Rules for prisoners in Jordanian detention facilities

Rules for prisoners in Jordanian detention facilities were posted regulations that Mohamedou Ould Slahi discovered during his eight-month detention in Jordan. Their provisions described routine controls and an expected schedule of visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross; in practice, Slahi said, guards used the rules’ fourteen-day interval to hide him from those visits.

Discovery and Provisions

During Ramadan, after being taken to a cellar, Slahi noticed a paper on the door listing prison rules. The guards had left it in place, although he believed he was not supposed to read it. The provisions included permission to smoke only when cooperating, a ban on speaking to guards, and a direction not to discuss a political case with the International Committee of the Red Cross. The paper also stated that the organization visited the prison every fourteen days.

The rules therefore set out both everyday restrictions and a formal timetable for outside access. That timetable became especially significant because it gave Slahi a way to interpret the repeated moves between his cell and the cellar.

How the Rules Operated

Slahi said that every fourteen days guards moved him from his cell to the cellar, kept him there for a couple of days, and then returned him. He later understood the pattern as an effort to keep him from meeting the International Committee of the Red Cross during its visits. The alternation between cell and cellar continued throughout his time in Jordan, which he described as eight months.

When he asked his interrogator to see the organization, the interrogator denied that it was present. Slahi then referred to the posted rules and challenged the recurring transfers as a means of preventing a visit. The interrogator refused access, maintaining that he was protecting Slahi. Slahi also asked to see the Mauritanian ambassador and was told that this was impossible.

Significance

The posted rules exposed a gap between the prison’s stated arrangements and Slahi’s experience of them. A written promise of regular visits did not, in his account, secure contact with outside representatives: the recurring cellar transfers instead made the interval itself a means of concealment. The rules thus served as both a rare source of information about the institution and a basis for recognizing how its procedures were being applied to him.