The New Yorker Radio Hour - Living in the Shadow of Guantánamo

Episode Date: March 5, 2021

When Mohamedou Salahi arrived at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, in August of 2002, he was hopeful. He knew why he had been detained: he had crossed paths with Al Qaeda operatives, and his cousin had once called him from Osama bin Laden’s phone. But Salahi was no terrorist—he held no extremist views—and had no information of any plots. He trusted the American system of justice and thought the authorities would realize their mistake before long.  He was wrong.  Salahi spent fifteen years at Guantánamo, where he was subjected to some of the worst excesses of America’s war on terror; Donald Rumsfeld personally signed off on the orders for his torture. And, under torture, Salahi confessed to everything—even though he had done nothing. “If they would have wanted him to confess to being on the grassy knoll for the J.F.K. assassination, I’m sure we could have got him to confess to that, too,” Mark Fallon, who led an investigation unit at Guantánamo, said. Ben Taub reported Mohamedou Salahi’s story for The New Yorker and tried to understand what had gone wrong in the fight against Al Qaeda. Salahi met Ben in Mauritania, because, when the U.S. released him, it was under the condition that Mauritania would withhold his passport. He would like to go abroad—he needs medical treatment, and he hopes to live in a democracy. But, for an innocent victim of Guantánamo, being released isn’t the same as being free.    This episode originally aired August 2, 2019. Ben Taub’s reporting on Mohamedou Salahi won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2020. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. When the first terror suspects were brought to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, this was in January of 2002, there were 20 men, blindfolded and handcuffed in orange jumpsuits. They were met by Marines and Humvees. Soldiers were armed with rocket launchers and a helicopter gunship patrolled above. After the destruction in the United States on September 11th, we thought these terrorists were something other than human,

like villains from the movies. They were strapped like cargo into planes because they would gnaw through hydraulic cables to take the planes down. And so, you know, people had, in their minds envision these people as monsters. Mark Fallon is a career Navy investigator, and he was the deputy commander of a task force investigating alleged al-Qaeda members. Fallon knew immediately that something wasn't quite right. When the first prisoners got off the plane,

it wasn't the Al-Qaeda members that we were looking for. It was, we call them dirt farmers. Lots and lots of dirt farmers. But when a man named Mohamedu Salahi arrived at Guantanamo Bay in August 2002, he seemed somehow like the real deal. He was no farmer but an electrical engineer who had lived in the West. The evidence pointed to him being, high-level al-Qaeda with his hands in a number of terrorist plots.

But almost 15 years later, officials let him go, because Salahi hadn't committed any acts of terror and had no valuable information on people who had. The United States had detained, interrogated, and tortured, an innocent, very unlucky man. Salahi's experience is the basis of the film The Moritanean, which is just out. But back in 2019, New Yorker's state. staff writer Ben Tab flew to Moritania to meet Mohamedu Salahi and hear a story in person.

Moritania is a vast desert country in West Africa. It's about the same distance from New York as France is, but it takes a really long time to get there. I went through Casablanca, spent 15 hours in the airport there, and then flew very late at night to Nuakchot, the capital of Mauritania. On the descent into Nuwachot, it's pitch black. There are no lights because very, very much. Very few people in the country have electricity. You can only tell you're arriving because the plane just keeps getting lower and your ears are popping. And then all of a sudden you're on the ground. I walk into the airport and get my visa.

And then almost immediately I'm pulled aside by a security official. I told him I'm here to see Mohamedu Salahi and he said, The ex-prisoner from Guantanamo? And I said, yes. And he said, stand over there. A Mauritania intelligence officer came over to me and I tried to explain to him that I'm not here. to cause any trouble. I'm not here to rendition Muhammadu like the Americans had in the past. Meanwhile, Muhammadu was outside the airport waiting for me. He can't enter the building. Clearly,

the security officials know who he is, and he's trying to keep a low profile these days. I texted him, and a few minutes later, he sent in his nephew, who just slipped behind airport security because he happens to know someone. The fact is, this is a place where personal relationships matter more than the official system. A few minutes later, he came to an agreement with airport security. They took a photograph of his identity card and said essentially, okay, if Ben creates any trouble in this country, it's your problem and it's your fault.

They stamped my passport. I went outside and I saw Muhammadu. His face was obscured by a white turban. The first thing he said was, bet you'll think twice next time about saying you know me. And he laughed and led me to the car, and we drove past a dead horse carcass down into Nuwakshah. You know, it's still like boiling in my head.

