle Shephard, “CSIS Grilled Trio in Guantánamo,” http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2008/07/27/csis_grilled_trio_in_cuba.html.

* In 2010 the Supreme Court of Canada found that the interrogations of Omar Khadr’s by Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Foreign Intelligence Division of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) agents in Guantánamo in February and September 2003 and March 2004 violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Supreme Court held, “The deprivation of [Khadr]’s right to liberty and security of the person is not in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice. The interrogation of a youth detained without access to counsel, to elicit statements about serious criminal charges while knowing that the youth had been subjected to sleep deprivation and while knowing that the fruits of the interrogations would be shared with the prosecutors, offends the most basic Canadian standards about the treatment of detained youth suspects.” The Supreme Court’s opinion is available at http://scc-csc.lexum.com/decisia-scc-csc/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/7842/index.do.

* MOS told the Administrative Review Board that his last interview with FBI interrogators took place on May 22, 2003; the DOJ IG report confirms that “in late May 2003 the FBI agents who were involved with Slahi left GTMO, and the military assumed control over Slahi’s interrogation.” ARB transcript, 25; DOJ IG, 122.

A few days after the military took over MOS’s interrogation, an FBI agent circulated a report documenting FBI concerns about the military’s interrogation methods in Guantánamo. According to the DOJ IG report, a month later, on July 1, 2003, the FBI’s assistant general counsel, Spike Bowman, sent an e mail to senior FBI officials, “alerting them that the military had been using techniques of ‘aggressive interrogation,’ including ‘physically striking the detainees, stripping them and pouring cold water on them and leaving them exposed (one got hypothermia) and similar measures.’ Bowman opined that: ‘Beyond any doubt, what they are doing (and I don’t know the extent of it) would be unlawful were these Enemy Prisoners of War (EPW). That they are not so designated cannot be license to do something that you cannot do to an EPW or criminal prisoner.’ Bowman expressed concern that the FBI would be ‘tarred by the same brush’ and sought input on whether the FBI should refer the matter to the DoD Inspector General, stating that ‘[w]ere I still on active duty, there is no question in my mind that it would be a duty to do so.’” ARB transcript, 25; DOJ IG, 122, 121.

* The second female interrogator was only posing as an FBI agent. The DOJ Inspector General found that “the person who identified herself as ‘Samantha’ was actually an Army Sergeant.” According to the IG, “On several occasions in early June 2003 an Army Sergeant on the DIA Special Projects Team at GTMO identified herself to Slahi as FBI SSA ‘Samantha Martin’ in an effort to persuade Slahi to cooperate with interrogators.” DOJ IG, 296, 125.

* Abdul Rahman Shalabi was released and transferred to Saudi Arabia on September 22, 2015. Mohammed al Qahtani remains in Guantánamo. His “Special Projects” interrogation has been documented extensively in the Senate Armed Services Committee and Department of Justice Inspector General reports, and in March 2006 Time published the interrogation log of a forty-nine-day stretch of that interrogation. The log is available at http://content.time.com/time/2006/log/log.pdf.

* Military interrogators in Guantánamo were under the command of the Joint Task Force Guantánamo (JTF-GTMO), which was led at this time by General Geoffrey Miller. Their interrogation methods were sanctioned first by the “Counter Resistance Techniques” memorandum that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld signed on December 22, 2002; then by a March 13, 2003, legal opinion written by John Yoo of the Office of Legal Counsel; and finally by another authorization memo that Rumsfeld signed on April 16, 2003. The Senate Armed Services Committee found that General Miller sought official Pentagon approval for, and Rumsfeld personally signed off on, MOS’s “Special Interrogation Plan.” SASC, 135–38.

The Schmidt-Furlow report, the DOJ IG report, the Senate Armed Services Committee report, and several other sources all document the sexual humiliation and sexual assault of Guantánamo prisoners, often carried out by female military interrogators. After the release of the Schmidt-Furlow report in 2005, a New York Times op ed titled “The Women of GTMO” decried the “exploitation and debasement of women in the military,” noting that the report “contained page after page of appalling descriptions of the use of women soldiers as sexual foils in interrogations.” See http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/15/opinion/15fri1.html.

