Jordanian General Intelligence Department

The Jordanian General Intelligence Department (GID) figures in the book as both a detention authority and part of a wider system in which prisoners could be held for the Central Intelligence Agency outside its own custody. Human Rights Watch reported that the GID served as a proxy jailer for the CIA, keeping prisoners out of circulation and later returning some to it. Slahi’s account of confinement in Jordan shows how that arrangement could be sustained through restricted movement, isolation, and the concealment of detainees from outside visitors.

Role in Proxy Detention

Human Rights Watch reported that from 2001 until at least 2004, the GID held prisoners whom the Central Intelligence Agency apparently wanted kept out of circulation, and later handed some of them back to the agency. Its report named Mohamedou Ould Slahi among at least fourteen people sent to Jordan during that period. This public account places the GID within a transnational detention system: custody in Jordan could serve United States interests even when the detainee was not held in a United States facility.

The broader chronology in the book describes Slahi’s movement from Mauritania to Jordan, then onward to Bagram Air Base and Guantánamo. For almost a year, his family believed he remained in Mauritanian custody, while he had in fact been transferred through those other sites. The account makes clear that the Jordanian detention was one stage in a sequence of transfers, rather than an isolated episode; it does not, however, establish every agency decision or operational detail behind each transfer.

The Amman Detention Facility

Human Rights Watch located the GID’s main headquarters in the Jandawil district of Amman, in Wadi Sir. The organization described a compound covering nearly an acre and containing a four-story detention facility. Its researchers recorded administrative offices and interrogation rooms on the second floor, visiting rooms on the ground floor, and cells on several levels, including a basement. The report noted that prisoners had described the basement as a place where they were taken for especially violent treatment; that description is a reported allegation, not a direct observation by the researchers.

The facility’s design and rules sharply limited contact. Human Rights Watch reported that detainees were held in single-person cells and forbidden to speak with one another. Some nevertheless managed to communicate through the rear windows of their cells, which faced the central courtyard. The prison thus combined enforced separation with small, difficult channels of contact: isolation was the rule, but it was not always complete.

Concealment and Red Cross Access

Slahi describes a recurring transfer to a cellar that prevented the International Committee of the Red Cross from finding him during visits. A paper posted on a door, which he was not supposed to read, listed prison rules and said that the International Committee of the Red Cross visited every fourteen days. It also instructed prisoners not to discuss their political cases with representatives. Slahi understood later that guards moved him to the cellar every fourteen days and kept him there for a couple of days, as part of a concealment routine that lasted through his eight months in Jordan.

When Slahi asked his interrogator to see the International Committee of the Red Cross, the response was, “There is no ICRC here. This is a Military prison.” His narrative presents that denial against the posted rules and the repeated movement between his cell and the cellar. The contrast reveals not simply restricted access, but an effort to make the visit schedule ineffective for a particular prisoner.

Evidence and Limits

The account of the GID and its detention site is assembled from different kinds of evidence. Human Rights Watch researchers described the building and its layout after visiting it in 2007, while their report also recorded claims made by prisoners about conditions and treatment. The book’s annotations place Slahi’s account alongside public reporting and declassified records, while explicitly declining to reconstruct redacted text or present speculation as recovered fact.

That distinction matters when describing the department’s role. The public record cited in the book supports the characterization of the GID as a proxy jailer and identifies the Amman headquarters as a detention site; Slahi’s account supplies the recurring cellar transfers and obstruction of Red Cross access. Together, these materials show how institutional custody, controlled space, and restricted outside observation could make a detention difficult for families and monitors to locate, without resolving every detail concealed by redactions.