Still simmering, not boiling, but simmering in my head. Or a lot of whys, why. You know, why we cannot live in dignity and peace in this part of it? How often do you still have dreams that are related to Guantanamo? Very often, dude. Very often. You don't drink milk? Muhammad, who lives on the second floor of a small building

in central Nuakshod. He sleeps under a mosquito net on a mattress on the floor, and outside the window, which is open all the time, there's a sheep. Is it just one sheep? I don't know.

Do they go inside the home? Yes, they live inside the home. Not inside the room, inside the room. Right. Mohamedu was born into a family of camel herders in a village a few hundred miles from here, but he moved to Muakchot as a kid. He grew up measuring political eras by military coups.

and the country is still governed by an oppressive, undemocratic regime. It's an environment that's very hostile to journalism and free speech. I had to work very carefully. I couldn't carry any real recording equipment with me, and so I recorded my interviews with Mohamedu on my phone. This feels about as far away from the United States as you can get. And yet, Mohamedu spends his days watching Adam Sandler movies and the office and YouTube compilations of the worst auditions on America.

American Idol. He's never actually been to the United States, but he's obsessed with American culture, almost all of which he learned about during his detention at Guantanamo Bay. When did you first start listening to country music? The guards. They got to listen to it and by virtue of me being there. He even learned English by imitating his guards and his interrogators. And like, my brain is a mountain carton timber down. Oh, you what? What was the phrase?

What was the... I've been in the mountains, cutting timber down. I've been in what? In the mountains. In the mountains. Cutting timber down. Cutting timber down. Yeah, Saudi speak.

It might seem weird to you that this guy was supposedly a high-level Al-Qaeda official and was once considered the US military's highest value detainee. Because the truth is, he never was. a high-level al-Qaeda official. He just happened to look like one 20 years ago to someone monitoring his travel and connections. But the question of who he actually was and how exactly he was connected to al-Qaeda

is what faced investigators like Mark Fallon. You know, what were the circumstances? How did Mohamedu wind up there? Mark Fallon led a team of elite investigators tasked with assembling criminal cases against detainees at Guantanamo. Mohamadu arrived at the detention camp in August of 2002. And so we would talk to a detainee,

and we would try to track them from adolescence to Guantanamo. Okay, let's start with adolescence. Islam is a complete system that can organize every aspect of life. Muhammadu grew up very devout. As a teenager, he memorized the entire Quran. In the evenings, he and his cousin, A young poet named Mahfuz-Walid would go to a local cafe where the owner showed them videos from the Palestinian struggle and the jihad in Afghanistan.

In the mosques throughout the countryside, teachers call people to join the fighting, telling them why jihad is obligatory for them. The Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan and was trying to install a communist government. Mahamadu and his cousin were smitten with this narrative that a rag-tag group of Mujahideen were taking on a superpower in defense of Muslims. Back then, this was the jihad. In all the provinces, Mujahideen and rebel soldiers are fighting to take control before making the final assault on the...

Mohamedu was an exceptional student. After high school, he got a scholarship to study engineering abroad in Germany. But he couldn't let go of his romantic view of the Mujahideen. In December 1990, shortly before his 20th birthday, Muhammadu abandoned his studies and set off for the jihad in Afghanistan. Soon afterward, his cousin, Mafuz-Walid, went too. Militant groups often organized by language, you have to be able to talk to your comrades,

and so Mahmoudu and Mahfuz ended up in a group that spoke Arabic. The leader was a tall Saudi construction heir named Osama bin Laden, and the group was Al-Qaeda. At that point, al-Qaeda wasn't the same thing that we know it to be today. It hadn't carried out any terrorist attacks abroad. The leadership may have had global ambitions, but Mohamedu never met bin Laden. While he was still in training, the battle with the communists ended.

And these rival Islamist groups in the region started competing for power. Mohamedu didn't want any part of that. It wasn't what he signed up for. After three months, he left Afghanistan for good. He went back to Germany and worked in a computer repair shop and finished his degree. Because I'm a very modernist. I'm very traditional Muslim.

I'm not appalachad for that. Of course. But I hate, I fucking hate extremism. Yeah. Because extremism is not a part of this culture I grew up. When I was a teenager, I flirted with this. Because of Afghanistan. By the mid-90s, a number of people who had joined Al-Qaeda were returning to their home countries.