* Walid Said Bin Said Zaid, ISN 550, was one of several Yemeni prisoners in Guantánamo who remained imprisoned long after they were cleared for release. He was brought to Guantánamo on May 3, 2002. As early as 2006, the Guantánamo Task Force recommended that he be transferred out of the facility, and he was one of seventeen Yemeni prisoners approved for release in 2010. Their releases were stalled, however, when Congress banned the transfer of Yemeni prisoners following the attempt by twenty-three-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to detonate a bomb aboard a U.S.-bound flight on December 25, 2009. Walid Said Bin Said Zaid was one of a group of ten Yemeni prisoners who were transferred to Oman on January 14, 2017, less than a week before the end of Barack Obama’s presidency. No prisoners have been released from Guantánamo since that transfer.

* Other former detainees who were held for a time in India Block describe windowless solitary confinement cells that were often kept at frigid temperatures. See, e.g., James Meek, “People the Law Forgot,” Guardian, December 2, 2003. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/dec/03/guantanamo.usa1.

* An October 9, 2003, JTF-GTMO Memorandum for the Record recounts a contentious meeting between a visiting delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross and Guantánamo commander General Geoffrey Miller. During the meeting, General Miller “informed [ICRC team leader Vincent] Cassard that ISN 760, 558, and 990 were off limits during this visit due to military necessity.” MOS is ISN 760. The minutes of the ICRC meeting are available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp srv/nation/documents/GitmoMemo10 09 03.pdf.

* Ahmed Laabidi, a Tunisian national, lived in Montreal in 2000, where he and MOS were friends. Laabidi was later detained in the United States on an immigration violation. Laabidi was held in U.S. immigration custody and then deported to Tunisia in September 2003. See footnote on page 290 for more on Laabidi.

* DOC is the acronym for the Detention Operations Center, which directs all movements within Guantánamo.

* The Senate Armed Services Committee found that shackling MOS to the floor was prescribed in his “Special Interrogation Plan.” SASC, 137.

* This incident is well documented in the Schmidt-Furlow report, the DOJ IG’s report, and elsewhere. Lt. Gen. Randall Schmidt and Lt. Gen. John Furlow, Army Regulation 15-6: Final Report, Investigation into FBI Allegations of Detainee Abuse at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba Detention Facility (hereinafter cited as Schmidt-Furlow). Schmidt-Furlow, 22–23; DOJ IG, 124. The Schmidt-Furlow Report is available at https://www.thetorturedatabase.org/files/foia_subsite/pdfs/schmidt_furlow_report.pdf.

* Court papers filed in MOS’s habeas appeal reference records that seem to be from this exam: “The medical records document increased low back pain ‘for the past 5 days while in isolation and under more intense interrogation’” and note that the pain medication prescribed for him could not be administered throughout July 2003 because he was at the “reservation.” The June 9, 2010, Brief for Appellee is available at https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/brief_for_appellee_-_july_8_2010.pdf.

* Christopher Paul is an American who received al Qaeda training in Afghanistan in the early 1990s. He was indicted in 2007 on terrorism-related charges and pled guilty in a plea agreement that resulted in a fifteen-year sentence.

* “Mr. X” appears in the Schmidt-Furlow, DOJ IG, and Senate Armed Services Committee reports. At his 2005 Administrative Review Board hearing, with characteristic wit, MOS said this interrogator was always covered “like in Saudi Arabia, how the women are covered,” with “openings for his eyes” and “O.J. Simpson gloves on his hands.” ARB transcript, 25–26.

* The Senate Armed Services Committee, which reviewed JTF-GTMO interrogation records, dates what appears to be this interrogation session as July 8, 2003. On that day, the committee found, “Slahi was interrogated by Mr. X and was ‘exposed to variable lighting patterns and rock music, to the tune of Drowning Pool’s ‘Let the Bodies Hit [the] Floor.’” SASC, 139.

* The BNCO is the Block Non-Commissioned Officer, the senior member of the guard unit.

