Slahi’s transfer from Jordan to Bagram Air Base was a concealed stage in his movement through a United States-directed system of detention. On July 19, 2002, a CIA aircraft retrieved him from Amman after seven and a half months of interrogation by Jordanian intelligence services and flew him to Bagram Air Base. The episode opens the narrative of Guantánamo Diary: a journey that Slahi had not chosen, whose destination and consequences were controlled by others, and whose secrecy also kept his family from knowing where he was.

Route and chronology

Slahi’s transfer followed a series of detentions connected to the Millennium Plot investigation. After twelve years studying, living, and working abroad, primarily in Germany and briefly in Canada, he returned toward Mauritania in January 2000. Senegalese police and then Mauritanian authorities detained and questioned him at the behest of the United States. He was released on February 19, when authorities concluded there was no basis to believe he had taken part in the plot.

He later lived with his family and worked as an electrical engineer in Nouakchott. Mauritanian authorities detained him again in September 2001 for two weeks of questioning, then released him while publicly affirming his innocence. On November 20, police asked him to accompany them for further questioning. He went voluntarily, driving his own car to the station, and told his mother he would soon return. Eight days later, a CIA rendition flight took him to a prison in Amman. The flight to Bagram came after those seven and a half months in Jordan, extending a succession of transfers across national borders.

The transfer as narrated

The diary’s account begins at night, after the transport truck had emptied and a silent team approached. Slahi describes being moved from one set of restraints to another and having his clothes removed as preparations for the flight proceeded. Blindfolded and unable to see what was happening around him, he could not make decisions about the journey or know with certainty where he was being taken. His account records competing hopes and fears about the destination, but no reliable information from the people directing the transfer.

The physical sequence is described in terms of dependence and loss of control rather than a negotiated handover. Slahi was prepared for transport, brought from the truck to the aircraft, and pulled up the steps when exhaustion left him unable to walk unaided. Once aboard, he was secured for the flight. He recalls thinking about family members he might never see again and regretting past failures toward them and others. The scene therefore makes the transfer more than a change of prison: it marks the moment when his separation from home became an immediate and personal prospect.

A hidden transfer and its family consequences

The secrecy surrounding the journey had consequences beyond Slahi’s own confinement. For almost a year, his family believed that Mauritanian authorities still held him. His oldest brother, Hamoud, regularly visited the security prison with clean clothes and money for Slahi’s meals. In reality, Slahi had been taken first to Jordan and then onward to Bagram; the prison officials accepted the family’s payments without disclosing that he was no longer there.

The family learned of his presence in Guantánamo through a newspaper account rather than an official explanation. On October 28, 2002, his youngest brother, Yahdih, read in Der Spiegel that Slahi had been held for months in the United States prison camp. Yahdih’s anger was directed at local authorities who had assured the family that Slahi was in their custody and safe. The false appearance of continued local detention concealed the international route and left the family paying for his supposed upkeep while unable to locate him.

Destination and wider journey

Bagram was not the final destination. After two weeks of interrogation there, Slahi was placed aboard a military transport with thirty-four other prisoners. The group reached Guantánamo on August 5, 2002. In the larger chronology, the July flight sits between prolonged interrogation in Jordan and the transfer into the Guantánamo detention system. The sequence illustrates how custody could be shifted across jurisdictions without the family being told where the person held had gone.

The book frames this route as an extended journey determined by the United States: across roughly twenty thousand miles over eighteen months, through four countries, and away from a return to Mauritania. The transfer from Amman to Bagram is a decisive link in that account. It also establishes the diary’s opening situation: Slahi’s whereabouts, movement, and access to his family were controlled by institutions operating across borders, while those closest to him were given a misleading account of his custody.

Evidence and narrative significance

The transfer is presented through Slahi’s first-person recollection and set against a dated detention timeline. The account gives concrete details about the night and the process of preparing him for flight, while the timeline fixes the date and route. The distinction matters: the narrative conveys his experience of uncertainty, whereas the chronology identifies the transfer as part of a longer chain of detention and interrogation.

The opening scene also establishes the book’s tension between intimate testimony and information withheld from the person undergoing events. Slahi can recount the team’s actions and his own uncertainty, but he is not shown receiving an explanation of the operation or its destination. Meanwhile, his family’s mistaken belief that he remained in Mauritanian custody demonstrates how secrecy extended beyond the transfer itself. The episode thus joins two forms of separation: the immediate removal of a detainee across borders and the prolonged concealment of his location from his family.