India Block was a solitary-confinement area in Camp Delta where Mohamedou Ould Slahi was isolated from other detainees in June 2003. In his account, the block’s cold, deprivation, and continuous interrogation turned a prison location into an instrument of control; the difficulty of outside access also made it a place where abuse could remain concealed.

Setting and Transfer

Slahi later told an Administrative Review Board that around June 18, 2003, he was taken from Mike Block to India Block for total isolation. Former detainees described India Block’s cells as windowless and often kept at frigid temperatures. The physical environment thus reinforced the purpose of the transfer: separation from the camp’s other prisoners as well as confinement within a harsh, enclosed space.

When Slahi entered the block, two other detainees were there. One was a Yemeni man; the other is not identified in the published account. Slahi was placed at one end, the Yemeni detainee at the other, and the third man in the middle. The arrangement permitted no interaction among them. Both other prisoners were later transferred elsewhere, leaving the block reserved for Slahi and the guards and personnel whose identities are obscured in the manuscript.

Isolation and Interrogation

The isolation was accompanied by the removal of ordinary comforts and means of occupying time. Slahi says he was left with a thin sleeping mat and a small, worn blanket, while his books, Qur’an, soap, toothpaste, and toilet paper were taken away. The cell was cooled until he shook much of the time. He was prevented from seeing daylight, and occasional recreation time was scheduled at night to limit contact with other detainees.

For the next seventy days, he says, interrogation continued around the clock, in three and sometimes four shifts, with few days off and no night of undisturbed sleep that he could recall. Interrogators made sleep and hot meals conditional on cooperation. The block’s conditions and interrogation schedule worked together: deprivation was not simply a feature of the cell, but part of a system that made basic relief contingent on compliance.

Restricted Access and Concealment

The restrictions surrounding Slahi’s access to the International Committee of the Red Cross formed part of the wider geography of his confinement. In an October 2003 record of a meeting between the Guantánamo commander and a visiting ICRC delegation, Slahi was among the detainees designated off limits during that visit on grounds of military necessity. The documentary record places this restriction within the period of his isolation, though the designation does not by itself establish that the meeting concerned India Block specifically.

The ICRC was not allowed to visit Slahi until September 2004, after a prolonged dispute with the government. Its representatives said that his sudden disappearance from the camp had alarmed them and that they had been unable to establish where he was. Slahi later explained that fear of retaliation led him to conceal ill-treatment when asked about it. The eventual visit therefore did not erase the period in which isolation and lack of access had made his situation difficult to observe from outside.

Narrative and Documentary Significance

India Block’s significance lies in the way space organized both bodily experience and access to information. Placement at opposite ends of the block prevented detainees from speaking to one another; darkness, cold, and the interrogation shifts narrowed Slahi’s daily world further. Meanwhile, limits on ICRC access separated the prisoner not only from other detainees but also from an outside institution seeking to learn what had happened to him.

The published account preserves these details within a manuscript written by Slahi in his Guantánamo cell and subsequently subjected to extensive government redaction and editorial revision. The black bars obscure names and other content, making the record of confinement itself visibly incomplete. India Block consequently appears both as a specific site of isolation and as part of a larger detention system in which control over movement, contact, and information shaped what could be experienced and what could later be known.