* As these July 2003 sessions were happening, General Miller was submitting Slahi’s “Special Interrogation Plan” to SOUTHCOM commander General James Hill for approval. On July 18, 2003, Hill forwarded the plan to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The plan was approved by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz on July 28, 2003, and signed by Rumsfeld on August 13, 2003. In July 2003, Richard Zuley, a retired Chicago police officer and navy reserve lieutenant, was appointed chief of MOS’s “special projects” interrogation team. Zuley’s identity was first revealed in an unredacted footnote of the Senate Armed Services Committee report, and has been corroborated by court documents in MOS’s habeas corpus case and in numerous press reports. See, e.g., https://www.theguardian.com/us news/2015/feb/18/american-police-brutality-chicago-guantanamo. In his book The Terror Courts: Rough Justice at Guantanamo Bay (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), Wall Street Journal reporter Jess Bravin writes that Zuley took over MOS’s interrogation on July 1, 2003, the same day General Miller approved his “Special Interrogation Plan” (Bravin, The Terror Courts, 105). Zuley publicly acknowledged his role as a lead interrogator in Guantánamo in an episode of the Blog Talk Radio Dave and Chris Show in January 2009. Audio of that podcast is available at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/perfectly-harmless/2009/01/31/the-dave-and-chris-show. For a detailed account of the development and authorization of MOS’s “Special Interrogation Plan,” see SASC, 135–41.

* When Defense Secretary Rumsfeld issued his original authorization to use interrogation techniques beyond those included in the Army Field Manual, including forced standing, he famously appended the note “I stand for 8–10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to four hours?” But as Albert Biderman found in his study of coercive interrogation techniques employed by North Korean interrogators during the Korean War, “Returnees who underwent long periods of standing and sitting… report no other experience could be more excruciating.” Biderman explained, “Where the individual is told to stand at attention for long periods an intervening factor is introduced. The immediate source of pain is not the interrogator but the victim himself. The contest becomes, in a way, one of the individual against himself. The motivational strength of the individual is likely to exhaust itself in this internal encounter. Bringing the subject to act ‘against himself’ in this manner has additional advantages for the interrogator. It leads the prisoner to exaggerate the power of the interrogator. As long as the subject remains standing, he is attributing to his captor the power to do something worse to him, but there is actually no showdown of the ability of the interrogator to do so.” See http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/torturingdemocracy/documents/19570900.pdf.

* Like MOS and Mohammed al Qahtani, Abdullah Tabarak was held in isolation and inaccessible to the International Committee of the Red Cross. In 2006, the Washington Post reported, “Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller told Red Cross inspectors on Oct. 9, 2003, that they could not visit Tabarak or three other detainees ‘because of military necessity,’ according to the memos. On a follow up visit Feb. 2, 2004, Miller informed Red Cross officials that they could see anyone at the base, except Tabarak. Miller once again cited ‘military necessity.’ A Defense Department spokesman declined to comment on the memos.

“Tabarak has told his attorney and other detainees that he was kept in an isolation cell during most of his stay at Guantanamo. For about one year, he said, he was interrogated only while blindfolded, so he could not see his captors or even know for certain if he was in Cuba or another country.”

Tabarak was transferred to Morocco in August 2004, held for four months in the custody of Moroccan police, and then released. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp dyn/content/article/2006/01/29/AR2006012901044_pf.html.

* Military, Department of Justice, and Senate investigators have described in more detail several of these threats. According to a footnote in the Schmidt-Furlow report, “On 17 Jul 03 the masked interrogator told that he had a dream about the subject of the second interrogation dying. Specifically he told the subject of the second special interrogation that in the dream he ‘saw four detainees that were chained together at the feet. They dug a hole that was six-feet long, six-feet deep, and four-feet wide. Then he observed the detainees throw a plain, pine casket with the detainee’s identification number painted in orange lowered into the ground.’ The masked interrogator told the detainee that his dream meant that he was never going to leave GTMO unless he started to talk, that he would indeed die here from old age and be buried on ‘Christian… sovereign American soil.’ On 20 Jul 03 the masked interrogator, ‘Mr. X,’ told the subject of the second Special Interrogation Plan that his family was ‘incarcerated.’”

The report continues, “The MFR dated 02 Aug 03 indicates that the subject of the second special interrogation had a messenger that day there to ‘deliver a message to him.’ The MFR goes on to state: ‘That message was simple: Interrogator’s colleagues are sick of hearing the same lies over and over and over and are seriously considering washing their hands of him. Once they do so, he will disappear and never be heard from again. Interrogator assured detainee again to use his imagination to think of the worst possible scenario he could end up in. He told Detainee that beatings and physical pain are not the worst thing in the world. After all, after being beaten for a while, humans tend to disconnect the mind from the body and make it through. However, there are worse things than physical pain. Interrogator assured Detainee that, eventually, he will talk, because everyone does. But until then, he will very soon disappear down a very dark hole. His very existence will become erased. His electronic files will be deleted from the computer, his paper files will be packed up and filed away, and his existence will be forgotten by all. No one will know what happened to him, and eventually, no one will care.’” Schmidt-Furlow, 24–25.

