Mahfouz Ould al-Walid

Mahfouz Ould al-Walid, also known as Abu Hafs al-Mauritani or Abu Hafs, appears in the account of Mohamedou Ould Slahi as both a senior al-Qaeda figure and a relative with whom Slahi maintained intermittent contact. That combination became consequential: government lawyers treated the relationship as evidence that Slahi remained part of al-Qaeda, while the public record described Abu Hafs as an opponent of the September 11 attacks. His history therefore complicates the conversion of family ties and sporadic assistance into proof of continuing organizational membership.

Identity and family connections

Abu Hafs was a member of al-Qaeda’s Shura Council and one of Osama bin Laden’s senior theological advisers. He was also Slahi’s distant cousin. Their connection was reinforced by marriage: Abu Hafs was the brother of Slahi’s wife’s sister, making him Slahi’s brother-in-law as well as a cousin. These overlapping ties placed him within Slahi’s extended family network, not simply among the political or religious figures with whom investigators associated Slahi.

The relationship was active but limited in the details given. While Slahi was living in Germany, the two were occasionally in telephone contact. Twice, Slahi helped Abu Hafs transfer $4,000 to Abu Hafs’s family in Mauritania around Ramadan. The account records these as specific acts of practical assistance, but does not describe them as operational support for al-Qaeda. Their later significance in court arose from how the government assembled such contacts into a broader claim about Slahi’s membership.

Contact in Germany and the security case

Slahi had joined al-Qaeda in 1991 and swore an oath of allegiance at that time. He maintained that his participation ended with the fall of the communist government in Afghanistan. In Germany during the 1990s, he continued to know people from his earlier Afghanistan experience, some of whom retained ties to al-Qaeda, and remained in occasional contact with Abu Hafs. In 1999, German intelligence took notice of a call from Abu Hafs made using Osama bin Laden’s satellite phone. The account presents that call as the point at which the relationship entered the attention of intelligence services; it does not establish that the call itself concerned a plot or attack.

When the government argued that Slahi was still part of al-Qaeda, it relied in part on his contacts and interactions with Abu Hafs and a small number of other acquaintances. The court record described the government’s theory as resting on Slahi’s oath, associations, and various forms of assistance, including hosting leaders and referring aspiring jihadists to an operative. Judge James Robertson considered whether the evidence showed active membership at the time Slahi was detained. He suggested that the contacts were sporadic and that even possible gestures of support did not amount to criminal material support for terrorism. In that assessment, Slahi’s limited dealings with people who remained active could also be read as an attempt to avoid both close association and open hostility.

Opposition to the September 11 attacks

Abu Hafs’s standing in al-Qaeda made his connection to Slahi particularly damaging in the government’s account. The United States placed a $5 million bounty on him in the late 1990s; after the September 11 attacks, the amount rose to $25 million. Yet the 9/11 Commission had reported that Abu Hafs opposed the attacks and wrote Osama bin Laden a message arguing against them on the basis of the Qur’an. The juxtaposition matters to the evidentiary story: a high-ranking position and kinship with Slahi did not, by themselves, establish agreement with the attacks.

The government had not sought to detain Slahi on the ground that he aided the September 11 attacks. By the time of the habeas proceedings, it had abandoned an earlier argument that Slahi was detainable under the AUMF for having aided them, acknowledging that he probably did not even know about the attacks. The dispute instead centered on whether his oath and intermittent connections to people such as Abu Hafs showed that he remained part of al-Qaeda when captured. Abu Hafs’s opposition to the attacks sharpened the distinction between association with an organization’s members and proof of support for a particular act.

Iran, return, and release

After the attacks, Abu Hafs left Afghanistan for Iran. Iranian authorities placed him under a relatively lenient form of house arrest for more than a decade. In April 2012, Iran repatriated him to Mauritania, where he was held in prison for two months. During that detention, he reportedly met with an international delegation that included Americans, condemned the September 11 attacks, and renounced his ties to al-Qaeda. He was released in July 2012 and thereafter lived as a free man.

His release gave the relationship between Abu Hafs and Slahi an unresolved legal and historical dimension. Abu Hafs had been among the government’s most consequential connections in arguing that Slahi remained a member, yet he was himself returned to Mauritania, publicly disavowed al-Qaeda, and lived freely there. The account does not claim that his later status settled Slahi’s case. Rather, it shows how the same relationship could be presented as evidence of continuing affiliation while also involving family obligations, limited contact, and a relative whose recorded position on the September 11 attacks contradicted any simple inference of shared purpose.