An Interview With Mohamedou Ould Slahi (Guantanamo Diary)

The Darkened Hour

Mohamedou Ould Slahi Houbeini was born in Rosso, Mauritania, the ninth of twelve children of a camel herder. His family moved to the capital of Nouakchott when he was a child, where he excelled in school and earned a scholarship to study electrical engineering at Gerhard-Mercator University in Duisburg, Germany. In 2001, he was living and working in his home country of Mauritania when he was detained and renditioned to Jordan, beginning an ordeal that he would chronicle in his internationally bestselling Guantánamo Diary. The manuscript, which he wrote in his isolation cell in the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, remained classified for almost eight years and was finally declassified, with substantial redactions, in 2013. It was first published in the United States and United Kingdom in January 2015 and has since been published in 25 languages.

After 15 years of detention, Mohamedou was released on October 17, 2016, to Mauritania. The following year he published a “restored edition” of Guantánamo Diary, filling in the U.S. government’s redactions, and in 2021, his first novel, The Actual True Story of Ahmed and Zarga, is being published by Ohio University Press. In 2021, a theatrical film was released, entitled The Mauritanian, which is of course based on Slahi's detention and torture, in which actor Tahar Rahim, played the part of Slahi in which was nominated for two Golden Globe awards and five nominations at the British Film Academy Awards as well.

In todays episode, Mohamedou extensively talks about his upbringing in Mauritania, his life in countries such as Canada, Germany, his experience in Afghanistan and training in an Al Qaeda camp (Al Farouq), his extradition to Jordan and his kidnap and torture by US authorities while to Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

Guantanamo Diary:

https://www.amazon.com/Guant%C3%A1namo-Diary-Mohamedou-Ould-Slahi/dp/0316389250

The Mauritanian:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4761112/