* An incident in which MOS was “deprived of clothing by a female interrogator” is recorded in the DOJ IG report; the report suggests the date of that session was July 17, 2003. DOJ IG, 124.

* The date, according to the DOJ Inspector General, is now August 2, 2003. The IG reported, “On August 2, 2003, a different military interrogator posing as a Navy Captain from the White House” appeared to MOS. Both the Senate Armed Services Committee report and the DOJ IG report describe the letter he delivered. According to the Senate Armed Services Committee, the letter stated “that his mother had been detained, would be interrogated, and if she were uncooperative she might be transferred to GTMO.” The DOJ IG reported that “the letter referred to ‘the administrative and logistical difficulties her presence would present in this previously all-male environment,’” and “The interrogator told Slahi that his family was ‘in danger if he (760) did not cooperate.’” The DOJ IG and SASC reports and the army’s Schmidt-Furlow report all make clear that this interrogator was in fact the chief of MOS’s “Special Projects Team,” and the Schmidt-Furlow report indicates he presented himself to MOS as “Captain Collins.” DOJ IG, 123; SASC, 140; Schmidt-Furlow, 25.

* Guantánamo’s Camp IV opened in February 2003. Globalsecurity.org describes Camp Four as a “medium security facility built inside the limits of Camp Delta.” “With dormitories able to hold up to 20 detainees in each unit, Camp 4 is aimed at enabling a limited number of captives the opportunity to interact with one another. There, detainees are able to eat, sleep and pray together,” the site reports. It was the first time Guantánamo’s prisoners were allowed to live communally, and photographs of prisoners in Camp Four were displayed in other blocks and in interrogations rooms as an incentive to encourage cooperation. The Camp was emptied when Camp V and Camp VI were opened. See http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/guantanamo-bay_delta.htm.

* The Senate Armed Services Committee found that the military’s “Special Interrogation Plan” for MOS included a staged scene in which “military in full riot gear take him from his cell, place him on a watercraft, and drive him around to make him think he had been taken off the island.” Afterward, the committee reported, “Slahi would be taken to Camp Echo,” where his cell and interrogation room—self-contained in a single trailerlike isolation hut—had been “modified in such a way as to reduce as much outside stimuli as possible.” The plan directed that “the doors will be sealed to a point that allows no light to enter the room. The walls may be covered with white paint or paper to further eliminate objects the detainee may concentrate on. The room will contain an eyebolt in the floor and speakers for sound.” The SASC also recorded that an August 21, 2003, e mail from a JTF-GTMO intelligence specialist to Lt. Richard Zuley reported on the final preparations to the Camp Echo hut: “The email described sealing Slahi’s cell at Camp Echo to ‘prevent light from shining’ in and covering the entire exterior of his cell with [a] tarp to ‘prevent him from making visual contact with guards.’”

According to the DOJ Inspector General, the original Special Interrogation Plan that General Miller signed on July 1, 2003, “stated that Slahi would be hooded and flown around Guantanamo Bay for one or two hours in a helicopter to persuade him that he had been moved out of GTMO to a location where ‘the rules have changed.’” However, the IG reported, military interrogators told investigators that in the end “they did not use a helicopter because General Miller decided that it was too difficult logistically to pull off, and that too many people on the base would have to know about it to get this done.” Instead, “on August 25, 2003, Slahi was removed from his cell in Camp Delta, fitted with blackout goggles, and taken on a disorienting boat ride during which he was permitted to hear pre-planned deceptive conversations among other passengers.” SASC, 137–38, 140; DOJ IG 122–123, 127.

* MOS is referring here to detainees who were captured along with Ramzi bin al Shibh on September 11, 2002, and also held for a time in CIA custody before being transferred to Guantánamo. See footnote on page 54.

* Mamdouh Habib, held as ISN 661 in Guantánamo, was released and transferred to Australia on January 28, 2005.

