Guantánamo Diary summary

In January 2000, the author had been away from his home country for 12 years and decided to return to visit his family. He caught a flight to Dakar, Senegal, and planned to drive the remaining distance to Nouakchott, Mauritania with his brothers.

But the trip didn’t go at all to plan.

Although he was released, it wasn't long before US interrogators took an interest in the author once again.

One day, while attending his niece’s wedding, the author received a call from Mauritania’s Director General of Security. The two men met and drove together to police headquarters, where the author was again questioned.

While the author’s family were forbidden from visiting him while he was in Mauritanian custody, they didn’t even know that he had been sent to Jordan until a year afterwards. In fact, they may never have found out at all if the author’s brother hadn’t read an article about the author in the German magazine, Der Spiegel.

But even when they discovered where the author was, his family had no idea how poorly he was being treated. The author arrived, blindfolded and handcuffed, to Amman, Jordan, on the morning of November 29, 2001, and was immediately taken to the notorious House of Arrest and Interrogation.

On July 19, after spending eight months locked up in Jordan, the author was blindfolded, stripped naked, shackled and diapered. He was then sent, under US orders and in a CIA rendition plane, to Guantánamo Bay, also known as GTMO, where he became inmate #760.

What awaited him at GTMO?

While at GTMO, people from a variety of government bodies interrogated the author and accused him of participating in multiple terrorist attacks. In fact, different organizations were involved in each stage of his interrogation.

For instance, his interrogations in Senegal, Mauritania, Jordan and GTMO were all conducted by different agencies – sometimes it would be the FBI, sometimes the CIA and sometimes even special interrogators for the military.

After months of serious torture, the author began confessing to all charges, even ones that hadn’t been raised previously.

Why? It all began on August 25th, 2003, when a group of guards staged the author’s abduction.

Following the author’s confession and cooperation in taking a polygraph test, his conditions improved somewhat. Once he confessed and incriminated others, he was given hot meals and more regular showers.

But things really started to change when a “new era” of detention began in 2004. Over time, the author was allowed to pray in peace and was given books including the Bible, Star Wars, historical fiction titles and the classic novel The Catcher in the Rye.