Office for the Protection of the Constitution

The Office for the Protection of the Constitution is identified in the account as Germany’s domestic intelligence agency and as a participant in an interview with Mohamedou Ould Slahi at Guantánamo. Its appearance is brief, but it places a German intelligence service among the foreign visitors who questioned him while he was detained there.

Identification

The editorial note distinguishes the Office for the Protection of the Constitution from the Bundesnachrichtendienst, Germany’s foreign intelligence service. It says that a 2008 report by Der Spiegel described two members of the Bundesnachrichtendienst and one member of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution interviewing Slahi at Guantánamo in September 2002.

The Guantánamo Interview

According to the reported account, the visitors interviewed Slahi for ninety minutes. The note suggests that Slahi’s reference to an older and a younger visitor may concern two of the German officials, but it does not establish which agency either visitor represented. The evidence therefore supports the agency’s participation in the visit, not a more detailed account of its members or their individual roles.

Evidentiary Limits

The agency enters the narrative through an editorial annotation drawing on published reporting, rather than through a full account of the interview in the cited passage. The note identifies the reported meeting and its duration but gives no further detail about the questions asked, information obtained, or consequences. Its significance here is consequently specific: it documents the reported presence of German domestic intelligence personnel among the officials who had access to Slahi in Guantánamo.