* MOS’s habeas appeal brief refers to medical records from what could be this exam, describing a corpsman “who treated his injuries while cursing him” and citing “medical records confirming the trauma to Salahi’s chest and face, as ‘1) Fracture ?? 7–8 ribs, 2) Edema of the lower lip.’” Brief for Appellee, 26.

* Defense Department publicity materials for Guantánamo indeed emphasize protections for religious expression in Guantánamo; see, e.g., “Ten Facts about Guantanamo,” which states, “The Muslim call to prayer sounds five times a day. Arrows point detainees toward the holy city of Mecca.” See http://archive.defense.gov/home/dodupdate/For-the-record/documents/20060914.html.

* MOS’s habeas appeal brief describes this same scene: “After Salahi had been in isolation for a few days, Zuley told him he had to ‘stop denying’ the government’s accusations. While Zuley was talking, the [redacted] man was behind the tarp, cursing and shouting for Zuley to let him in.” Brief for Appellee, 26–27.

* Threatening prisoners with the specter of abusive interrogations by Israeli or Egyptian agents apparently was commonplace. In 2010 a former Guantánamo military interrogator named Damien Corsetti testified at the military commissions trial of Omar Khadr that during his time at the Bagram air base, “interrogations included threats of sending detainees to Israel and Egypt.” See http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/omarkhadr/2010/05/05/interrogator_nicknamed_the_monster_remembers_omar_khadr_as_a_child.html.

* This is corroborated chillingly in government documents. According to the Senate Armed Services Committee, on October 17, 2003, a JTF-GTMO interrogator sent an e mail to a GTMO Behavioral Science Consultation Team (BSCT) psychologist that read, “Slahi told me he is ‘hearing voices’ now.… He is worried as he knows this is not normal.… By the way… is this something that happens to people who have little external stimulus such as daylight, human interaction, etc???? seems a little creepy.” The psychologist responded, “Sensory deprivation can cause hallucinations, usually visual rather than auditory, but you never know.… In the dark you create things of what little you have.” SASC, 140–41.

* The Schmidt-Furlow report places the date of this session as September 8, 2003, noting that interrogation records show that on that date “the subject of the second special interrogation wanted to see ‘Captain Collins’” and that the interrogation team “understood that detainee had made an important decision and that the interrogator was anxious to hear what Detainee had to say.” Schmidt-Furlow, 25.

* The reference here is likely to Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent who spied for Soviet and then Russian intelligence services from 1979 until his arrest and conviction in 2001.

* Bob Barker Company, Incorporated, which identifies itself as “America’s Leading Detention Supplier,” is a major supplier of prison uniforms for the U.S. Department of Defense. See http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1454&dat=20020112&id=6gJPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Ux8EAAAAIBAJ&pg=5765,3098702.

* It appears from MOS’s 2008 Detainee Assessment and from MOS’s habeas corpus decision that confessions like those MOS is describing here became part of the government’s allegations against him. Both Raouf Hannachi and Ahmed Laabidi appear in both the 2008 Detainee Assessment and Judge James Robertson’s 2010 habeas memorandum order; in both documents the government portrays MOS, Hannachi, and Laabidi as members of a Montreal cell of al Qaeda, with Hannachi as the cell’s leader and Laabidi as the cell’s financier. A footnote to Judge Robertson’s opinion specifically notes that MOS’s statement under interrogation that “Laabidi [is] a terrorist who supported use of suicide bombers” came in an interrogation session dated September 16, 2003—right around the time of the scene MOS describes here. The 2008 Detainee Assessment is available at http://projects.nytimes.com/guantanamo/detainees/760-mohamedou-ould-slahi. Detainee Assessment, 10; Memorandum Order, 26–28.

* MOS indicates later in the manuscript that he remained in the same cell he was delivered into at the end of his staged abduction through the time of the manuscript’s creation. A 2010 Washington Post report described a “little fenced in compound at the military prison” that matches the description of his living situation in Camp Echo at the time the manuscript was written. See Peter Finn, “For Two Detainees Who Told What They Knew, Guantanamo Becomes a Gilded Cage,” Washington Post, March 24, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp dyn/content/article/2010/03/24/AR2010032403135.html. MOS manuscript, 233.

