Hamoud Ould Slahi

Hamoud Ould Slahi is Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s older brother, a figure whose role in the account is defined by practical care and the effort to preserve family contact across a prolonged separation. He delivered clothes and money to the prison where the family believed Mohamedou was being held, and later spoke with him during the first family call arranged through the International Committee of the Red Cross. His story makes the distance between what a family was told and what had happened to its missing member concrete.

Identity and Family Background

Hamoud belongs to a large family whose circumstances shaped Mohamedou’s sense of responsibility. Mohamedou was born in Rosso, the family later moved to Nouakchott, and their father—a nomadic camel trader—died not long after the move. Mohamedou had eight older siblings, with three more children following; Hamoud is identified as his oldest brother. The family’s size was not merely background: Mohamedou later described having a large number of people to support, while his siblings took on responsibilities in his absence.

Visits to the Prison

After Mohamedou voluntarily went to police headquarters for questioning, his family was led to believe he remained in Mauritanian custody. For almost a year, Hamoud regularly visited the security prison, bringing clean clothes and money to pay for his brother’s meals. In reality, a week after Mohamedou turned himself in, a CIA rendition flight had taken him to Jordan; he was later transferred to Bagram Air Base and then to Guantánamo. The prison officials accepted the family’s payments without telling them that Mohamedou was no longer there. Hamoud’s repeated visits thus became an unwitting act of care directed toward a place where his brother was absent.

The First Call from Guantánamo

The family’s first telephone contact with Mohamedou came in June 2008, six and a half years after his disappearance. His mother, siblings, and other relatives gathered at an International Committee of the Red Cross office in Nouakchott for the call. Hamoud spoke with Mohamedou for forty minutes. Their conversation turned to family life: who had married, how the siblings were doing, and which relatives had children. Afterward, Hamoud said that the brother he had heard was the one he knew, unchanged despite the years apart. The ordinary subjects of the call—marriages, children, and the condition of relatives—restored a measure of family intimacy without resolving the separation itself.

Family Contact and Separation

By 2013, calls arranged under the Red Cross’s auspices connected Mohamedou with the household in Nouakchott and with Yahdih Ould Slahi in Germany. The calls had become video calls, but the family’s contact remained limited to twice a year. The later conversations were described as much the same in substance as before, while a profound change had taken place: Mohamedou and Hamoud’s mother had died on March 27, 2013. Hamoud’s place in the account therefore rests on both the continuity of family bonds and the losses those bonds had to absorb. His visits to the prison and his long conversation with Mohamedou frame care not as a single dramatic gesture, but as repeated attention maintained under conditions of uncertainty and separation.