Segregation from other detainees

Segregation from other detainees was not simply separation from a prison population. In Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s account, it was a means of controlling what he could see, whom he could speak to, and whether outside monitors could find him. It took different forms in Jordan and at Guantánamo Bay detention camp: a cellar used to conceal him from the International Committee of the Red Cross, an emptied block, and later a prolonged period in which access to ordinary comforts and human contact was sharply restricted. Across these settings, isolation made the location and duration of his detention harder to know while intensifying the pressure on him to provide information.

Concealment in Jordan

In Jordan, separation was tied directly to a recurring effort to keep Slahi from the International Committee of the Red Cross. A forgotten notice on a cellar door disclosed rules that he was not supposed to read. Among them were instructions that prisoners could smoke only if they cooperated, that they could not talk to guards, and that they must not discuss their political cases with the Red Cross. The notice also stated that the organization visited every fourteen days. Slahi initially took the discovery as hopeful: he thought he might at least be able to send letters to his family. He had not yet understood why he had been put in the cellar.

The routine soon made the purpose clear. Every two weeks, guards moved him from his cell to the cellar for a couple of days, then returned him. The repeated removal coincided with Red Cross visits and concealed him from its representatives for eight months, the whole of his stay in Jordan. When he asked his interrogator to let him see the organization, the interrogator denied that it was present and claimed the facility was a military prison. In this episode, segregation operated not only as physical isolation but as managed visibility: Slahi could be moved between spaces inside the prison, while the monitors seeking to see him were kept from knowing where he was.

An emptied block at Guantánamo

At Guantánamo Bay detention camp, Slahi describes another form of isolation in a block reserved for him. When he entered, the block was empty of signs of life. A Yemeni detainee was at one end and Slahi at the other, with no interaction between them; another detainee was placed in the middle, also out of contact. After the other men were transferred elsewhere, Slahi was left alone in the block. The space’s emptiness was not incidental: it made separation from other detainees a condition of his confinement.

The physical conditions reinforced that separation. Slahi had only a thin sleeping mat and a small, worn blanket; his books, Qur’an, soap, toothpaste, and toilet paper were taken away. The cell was cooled until he shook, and he was denied daylight. Recreation time came at night, keeping him from seeing or interacting with other detainees. For seventy days, he says, interrogations continued around the clock, across three and sometimes four shifts, with few days off and no night of quiet sleep. Sleep and hot meals were presented as conditional on cooperation. In that arrangement, isolation and interrogation were not separate features: the deprivation and the promise of relief framed cooperation as the route to basic rest and comfort.

Isolation extended into a secret place

The account of the later secret detention describes a further escalation. Slahi says he was to be taken from the camp, made to believe he was on a distant island, and told that his mother had been captured and placed in a special facility. In the secret location, he could not distinguish day from night or tell how time was passing. Meals were deliberately irregular: after periods without food, he might be given only minutes to eat before the plate was taken away; at other times guards forced him to consume excessive food and water. Water was also given at intervals of one to two hours to prevent sleep, leaving him repeatedly on the toilet and unable to close his eyes for long.

His permitted speech was reduced to three sentences: “Yes, sir!” “Need my interrogator!” and “Need the medics.” Guards sometimes rushed into his cell, forced him to face a wall, and threw his few belongings out while shouting and cursing. For weeks he had no shower, laundry, or toothbrush. These details show how isolation reached beyond the absence of other prisoners: it organized communication, bodily routines, time, and access to basic care. The narrative records a prisoner unable to orient himself in time, while the people controlling the space could alter food, sleep, and contact at will.

Prolonged separation and delayed access

Isolation continued even as some conditions gradually improved. Guards began allowing Slahi to brush his teeth, receive more warm meals, and take more showers. Yet a request to be released from what he called a living hell brought a direct answer: “You will not go back to the population anytime soon.” The stated focus remained keeping him segregated and gathering information from him. He spent much of his time silently reciting the Qur’an, talking to himself, considering possible futures, and counting roughly 4,100 holes in the cage. Puzzles and opportunities to learn English vocabulary offered ways to occupy his attention, but they were given within a regime where privileges could be withdrawn if interrogators decided he had lied.

The separation also obstructed contact with the outside world. In September 2004, after a prolonged dispute with the government, the International Committee of the Red Cross was finally allowed to visit Slahi. Representatives said he was the last detainee they had still been fighting to see. They had tried to locate him and had been unable to learn where he was; when they could speak with him, Slahi concealed his mistreatment because he feared retaliation. He also understood that allowing a Red Cross visit could signal that an operation against a detainee had ended. The long delay therefore mattered both as a loss of contact and as a condition that left him uncertain about the consequences of speaking openly.

The geography of isolation

The contrast between the Jordanian cellar and the Guantánamo blocks gives segregation a broader significance in the account. Across a detention journey that covered thousands of miles and several countries, control of space repeatedly determined whether Slahi could encounter other detainees, communicate with his family, or be reached by monitors. While his family believed for almost a year that he remained in Mauritanian custody, he had been transferred through Jordan and Afghanistan to Guantánamo; relatives continued paying for his upkeep in a Nouakchott prison without knowing he was gone. That larger concealment parallels the local practice of moving him out of sight before Red Cross visits.

Segregation thus appears as both a physical condition and an information barrier. It isolated Slahi within cells and blocks, but also separated his experience from the people who might have verified his location or heard his account. The recurring movement between spaces—cell and cellar, populated camp and emptied block, camp and secret site—made confinement difficult to map from outside. In the narrative, the repeated counting of cage holes and the effort to infer where he was stand against the institutions’ control over access, movement, and disclosure.