Exposure to freezing interrogation rooms

Exposure to freezing interrogation rooms was a recurring feature of the interrogation regime Mohamedou Ould Slahi describes at Guantánamo. The cold was not presented as an isolated discomfort: it formed part of a wider system of prolonged questioning, restricted sleep, isolation, and pressure to cooperate. His account also emphasizes the deliberate contrast between the detained person’s conditions and the interrogators’ ability to leave the room, dress warmly, and return when they chose.

Conditions and Place in the Interrogation Regime

After Slahi was transferred to an isolated block, he describes being left with little more than a thin sleeping mat and a small, worn blanket. His books, Quran, soap, toothpaste, and toilet paper were taken away. The cell was kept cold enough that he says he was shaking much of the time. Daylight and contact with other detainees were also restricted; recreation took place at night. These conditions placed cold exposure within an environment of sensory and social deprivation rather than treating it as a separate episode.

The interrogation schedule compounded that deprivation. Slahi says the questioning continued around the clock for seventy days, with three or sometimes four shifts in a day and few days off. He recalls rarely sleeping peacefully. Interrogators linked relief from the conditions to cooperation, promising sleep and hot meals if he would comply. In a later exchange, an interrogator threatened that he would be imprisoned for life and never see his family. Slahi rejected the premise that comfort he did not possess could be taken from him. The threats and conditional offers made the cold part of a continuing contest over control, not simply a room setting.

A Chilled Room and Its Operation

In another episode, Slahi describes an interrogator turning the air conditioning down. He says the room reached 49 degrees Fahrenheit, or 9.4 degrees Celsius, despite the equipment’s attempt to cool it further. He explains that he remained there for more than twelve hours in a thin uniform, without underwear, and that he came from a hot country. These details make the method concrete while also showing how the room’s temperature interacted with the length of exposure and the clothing available to him.

Slahi distinguishes his experience from that of the interrogators. He says they entered to humiliate or discourage him and then went to a monitoring room next door; they did not remain in the cold room for long and were dressed for the cold. He describes being kept in a position that limited movement, while his own attempts to warm himself by rubbing his hands were stopped by a special restraint. The difference in duration, clothing, and freedom of movement is central to his account of the room as an instrument of interrogation rather than a shared environment.

The narrator also says that the method had been used at the camp since at least August 2002 and that other detainees had been exposed to freezing rooms. He believed some effects might appear only later in life, and described the practice as designed to avoid obvious evidence at the time. Those statements record his understanding and assessment; they should not be mistaken for independent medical findings. His account stresses the gap between an immediate, observable condition and harms he feared might emerge only later.

Escalation and Overlapping Methods

Cold exposure appears alongside other forms of pressure. In one episode, an interrogator poured ice-cold water on Slahi while he was still clothed. Another interrogator signaled for the action to stop, after which the first turned to music. Slahi recalls that the music distracted him from the immediate ordeal and that he tried to make out its words. The sequence shows how the interrogation could shift between methods and how an intervention that halted one action did not end the session or the surrounding pressure.

On another night, Slahi was taken to a specially prepared room decorated with images of U.S. military power and a picture of George Bush. He says that he was made to listen to the U.S. anthem through the night and was told not to pray. He tried to pray privately and describes being exhausted and shaking. He was released between four and five in the morning, then taken back into the same routine a few hours later. Cold, sleep disruption, and restrictions on religious practice thus recur together, though each imposed a distinct pressure.

The larger pattern included long hours standing in the cold room, repeated threats of permanent imprisonment, and demands that Slahi write extensively about his life. He says that one night a guard was made to remove his clothes after he had put shorts over his trousers in anticipation of the cold. He describes feeling violated and continuing to pray despite orders to stop. This episode connects the room’s temperature to the control of clothing, posture, and religious practice, without making any one element the whole of the interrogation system.

Documentation and Limits of the Record

The memoir is not the only record of the special interrogation program. Stuart Couch’s investigator obtained interrogators’ files that included daily memoranda describing both what was said and how information was extracted. The files remain classified, but the Senate Armed Services Committee’s 2008 inquiry and a 2008 review by the U.S. Department of Justice summarized the program and described it as closely corresponding to Slahi’s account. These investigations support the broader existence and structure of a special interrogation regime; the cited material does not independently establish every detail of every cold-room episode.

The book’s editorial introduction explains that its footnotes about redactions are contextual speculations, not attempts to reconstruct classified text. The editor drew on the manuscript, publicly available sources, declassified documents, and official investigations, while explicitly noting that cleared attorneys and people with access to the unredacted manuscript had not verified those introductory notes. That distinction matters here: the conditions Slahi describes can be read alongside official documentation of the interrogation program, but missing or blacked-out text cannot be treated as confirmed evidence of a particular detail.

A separate account of the Camp Echo preparations describes a planned isolation hut designed to reduce outside stimuli, with efforts to block light and prevent visual contact with guards. That evidence helps place sensory control within the broader interrogation strategy, but it does not by itself demonstrate that the Camp Echo hut was a freezing room. Keeping these methods distinct preserves the difference between what the records specifically describe and what can only be inferred.

Significance

In Slahi’s account, cold exposure gains significance through repetition and combination: a chilled cell, long periods in a cold room, disrupted sleep, limited movement, and the promise that cooperation might bring relief. The room’s measured temperature and the contrast between detainee and interrogator conditions give the description a material specificity, while the wider routine shows how those conditions operated over time. Official summaries corroborate the existence of the special interrogation program, but redactions and the limits of available records leave some particulars unresolved. The account therefore presents the cold room both as a concrete setting and as one component of a larger system for exerting pressure.