The Mauritanian (Guantánamo Diary)

Content Warning: This section references extreme instances of torture, graphic violence, sexual assault, racism, and Islamophobia.

Camp Delta featured arrows pointing to Mecca along with a call to prayer five times a day. In public, the Americans “always repeated that the war is not against the Islamic religion” (261). In private, however, “the war against the Islamic religion was more than obvious” (261). Secret camps forbade prayer, having the Koran, or even reciting passages from it. During one of Slahi’s interrogations, SFC Shally told the author that both Karim Mehdi and Christian Ganczarski had informed him that Slahi recruited them for al-Qaeda.

Since sexual abuse didn’t work on Slahi, the interrogators considered reducing his sleep to make him more compliant. One way of accomplishing sleep deprivation was by forcing a detainee to drink 25-oz bottles of water at regular intervals which led to spending most of the time in the bathroom. In addition to using this method with Slahi, they made him believe that he was kidnapped on a remote island, as described in the previous chapter, and that his mother had been captured and placed in a special facility: “Over the next few days, I almost lost my mind” (266).