Jordanian Special Forces

Jordanian Special Forces appear in the memoir through the guards serving at the Jordanian detention facility where Mohamedou Ould Slahi was held. The account situates the guards within an elite military force while also describing their everyday work: moving detainees, managing limited routines, and, at times, speaking with prisoners despite rules against interaction. Their presence joined institutional discipline to the small, human exchanges that detention could not entirely eliminate.

Recruitment and Service

The guards were recruited mostly from Bedouin tribes described as historically loyal to the King. The memoir presents this background alongside the force’s institutional status, identifying the guards as members of Jordanian Special Forces and noting that its personnel received training overseas. It also states that there were no women in the force.

Their pay was about $430 a month, give or take. Although the account describes this as among the best wages available in Jordan, it was not enough for a guard to support a family without additional help. After fifteen years of service, a guard could retire on half of his current wage or continue working while receiving that amount in addition to his regular wage. These details give the force a concrete economic and career structure, rather than presenting its personnel only as an anonymous security presence.

Duties in Detention

At the facility, guards took detainees between cells and to interrogations and showers; they also escorted prisoners when parents were permitted to visit on Fridays. Other recurring duties included keeping watch and organizing a Saturday grocery round. A guard carrying a list went from cell to cell to record requests for items such as juice, milk, candy, underwear, and towels. Slahi had about $87 when he was sent to Jordan, which he says was enough for his modest purchases; whether a prisoner received what he ordered depended on having sufficient money.

The memoir makes the unevenness of these routines personal. Slahi watched other detainees see their families while he was repeatedly denied that opportunity. During one grocery round, he saw his name beside the accusation of participation in terrorist attacks. The list was an ordinary administrative object, but in that moment it also made the official charge part of the daily landscape of confinement.

Conduct and Contact with Prisoners

The account distinguishes formal rules from guards’ conduct. Guards were forbidden to interact with detainees, yet they sometimes told Slahi jokes, offered him cigarettes, and spoke about other prisoners, their own marriages and children, and social life in Amman. Slahi declined the cigarettes because he did not smoke, but these conversations gave him information about life beyond his cell. Guards also brought him books from the library, including a Bible he requested to learn about the book that had shaped American lives. Prisoners used books to pass messages to one another, and Slahi searched for and memorized the notes he found.

These encounters do not erase the structure of detention or the restrictions imposed on prisoners. They show instead that the guards’ institutional role and their occasional personal exchanges existed side by side. The memoir’s portrayal of Jordanian Special Forces is consequently grounded in both the organization’s stated service conditions and the daily interactions through which detainees experienced its personnel.