Slahi's renewed detention in Mauritania in 2001

Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s renewed detention in Mauritania in 2001 marked a return to official suspicion after his release the previous year, and showed how an American allegation could prompt another arrest without publicly presented proof. The authorities detained him on September 29, shortly after the September 11 attacks, questioned him, searched his home, and released him on October 15. Though this detention ended, the reassurance that he could resume ordinary life did not last: within weeks, a further summons led to his disappearance and transfer into secret custody abroad.

Background and renewed arrest

In February 2000, Mauritanian authorities had released Slahi after concluding there was no basis to believe he was involved in the Millennium Plot. At that time, as Slahi later recalled, officials told him that the Americans continued to describe him as a link but had provided no proof. The 2001 detention therefore followed a prior investigation and release, not a publicly established finding of guilt.

Judge James Robertson’s chronology records that Mauritania summoned Slahi again at the United States’ request after the September 11 attacks. On September 29, authorities arrested him, saying the action was connected to an allegation that he was involved in the Millennium Plot. The episode shows the persistence of that allegation across two separate periods of detention, even though the earlier Mauritanian inquiry had ended in release. The account does not establish that the new arrest produced evidence confirming the allegation.

Search, questioning, and release

Slahi remained detained while officials searched his house on October 12, seizing tapes and documents. The search extended the episode beyond questioning him: objects and papers from his home became part of the investigation, although the account does not specify what they contained or what conclusions investigators drew from them.

Mauritanian authorities released him on October 15. The record identifies the release but redacts the authorities responsible, leaving that detail unresolved. His release returned him to civilian life, but it did not end the attention of American investigators. Both arrests in Mauritania involved questioning by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, placing the renewed detention within a continuing cross-border investigation rather than an isolated local inquiry.

Return to work and the next summons

Between the two arrests, Slahi had built a working life in Mauritania. He did computer and electronics work, first for a medical-supply company that also provided internet services and later for a diversified family-owned import business. After his October release, he feared his employer would not take him back because he was suspected of terrorism. According to his account to the Administrative Review Board, Mauritania’s senior intelligence official called the employer in his presence, said he was a good person and had been questioned, and assured the employer that he could return. His boss did take him back.

A little more than a month later, Slahi’s work took him to the Presidential Palace of Mauritania, where he spent a day preparing a bid to upgrade President Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya’s telephone and computer systems. On returning home, he found the national police there again. They said he was needed for questioning. He asked them to wait while he showered, dressed, took his keys, and drove his own car to police headquarters. He told his mother not to worry and that he would be home soon. This time, he did not return.

The renewed detention and the later summons are distinct episodes: the first ended with his October release, while the second began after the period in which his employer had been reassured and he resumed work. The subsequent account explains that, about a week after he turned himself in, a CIA rendition flight had taken him to Jordan. For nearly a year, his family believed he was being held in Mauritania. His brother Hamoud regularly brought clean clothes and money for meals to the security prison, not knowing that officials were concealing Slahi’s transfer and accepting the money. The October detention thus sits at the hinge between visible arrests in his own country and a disappearance his family could not understand.

Allegations and the public record

The distinction between the allegation and what later became known matters to the episode’s interpretation. Slahi’s questioning in Mauritania in 2000 and 2001, and his account of questioning in Jordan, centered on the Millennium Plot. A later government argument that he could be detained because he had aided the September 11 attacks was abandoned; the court record summarized in the book states that the government acknowledged he probably did not know about the attacks. The renewed Mauritanian arrest should therefore not be retroactively described as an established finding that he participated in them.

A separate link to the September 11 hijackers surfaced in Guantánamo in September 2002, when Ramzi bin al-Shibh identified Slahi as a person he had met in Germany in 1999 and said had directed him toward training in Afghanistan. That later development belongs to a different stage of the case, not to the known circumstances of the September 2001 arrest. Keeping the chronology clear shows how the basis for suspicion changed over time, while the earlier Millennium Plot allegation continued to shape the investigation.

The account also makes visible the limits of reconstructing a censored history. Editorial annotations draw on the manuscript’s context and on public materials, including declassified records, reporting, and government investigations; they are not attempts to restore classified words hidden by redactions. In this episode, the dates, search, release, employment, and subsequent summons provide a traceable sequence, but some details remain obscured. That combination of a recoverable chronology and unresolved gaps reflects the larger consequence of Slahi’s renewed detention: an arrest that officially ended in release was followed soon afterward by a disappearance concealed from his family and carried out across national borders.