This is Dadahi-Walid-Avdha. He was the head of Mauritania's intelligence apparatus at the time. And what he's saying is that Mohamedu's name kept showing up in his investigations into al-Qaeda. A number of the Mauritans who had come back from Afghanistan described Muhammadu as one of their contacts in Europe. So, Abdullahi asked the Germans to keep an eye on him. For the next few years, Mohamedu was just working with computers and preaching in backyard mosques.

And then, in 1998, he got this phone call. This has nothing to do with it. The phone calls, the infamous phone call. Yeah. Okay? The infamous phone call happened. So you remember Salahi's cousin, Mafuse Walid, the poet who watched those jihadi videos back in the cafes in Mauritania?

He also went to Afghanistan, and he did meet bin Laden. He was only 16 years old at the time, but bin Laden was really impressed with his eloquence and his conviction. He got so close to bin Laden that he actually started writing a lot of bin Laden. speeches. He even drafted Bin Laden's most important fatwa, the Declaration of War Against the United States. Like many jihadis, Mafuz took on a fake name to obscure his identity. He started going by Abu Hafts al-Muritani. In 1998, Abu Hafts called Muhammadu Salahi from Bin Laden's satellite phone. That's staff writer Ben Taub reporting for the New Yorker on the story of Mohamedu Salahi.

Ben's piece in the magazine received the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2020. The call had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. Abu Hafts's father was sick back at Mauritania, and Abu Haft wanted to pay for his treatment. But he needed Mohamedu's help. He wanted to send you money to look after his dad. He didn't remember... So Mohamedu helped. Abu Haft wired him around $4,000, and Mohamedu withdrew the cash and gave it to friends who were traveling back to Noakshod.

And so the investigator's job is, is to go in there and determine what actually happened there, what occurred, what were the factors. That's Mark Fallon, the investigator at Guantanamo. You know, I could hand somebody my phone and they can take a call. That doesn't mean that I'm working with them, right? Or they could borrow a phone. So, you know, you're trying to determine what are the circumstances here.

This kind of thing, it happened all the time. Mohamedu was operating in this jihadi milieu, even though he was no longer a part of Al-Qaeda. One night in October 1999, his friend asked him to host three Muslims who were passing through his town in Germany. Mohamedu didn't know who these guys were, but he said yes. They stayed for dinner and left at dawn. He never knew their names, and he never saw them again, but they would go on to become hijackers on 9-11. By now, Salahi was having visa problems related to his employment status.

One of his friends in Canada suggested that he moved to Montreal. So, in November 1999, he moved there and started leading prayers at a prominent mosque. But once again, he found himself in accidental proximity to men who were plotting attacks. Three weeks after he arrived, a guy who used to pray at the mosque where Muhammadu was now preaching was caught trying to blow up Los Angeles International Airport. Last week, the U.S. Customs Service made one of its most important arrests. on December 14th, an individual who has now been identified as Ahmed Rassim attempted to smuggle highly explosive materials from Canada into the United States.

And because Mohamedu had arrived right before the failed attack and had recently been in touch with Abu Hafts, the Americans started to think that he was the mastermind. So, he's under surveillance in Canada, and back in Mauritania, his family is being called questioned about his involvement in this plot. They beg him to fly home. They tell him his mother is sick, and in January 2000, he goes back. But he's immediately arrested at the request of the Americans. After three weeks of interrogation, Abdallahi, the Mauritanian intelligence chief concluded that

Mohamedu was not a threat. He released him and let him go about his life. A friend helped Muhammadu find work installing internet routers for a telecommunications company. For the rest of that year, Throughout much of 2001, everything was fine. But then September arrived and everything changed. I've directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and to bring them to justice. The U.S. government was terrified that there was going to be another attack and so they started aggressively going after anyone who fit a certain threat profile and Mahmadoo fit.

You know, he was in Hamburg, he was in Canada. We had Rassam crossing the border. His travel patterns were consistent with what an al-Qaeda operative would do. You were the one who knew about technology and who had information. The FBI told me I have the perfect profile of a terrorist. Right. The United States asked the Mauritaniian government to turn over Mohamedu to the CIA. And Abdullahi is a professional.

He's not about to refuse a request from another intelligence agency. So, on November 20th, 2001, Abdullahi sent his men to pick up Salahi at his mother's house. As we drove off, I could see in the rear view mirror the fingers of my mother raised to the sky and counting prayers. I would never see my mother again, nor my old brother. After another week of questioning, Abdallahi handed over Muhammadu to a Jordanian rendition team. Abduhahdiah thought that Muhammad would be back within a few days. But that's not what happened.

