Guantanamo Diary - Hardcover

Slahi, Mohamedou Ould

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1782112847 ISBN 13: 9781782112846

Publisher: Canongate Canons, 2015

Synopsis

The acclaimed national bestseller, welcomed on the cover of the New York Times Book Review--the first and only diary written by a still-imprisoned Guantánamo detainee.

Mohamedou Slahi has been imprisoned at the detainee camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba since 2002. In all these years, the United States has never charged him with a crime. Although he was ordered released by a federal judge, the U.S. government fought that decision, and there is no sign that the United States plans to let him go.

Three years into his captivity Slahi began a diary, recounting his life before he disappeared into U.S. custody and daily life as a detainee. His diary is not merely a vivid record of a miscarriage of justice, but a deeply personal memoir---terrifying, darkly humorous, and surprisingly gracious. Guantánamo Diary is a document of immense emotional power and historical importance.

About this title

About the Author

Mohamedou Slahi was born in Mauritania. He left at the age of eighteen on a scholarship to study in Germany. In the early 1990s, he interrupted his studies and went to Afghanistan to join al-Qaeda units fighting--with American support--the Soviet-backed government in Kabul. He returned to Germany in 1992, completing his engineering degree and living and working first in Germany and then, for a few months, in Montreal. After his November 2001 apprehension by a Jordanian commando team, he was held in isolation and interrogated for the next seven and a half months before they concluded he had had no involvement with the Millennium plot. Nevertheless, a CIA rendition team captured him and on August 5, 2002, he was incarcerated at Guantanamo. Despite being cleared by multiple courts and foreign governments, he remained imprisoned. He has never been charged with a crime.

Review

''This is an incredible document, and a hell of a story.'' --Steve Kroft, correspondent for 60 Minutes

''Anyone who reads Guantanamo Diary - - and every American with a shred of conscience should do so, now--- will be ashamed and appalled. Mohamedou Ould Slahi's demand for simple justice should be our call to action. Because what's at stake in this case is not just the fate of one man who managed, against all odds, to tell his story, but the future of our democracy.'' --Glenn Greenwald, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State

''Here, finally, is the disturbing and stirring story the United States government tried for years to conceal. Mohamedou Ould Slahi's ordeal shocks the conscience, to be sure. But on display in these pages is something much deeper as well: an enduring faith in our common humanity, and in the power of truth to leap prison walls and bridge divides. With devastating clarity and considerable wit, Guantánamo Diary reminds us why we call certain things human rights.'' --Anthony Romero, Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union

''A vision of hell, beyond Orwell, beyond Kafka: perpetual torture prescribed by the mad doctors of Washington.'' --John le Carré

''Once considered such a high-value detainee that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld designated him for 'special interrogation techniques'....Slahi had been subjected to sleep deprivation, exposed to extremes of heat and cold, moved around the base blindfolded, and at one point taken into the bay on a boat and threatened with death....Slahi faces no criminal charges.'' --Carol Rosenberg, Miami Herald

About this edition

• Publisher: Canongate Canons
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1782112847
• ISBN 13: 9781782112846
• Binding: Hardcover