* At his 2005 Administrative Review Board hearing, after recounting the boat trip and its aftermath, MOS stated, “Because they said to me either I am going to talk or they will continue to do this, I said I am going to tell them everything they wanted.… I told them I was on my own trying to do things and they said write it down and I wrote it and I signed it. I brought a lot of people, innocent people with me because I got to make a story that makes sense. They thought my story was wrong so they put me on polygraph.” ARB transcript, 27.

* An official Report of Examination of two polygraph tests administered on November 12 and November 20, 2003 was included in the exhibits entered into the record in MOS’s habeas corpus appeal proceedings. The report describes the following questions and results:

On 12 Nov 03, ISN 760 was interviewed and consented to a polygraph examination concerning his participation in plans to harm the United States or Canada and if he had provided false information in regard to a known terrorist.

On 12 Nov 03 and 20 Nov 03, ISN 760 was interviewed and consented to a Polygraph examination to verify the veracity of his statements as reflected above.…

Based on the above information ISN 760 was provided a Polygraph examination in which the below questions were asked and answered as indicated:

While in Canada, did you plan with anyone to harm the U.S. or Canada?… No

Do you know of any Al Qaida members that have lived in the U.S. or Canada that you have not told us about?… No

Do you have any knowledge regarding future plans to harm the U.S. or Canada?… No

After analysis of the polygrams collected during SERIES I, no opinion could be rendered due to ISN 760s physiological responses to the relevant questions. A SERIES II was conducted with the following relevant questions asked and the responses with the ISN 760’s answer:

Have you provided any false information regarding Laabidi?… No

Have you withheld any information regarding Laabidi?… No

After analysis of the polygrams collected during SERIES II, no opinion could be rendered due to ISN 760’s answer:

Have you provided any false information regarding Laabidi?… No

Have you withheld any information regarding Laabidi?… No

After analysis of the polygrams collected during SERIES III, the Examiner determined that ISN 760’s physiological responses were not indicative of deception and is being reported as No Deception Indicated.…

While in Canada, did you ever plan with anyone to harm the U.S. or Canada?… No

Do you have any knowledge regarding future plans to harm the U.S. or Canada?… No

After analysis of the polygrams collected during SERIES I, no opinion could be rendered due to ISN 760’s physiological responses to the relevant questions. A SERIES II was conducted with the following relevant questions asked and the responses with the ISN 760’s answer:

While in Canada, did you make plans with anyone to harm the U.S. or Canada?… No

Do you know of any future plans to harm the U.S. or Canada?… No

After analysis of the information collected during the Polygraph, it was the opinion of the examiner that ISN 760 responses resulted in a no deception indicated test result.

(Report of Examination, ISN 760, entered into the record in the habeas corpus appeal Mohammedou Ould Salahi v. Barack Obama, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia).

* KSM is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He remains imprisoned in Guantánamo and is on trial before a military commission as the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

* MOS adds a note here in the margin of the handwritten original: “Phase four: getting used to the prison, and being afraid of the outside world.”

* The book is Edward Rutherfurd’s historical novel The Forest, which was published in 2000.

* Earlier in the manuscript, MOS indicates that he received the first letter from his family on February 14, 2004.

* Three Guantánamo-based personnel who were practicing Muslims were arrested in September 2003 and accused of carrying classified information out of the prison. MOS may be referring here specifically to army chaplain Captain James Yee, who was charged with five offenses including sedition and espionage, and Senior Airman Ahmad al Halabi, an Arabic-language translator who was charged with thirty-two counts ranging from espionage and aiding the enemy to delivering unauthorized food, including the dessert baklava, to detainees. The sedition and spying cases collapsed. All charges against Yee were eventually dropped, and he received an honorable discharge; al Halabi pled guilty to four counts, including lying to investigators and disobeying orders, and received a “bad conduct” discharge. See, e.g., http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004 05 16 yee-cover_x.htm; and http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004 09 23 gitmo-airman_x.htm.

* In April 2004, General Miller left Guantánamo to assume command of prison and interrogation operations in Iraq.