During that time, I was rented by the U.S. to Jordan, where I was interrogated in a Jordanian intelligence prison. I was rendered again to Bagam Air Base and finally rendered a third time in August of 2002 to the prison of Guantanamo Bay. Mohamedu Salahi. We'll hear about what happened to Salahi at Guantanamo Bay in just a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. On our program today, Ben Taub tells the story of one of the people detained at Guantanamo Bay, just one of the 780 detainees.

Mohamedu Salahi was once considered the highest value prisoner at the base. He was a Mauritanian, an electrical engineer who the authorities believed was an Al-Qaeda operative. And Salahi's cousin, a man known as Abu Hafts Almuritani, was in fact very close to Osama. bin Laden. So the interrogators really wanted to know about Abu Hafts. No, this is the FBI. The first question, he told me, where is Abu Hafts? Tell us where is he? It's here in Wachshod. I said, I don't know. And then the bullshit, fuck you and so. Tell us where he is. Because he was wanted for $25 million. Of course. At this point, Mohamedu was still optimistic about his situation. He understood that his life had involved a series of coincidences that looked really bad, but he thought that he'd be

exonerated by the American justice system. I said, no, I've been to the West, and I know that it doesn't matter your ethnicity, your nationality, you still be treated within the rule of law. But he didn't get access to the American justice system. By this point, Mark Fallon and his team of highly trained and experienced investigators, they had determined that most of the Guantanamo detainees were basically, innocent or had been sent there by mistake. But this didn't fit the official narrative. The Bush administration and the military leadership were telling everyone that Guantanamo was filled with men who would stop at

nothing to destroy the United States. So Fallon and his team of Al-Qaeda experts were essentially sidelined, and the guys who took over interrogations were mostly army reservists and conscripts. So many of them had no experience, and I would talk to them, and I'd ask, have you ever done an interrogation before? And many of them would point to the person sitting across the room and say, oh, yeah, I role played with this other soldier before. So the first time they were ever in a room, in an actual adversarial interview, was with a potential al-Qaeda suspect at Guantanamo Bay. And so it was just... These guys weren't getting any results. But they were impervious to the possibility that the man.

men before them might be innocent. In fact, each failed interrogation was taken as proof that these detainees were al-Qaeda and had been trained to resist interrogation. When the CIA wanted to torture, what they said was that there was a sophisticated training program that made these people almost superhuman, and they could resist even our best interrogators, so we need to utilize these techniques and these torture techniques, and able to break them. So they adopted a new set of methods.

It was meant to, they called it the triple Ds, debility, dependency, and dread. And so the goal was to make that person's existence so dreadful, to dehumanize them so much, to treat them like dogs, that their only source of refuge would be their interrogator. These techniques didn't come about by accident. They were part of a plan, drafted and approved by government lawyers and psychologists. But the tactics weren't conceived. by the Americans, they originated during the Korean War. It was basically the same techniques that the North Koreans utilized against our service members.

And the North Koreans weren't using them to gather intelligence. They just wanted to elicit false confessions for propaganda purposes. So what the CIA was doing was actually engaging in a process that we knew produced false information. And so how anyone logically can conclude that that would be an effective method to obtain information, is just absolutely ludicrous. The U.S. military considered Mohamedu Salahi to be its highest value detainee. They thought he was the leader of Al-Qaeda cells in Europe and Canada. So, Muhammadu was the second person subjected to what they called special projects.

Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, personally signed off on Salahi's interrogation plan. They kept him in a freezing cell with no exposure to daylight. They blasted him with strobe lights and heavy metal munitions. and heavy metal music. He was force-fed during the daylight hours of Ramadan when Muslims are supposed to fast. He was beaten, his ribs were broken, he was sexually assaulted by female interrogators. One day, Muhammadu's lead interrogator read him a letter that was later shown to be forged. It said that Muhammad's mother would soon be transferred to Guantanamo, where she would probably be raped.

