Mohamedou Ould Slahi–International Committee of the Red Cross relationship

Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s relationship with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was a constrained connection to the outside world: the organization sought access, communication, and information about his welfare, while government restrictions and surveillance limited what those efforts could accomplish. The relationship changed over time, from a prolonged struggle even to locate and visit him, to a cautious exchange in which Slahi withheld information about his treatment, and eventually to family calls facilitated through the ICRC. Its value to him was real, but so were the limits imposed on its presence.

An absence the ICRC could not explain

In September 2004, after a long fight with the government, the ICRC was finally allowed to visit Slahi. The delay had left the organization unable to account for his sudden disappearance from the camp: representatives had tried to see him and even to learn where he was, but their requests had been rebuffed. Slahi described himself as having effectively vanished from the ICRC’s view, at a time when he most needed outside attention.

The ICRC told him that he was the last detainee they had had to fight to see, while they had been able to visit the others. Its representatives explained that they had an idea of what had happened because they had spoken with other detainees who had been abused, but they wanted Slahi to talk so they could help prevent further abuse. Their request established a sharp contrast between the organization’s stated purpose and its limited access: it could seek accounts and raise concerns, but for a long period it could not reach the person at the center of its concern.

Slahi attributed the obstruction to officials who categorically refused access; only after one of them left did the ICRC manage to visit. In his account, control of detainees included control over their well-being and suffering, and granting the ICRC access could signal that an operation against a detainee had ended. That interpretation made the visit significant but also underscored its conditional character: access came after the period when he said he most needed it.

A visit shaped by fear and practical help

The ICRC urged Slahi to explain what had happened, saying it could not act without his account. He did not tell the delegates about his ill-treatment. He feared retaliation, and doubted that the ICRC could exert enough pressure on the United States government to change its course. His silence should therefore not be mistaken for evidence that nothing had happened or that he felt safe; in his telling, the risks of speaking outweighed the prospect of protection.

He did accept the relationship on narrower terms. He told the delegates that he was interested in sending and receiving mail and was grateful for their help with that. A senior ICRC representative from Switzerland, who had been working on his case, was brought to meet him and tried to encourage him to discuss his treatment. Slahi remained unwilling. The encounter shows both the organization’s persistence and the distinction Slahi drew between assistance he could use and disclosures he considered dangerous.

Confidentiality undermined

Although ICRC sessions were supposed to be private, Slahi said interrogators questioned him afterward about what he had discussed in his first meeting. He answered truthfully. He later informed the ICRC that this was happening; after that disclosure, interrogators stopped asking him about the content of the meetings. For Slahi, the sequence exposed a breach in the practical privacy on which the organization’s conversations depended.

He also described a wider climate of suspicion among detainees. Some had been confronted with statements they had made to the ICRC, leading them to believe the meetings were monitored. Many refused to speak to delegates and suspected that people presenting themselves as ICRC representatives might be interrogators in disguise. Slahi himself recalled interrogators posing as private journalists, adding to the difficulty of distinguishing independent contact from questioning. These practices produced tension between detainees and ICRC personnel; he reported that some delegates were cursed or spat at. The resulting distrust was not simply a failure of communication between detainees and the organization: it grew from the detainees’ belief that confidential conversations could be used against them.

A channel to family

The ICRC also became an intermediary for Slahi’s contact with his family. His first family call took place in June 2008, six and a half years after he had disappeared. The ICRC arranged the gathering at its office in Nouakchott, where his mother, siblings, aunts, nieces, and nephews assembled to speak with him by telephone after the Joint Task Force in Guantanamo approved the call. His mother, hearing his voice for the first time in more than six years, broke into tears. His older brother Hamoud spoke with him for forty minutes; Slahi asked who had married, how his siblings were doing, and which relatives had children. The call offered a rare exchange of ordinary family news after years of separation.

By the time of a later account, calls were held twice a year and connected Slahi with relatives in Nouakchott and his brother Yahdih in Germany. They had become Skype calls, allowing the family to see one another as well as speak. The contact remained limited, and the calls later took place without their mother, who died on March 27, 2013. The ICRC’s role here was concrete: it helped maintain communication across the barriers of detention, even though it could not restore the years of lost contact or remove the restrictions governing Slahi’s confinement.

Documentary record and limits

The account of the ICRC’s access dispute sits within a broader record assembled from Slahi’s manuscript, public documents, and investigations. The Senate Armed Services Committee and the Justice Department reviewed records describing the special interrogation and its methods, and those reports substantially corroborated Slahi’s description of the interrogation. That documentary confirmation helps establish the context in which the ICRC was denied access; it does not erase the distinction between the organization’s efforts to reach him and its inability to protect him from the conditions he described.

The relationship consequently carried two meanings at once. The ICRC offered a route for mail, visits, and family calls, and its delegates tried to obtain an account that might help stop further abuse. Yet Slahi’s fear of retaliation, the monitoring he reported, and the long delay before a visit made candor and trust difficult. Its presence mattered, but it did not give him control over access, privacy, or the terms of his detention.