The previous year, at the end of August 2003, Miller had traveled to Iraq with a team charged with assessing intelligence operations in the wake of the American invasion. The Senate Armed Services Committee reported that during that tour, Miller told an officer of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), the unit charged with gathering intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, that the ISG “was ‘running a country club’ and suggested that they were too lenient with detainees.” The committee reported that another officer “said that the GTMO Commander had told him about techniques like temperature manipulation and sleep deprivation.” After the trip, Miller submitted a report recommending an approach similar to the one he was presiding over in Guantánamo, which concluded: “To achieve rapid exploitation of internees it is necessary to integrate detention operations, interrogation operations, and collection management under one command authority.” Several officers, including Janis Karpinski, commandant of prison operations in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, reported that Miller described this approach as “GTMO-izing” interrogation operations in Iraq.

Numerous reports, including the Senate Armed Services Committee report and the report by Major General Antonio Taguba on the abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 and early 2004, trace the Abu Ghraib abuses to these recommendations. Nevertheless, when Karpinski was suspended after the publication of the Abu Ghraib photos, Miller was appointed deputy commanding general for detainee operations in Iraq, a position he held from April to November 2004. SASC 190-223. The Taguba report, “Article 15 6 Investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade,” is available at https://fas.org/irp/agency/dod/taguba.pdf. A Frontline interview with Janis Karpinski is available at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/torture/interviews/karpinski.html.

* A 2010 Washington Post article indicated that MOS and Tariq al Sawah occupied “a little fenced in compound at the military prison, where they live a life of relative privilege—gardening, writing and painting.” In a 2013 interview with Slate, Col. Morris Davis, who served as chief prosecutor of the Guantánamo military commissions in 2005 and 2006, described meetings with both MOS and Sawah in the summer of 2006. “They’re in a unique environment: They’re inside the detention perimeter, there’s a big fence around the facility, and then they’re inside what they call the wire, which is another layer within that, so it’s a manpower-intensive effort to deal with two guys,” he said. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp dyn/content/article/2010/03/24/AR2010032403135_pf.html; and http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2013/04/mohamedou_ould_slahi_s_guant_namo_memoirs_an_interview_with_colonel_morris.html.

* The original handwritten manuscript included the poem MOS composed imitating Schwitters’s “An Anna Blume.” It was censored in its entirety. The U.S. government still controls that manuscript, and it is not possible to reconstruct the original text of MOS’s poem. In addition to the complete, uncensored handwritten manuscript of Guantánamo Diary, several other written texts and manuscripts that MOS wrote in Guantánamo remained under the control of the United States government when MOS was released in October 2016. MOS and his attorneys continue to request that these materials be returned to him and cleared for public release.

* The Schmidt-Furlow report records that on December 11, 2004, “after months of cooperation with interrogators,” “the subject of the second special interrogation notified his interrogator that he had been ‘subject to torture’ by past interrogators during the months of July to October 2003.” A footnote elaborates: “He reported these allegations to an interrogator. The interrogator was a member of the interrogation team at the time of the report. The interrogator reported the allegations to her supervisor. Shortly after being advised of the alleged abuse, the supervisor interviewed the subject of the second special interrogation, with the interrogator present, regarding the allegations. Based on this interview, and notes taken by the interrogator, the supervisor prepared an 11 Dec 04 MFR addressed to JTF-GTMO JIG and ICE. The supervisor forwarded his MFR to the JTF-GTMO JIG. The JIG then forwarded the complaint to the JAG for processing IAW normal GTMO procedures for investigating allegations of abuse. The JAG by email on 22 Dec 04 tasked the JDOG, the JIG, and the JMG with a review of the complaint summarized in the Dec 04 MFR and directed them to provide any relevant information. The internal GTMO investigation was never completed.” Schmidt-Furlow, 22.

* MOS remained in the isolation hut in the classified zone of Camp Echo for nine years after the manuscript was completed. He was finally moved out of Camp Echo Special and into a nonsecret section of Camp Echo in October 2014, about three months before Guantánamo Diary was published in the United States, the United Kingdom, and seven other countries. On October 16, 2016, he was escorted onto a military transport jet and flown to Mauritania. He arrived in Mauritania, a free man, on October 17, 2016.

* MOS completed this manuscript in the fall of 2005; the last page is signed and dated September 28, 2005. One of the largest Guantánamo hunger strikes started in August 2005 and extended through the end of the year. See, e.g., http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/18/politics/18gitmo.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0; and http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/multimedia/guantanamo-hungerstriketimeline.html.

* The AUMF, or Authorization for Use of Military Force, is the September 14, 2001, law under which Guantánamo operates. It authorizes the president “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”