According to military records, Muhammad was also told to imagine the worst possible scenario he could could end up in and that he would soon disappear down a very dark hole. His existence will become erased. No one will know what happened to him and eventually no one will care. They took him to a black sight that had been constructed just for him. He was kept in total darkness. After a few weeks there, he started to lose his mind. I could hear voices and I could hear my family talking to me every day. I could hear music and I could fly. Actually, one time I tried to fly myself and I fell face down and I injured myself. Mahamadu's torture was extensively recorded in government documents, which have since been declassified. The use of torture

by the military accomplished two things in Muhammad's case. First, it made it so that he would never stand trial for any of the crimes he'd been accused of. Once that it was determined that he was tortured in custody, once it was determined that he was hallucinating, the prosecution basically said, this case is garbage. We cannot go to court, it is unreliable, we will not go to court with this case.

And second, it produced a torrent of false confessions. Mahamadu, like other detainees subjected to the torture program, confessed to all kinds of things he hadn't been involved in, crimes he didn't commit, plots that had never been plotted, conspiracies that did not exist. If they would have wanted him to confess to being on the grassy knoll for the JFK assassination, I'm sure we could have got him to confess to that too. And so we wasted valuable resources chasing false leads and false intelligence

trying to disprove the facts that were obtained under torture. This can't have come as a surprise. These tactics achieved exactly what they had been designed to do, But even though Muhammadu wasn't going to stand trial and was no longer a reliable source of intelligence, the government still couldn't let him go. He was a walking trove of information about a classified torture program. In 2008, the Senate Armed Services Committee published an extensive report on the military's use of torture. Muhammad's case is featured throughout, and so now much of what he had experienced was public.

Two years later, there were still no plans to prosecute Muhammad. and so a judge ordered his release. But the government appealed, and so Mohamedu was kept for another six years. Early in his detention, Mohamedu had written a diary detailing his mistreatment at Guantanamo, and in 2015, while he was still in custody, it was finally published. What do American people think? I am eager to know. I would like to believe the majority of Americans want to see justice done,

and they are not interested in financing the detention of innocent people. I know there is a small extremist minority that believes that everybody in this Cuban prison is evil, and that we are treated better than we deserve. But this opinion has no basis but ignorance. I am amazed that somebody can build such an incriminating opinion about people, he or she doesn't even know. I mean, we lost who we were. We forgot who we were.

Decisions were made out of fear, ignorance, and arrogance, and emotions ruled the day. And it was clouded by the fact that nobody was supposed to know. Nobody was ever supposed to know what we did to these human beings. They were never supposed to see the light of day. They were never supposed to talk about it. And if you look back at where the first leaks came from about the program, they came from the CIA.

CIA officers couldn't live what they were doing. Unlike those guys, Mark Fallon never leaked anything. But when he was kept out of key meetings, he and his team started carefully documenting everything that went wrong. It was clear to me these were war crimes that we were going to embark upon. And I did the only felt like I was under, I worked a lot of undercover operations in my career. I felt like I was undercover in a criminal enterprise

and just trying to salvage whatever I can, pushing evidence to people to hang on to so that, someday when this came to light, and I didn't know if it would be 20 years or if it would ever would. In October 2016, Mohamedu Salahi was loaded onto a military flight and shackled for the last time. He was flown back to Mauritania, free in a sense, but not really. A condition for his return was that the Mauritania government wouldn't give him a passport,

so he couldn't leave the country. The effects of the torture have followed him home. And I have, like, night terrible. For nights on it, I cannot sleep, and sometimes I wake up and I cannot breathe, I have this headache every single day. And no matter how much medication, I take, the headaches does not go away. Back in Guantanamo, Mohamedu had also undergone an emergency gallbladder surgery. But it was botched and requires correcting.

And in Mauritania, the doctors don't have the necessary equipment to carry it out. They usually send patients to Europe. And we are arranged to have a hospital in Germany. They want to give me the medical care I needed for free. But to this day, the U.S. United States government refuses to allow me to seek that medical treatment. And there's another reason he wants to move abroad. A couple years ago, he met a woman online, an American lawyer. They had a lengthy correspondence

and eventually she came to visit him in Nahuachad. They started dating and soon got married in an Islamic ceremony. And this April, she gave birth to Mahamadu's son. But she lives in Europe and he can't visit. So officially it will be single parent, fatherless. And that's very, very bad in my culture, very bad for me. And so now, Mohamedu Salahi is the father of father.

an American citizen. In total, around 780 detainees have been sent to Guantanamo Bay, but 740 have been released, which is to say that the overwhelming majority were determined to not be a threat to the United States. But the detention camp casts a really long shadow, and not just for the detainees. For as long as the camp has been open, terrorist groups have been recruiting based on the injustice it represents. When ISIS made its beheading videos, it dressed Western prisoners in orange jumpsuits, specifically to mirror the imagery of that shown from Guantanamo Bay's earliest photographs. Presidents, Bush, and Obama both tried and failed to close Guantanamo, but Donald Trump

has been really enthusiastic about keeping it open, and often claims, falsely, that torture is effective. And don't tell me it doesn't work. Torture works, okay, folks? Torture, you know, I have these guys. Torture doesn't work. Believe me, it works, okay? The United States government is the most powerful democracy in the world. And they have the means to uphold human rights. But instead, the United States is telling the world very clear and loud that democracy does not work. When you need to get caught and caught down and dirty, you need a dictatorship. That dictatorship was built in quantitative.

So much of what happened to Muhammadu can be traced back to the fact that his cousin, Abu Hafts Al-Muratani, was bin Laden's Sharia advisor and a member of al-Qaeda's Shura council. As I listened to Muhammadu tell his story, it was as if Abu Hafts were always lurking in the background. He was never caught or killed by the Americans. In fact, I had heard that he was also back in Mauritania. I really wanted Muhammadu to introduce me, but I was not sure how to ask. Then, one day, Mohamedu took me to a wedding party at the home of Mauritania's best radiologist

and the first person I saw as we approached was Abu Hafts on Mauritani. He was dressed in a turban and white-flowing robes. I followed him into the atrium. I stood in the reception area watching Mauritania leaders kiss Abu-Hawks on the cheek and thank him for gracing the party with his presence. A government official explained to me that Abu Hafts was now an advisor to the president.

Mohamedu had abandoned Al-Qaeda 10 years before 9-11, and his life was destroyed by the Americans. And yet, Abu Hafts, who drafted bin Laden's fatwa against the United States, is free and respected. As Abu Hafts approached the exit, I cut him off. I asked him for an interview, but he politely deflected. He gave me a phone number and said, call this number, is for my secretary.

The next day I did call. He doesn't have a secretary. The number was his own. He told me, come to my house right now. You're listening to The New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

In January 2019, our reporter Ben Taub traveled to Mauritania in Western Africa to meet with a man named Mohamedu Salahi. His story is the subject of our entire program. today. When Salahi was sent to Guantanamo Bay, one of the most damning pieces of evidence, is that he had once received a call from Osama bin Laden's satellite phone. Salahi's cousin was a high-ranking Al-Qaeda member very close to Ben Laden, and this cousin had once used bin Laden's phone to call

Salahi. While Salahi was subjected to torture at Guantanamo, the cousin, Abu Hafts al-Moratani, was never captured by the United States. He was living freely in his home country of Moratani. when Ben Taub was there reporting, and Ben ran into Abu Hafts at a wedding party. He gave me a phone number and said, call this number. It's for my secretary. The next day, I did call.

He told me, come to my house right now. Here's staff writer Ben Taub. Abu Hafts-Moratani is a man of extraordinary influence and power. He lives in one of Nuakchot's most expensive neighborhoods near the sea. It's made up of, lavish compounds, many of which belong to European expatriates, but one building is out of place. It's a small wooden shack sitting up against one of these compounds. This is the temporary site of a

mosque where Abu Hafts preaches. There's groups of young Zalafi men going into this shack, wooden shack with a loudspeaker hooked up to the top. This is called to prayer. As I approach his house, I go on Google Maps and drop a pin on my exact location. I send that pin to my editor in New York and give him the phone numbers for certain people he should contact in Martania if I can't check in within four hours. Abu Hafts finishes leading prayers and invites me to follow him into his compound. We walk through the gate and he closes it behind me and brings me into his living room. I sit down on his couch. Several of his followers come in too.

Yes, you're welcome. Come in. Okay, thank you. First thing, in the article, how would... It was me and my translator. Since I'd come to his house in such a hurry, the only person available was one of Mohamedu's nephews. And since Mohamedu and Abu Hafts are cousins, that means he's also one of Abu Haft's nephews.

So this is the question. I sat down on the couch and he poured me a glass of water. Bush. Bush. W. Bush. You're just said. I wanted to make clear that I was not there to relitigate his past in al-Qaeda or to blame him for 9-11.

In fact, I knew from the 9-11 Commission report that Abu Haft opposed the attacks. When he first learned about the plan, he stood up in a sure council meeting and defied bin Laden, saying that the scale of civilian casualties was indefensible in Islamic law. So he's especially sensitive about anyone linking him to 9-11. even though he knew about it before it took place. So if the terrorists, if they are interested, only to attack. Don't use that word. Yeah, yeah.

He didn't say that word. Yeah, yeah. He didn't say they are terrorists. But just to explain to you, I don't want to use... I'd come to Abu Hafts to learn two things. How did he feel about the fact that his cousin, whom he'd grown up with, who he had followed to Afghanistan,

had essentially gone to Guantanamo Bay in his place. And how is it that Abu Hafts, this Al-Qaeda leader who had a $25 million bounty on his head, was never captured and was living openly in the same country from which Mohamedu had been renditioned by the CIA? Those were my questions. But it was clear that Abu Hafts had other things on his mind. You live in the Western, you have a great mind.

and this is a great thing to guide you to the truth. Laude that if he are interested in it, the God will guide you to the truth. Good afternoon. On my orders, the United States military has begun strikes against al-Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. When the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, Abu Hafts was living in Kandahar. He knew he had to leave the country, and so he traveled through remote villages,

entrusting his life to Afghan shepherds who were presumably unaware of the $25 million bounty on his head. He made it to Pakistan, which was clearly giving sanctuary to many Taliban fighters, but he worried that they would turn him over to the CIA. Officially, if unreliably, Pakistan is a counterterrorism partner, the United States. And in Pakistan, Abu Hafts and the other Al-Qaeda fighters, who were mostly Arabs, stood out. In an emergency meeting with other Al-Qaeda leaders, he came out with a plan. The safest place he thought was a place that had no relationship to the Americans. He had to get to Iran. I chose Iran for many reasons.

What Abu Hafts guessed correctly is that the Iranians understood his value. They would have the al-Qaeda leadership living in their custody. And during that time, there would be no Al-Qaeda operations within Iranian territory. For the next decade, he lived partly as a prisoner, partly as a guest. I stayed in Iran 10 years. I was in a house. Every two days, I have the opportunity to go outside for the shower and to do a shower and everything. Technically, he was under house arrest. But he was the kind of detainee who gets escorted to fancy malls, who works out in the same gym as foreign diplomats,

who has a cell phone and internet access. This was at the same time that his cousin, Mohamedu Salahi, was being tortured at Guantanamo Bay. For the next decade, while Abu Hafs was living in Iran, Mauritania was the site of regular jihadi violence. But it stopped abruptly in 2011. And it was around that time. that Abu Haft realized he could go home.

And one day I decide that when I went to do the shower and to the gym and everything, I'll take the car away and go away. Okay, to the embassy. Yeah. Abou Haft slipped out of Iranian custody during a trip to the gym. He bolted into the changing room and into the street. And dressed in his gym clothes, he hailed a taxi to the Martin Embassy in Tehran. Yes, and the ambassador called the foreign minister,

and that called the president, and the president told them all to make sure that he's okay, and they have to do everything to bring him back to Mauritania. They booked him on a commercial route through three transit countries. That's an amazing story. Yeah, it's very amazing. In fact, could I ask him some questions about the Mahmoudi's case? Yes, I'm going to be two minutes.

He said, I'm going to ask him a second. Yes. The whole time you asked me, now I will ask you one question. And this question might lead you to a very successful life. Okay. You're... Are you a Christian or Jesus? No, I'm not.

If you know you ask yourself... Now if you see a big machine, a complicated machine, if you want to make sure about this machine or this thing, you should read the manufactured book for this machine to make sure everything. The machine is you. And the rule for the is the Quran. And the rule for the is the Quran. He handed me a French translation of the country.

Quran. This is the manual for the manual for you, for you, you don't want to if you die at the moment you'll go to the hell. You can, you can't help him from this

miscarriage of Shadha'u'll Allah and Muhammad Rousse. We don't want you to go to the hell. And he's able to do it. And you can do

by one phrase you said it by your time and you believe in your heart yes and the phrase is the shahara the shahara is one sentence there is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet when someone wants to convert to Islam

they say this phrase in the presence of Muslim witnesses in this moment it became clear to me that Abu Hafts wanted me to convert right here on his couch. The sheikh, he wants you to try, inshallah, to book your place in the paradise. And it is easy thing, just by one face. Yes. It's very easy. Just you can't try it.

But there was another part of what he said. He said, you have to say the shahadha, and you have to stand and believe in your heart. And to understand the second part, I need to finish reading this first. But no one, he has the experience. That will be tomorrow, because we can die now. I didn't get the sense that he was threatening me, but you feel very vulnerable in a former al-Qaeda leader's house. And Abu Haft's followers were getting agitated that I was not receptive to his message.

The fact is, the shahara is supposed to be a sincere profession of faith, something one chooses to do when one is ready. I hadn't even read the Quran. So I was now in this almost comical situation where I'm explaining to this man, a fundamentalist who considers himself a religious leader, why my spontaneous conversion wouldn't be legitimate in Islam. Yes, but I can't fulfill the shahadha properly until I've worked the book.

But you can't say the shahada and then you read the book. He said two things. I still needed to ask him about Mohamedu. So I had to figure out a way to pivot out of the talk of conversion and get back to the interview. So I tried to frame it in terms that he would understand. urgency, what I would like to do, if possible, is finish the questions tonight in case the police get me out of Martina,

because they don't like journalists. Yes, he understands the kinds of pressures that security intelligence apparatuses use on individuals. He's been subjected to it in the past. I'm curious, I just have a couple of questions about Mohamedu's case. If it's okay. So he wrote in his book that, and the Americans claim, That one time you called him from Bin Laden's satellite phone.

Is that correct? And if so, what did you discuss? No relationship with the jihad or something. Yeah. Well, Mohammedi told me, and he said it was about money to help your father who was sick. Is that right? Yes, I got to tell him.

Yes, I transferred to him some money. Ah, okay, so, okay. Then the other thing was about Mahmado. I guess the kind of uncomfortable question, and I don't mean to insult, but I wonder, does he think that Mohamudu would have ever been arrested if he had not been in Al-Qaeda? Not, not Mahmoudu, if I'm asking him. So, I said, it's no relationship. That was pretty much all he had to say on the subject of his cousin spending 15 years in Guantanamo Bay.

And then he thanked me for coming. And the happiness, you have never found the happiness without you believe in the God, the real belief. That night, I went to Mohamedu's apartment and told him what had happened. That's true. But this fit along with his general pattern of being, like, relatively dismissive,

but just dismissive and, like, not interested in your plight. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's good. Yeah. You're right, you're right, that's very dismissive. He's more interesting saving yourself. Yeah. Yeah.

Exactly. His only is not important to him. What was the other call? It was around 8pm on my last night. I went to his apartment to say goodbye to him. And he was packing up his stuff and said he needed to leave for the night. Because one of his aunts had died. That aunt was also Abu Haas's aunt.

And so the family was going to head out in convoy, drive overnight and bury her at dawn. and Abu Hafts was going to be in the convoy, Abu Hafts was going to lead the prayer at dawn. Encounters like this are basically inevitable. Mahamadu can try to separate himself from Abu Hafts, but in Nuakshut, he can't escape his orbit. And Muhammadu can't leave the country because, as a condition of his release from Guantanamo,

the Americans made the Mauritanian government promised to not issue him a passport for some unknown period of time. time. So he's stuck. He can't get the surgery he needs to correct the botch surgery he had at Guantanamo. He can't go see his wife. He has never even met his son. They can't live as a free man. And yet, he harbors no resentment toward the United States. He is forgiven his tormentors. He's passionate about democracy and the rule of law. He's obsessed with principles that the United States publicly espouses, but has never extended to him.

I was never charged, let's alone, convicted of any crimes against your country. And I'm just a peaceful person. And I never hurt anyone. And I don't intend to hurt anyone. And I just want the same freedom. I'm risking a lot by speaking out about this stuff. Because I was told many times that this is not good for. me. And I said, I'm not going to shut up. And I will not shut up because I want freedom.

I want the same freedom that American citizens enjoy in the United States. Why is that impossible? Why? I just need an answer. And I be on my way. Mohamedu Salahi speaking in 2019. Ben Tab won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for his piece in the magazine on Salahi called Guantanamo's Darkest Secret. And Salahi's story is the basis for the film The Mauritanian, which is out now. Since we first aired this story, Salahi has been granted a passport and allowed to leave the country, though he says that he's been denied visas to live with his wife and his son. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. Thanks for joining us. See you next week.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Avey, Carrillo, Riannon Corby, David Krasnow, Gauphin and Putubuele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, with help from Alison McAdam, Mengfei Chen, and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.