War on Terror period

The War on Terror period in Guantánamo Diary is not presented as a single, settled policy but as a sequence of investigations, transfers, interrogation decisions, and legal reinterpretations that reshaped Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s life. Its decisive tension is between the initial focus on the Millennium Plot, the later association of Slahi with September 11 attacks, and a government case that ultimately rested on whether his past contacts meant he remained part of al-Qaeda.

From investigation to secret transfer

In January 2000, after twelve years studying, living, and working overseas, primarily in Germany and briefly in Canada, Slahi returned toward Mauritania. He was detained twice at the request of the United States, first by police in Senegal and then by Mauritanian authorities, and questioned by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents about the Millennium Plot targeting Los Angeles International Airport. Authorities found no basis to believe he had participated and released him on February 19. He then lived with his family and worked as an electrical engineer in Nouakchott.

The investigation resumed after September 11 attacks. On September 29, 2001, Mauritanian authorities detained Slahi for two weeks and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents again questioned him about the Millennium Plot; he was released, with Mauritanian authorities publicly affirming his innocence. On November 20, police asked him to come in for further questioning. He complied voluntarily, driving his own car to the station. Eight days later, a Central Intelligence Agency rendition plane took him from Mauritania to a prison in Amman, Jordan. The move from an acknowledged investigation in his home country to an undisclosed transfer abroad changed the character of his detention: the family did not know he was in Jordan, and his confinement there was part of a secret detention and interrogation system.

Slahi remained in Jordan for seven and a half months, questioned by Jordanian intelligence services. A second Central Intelligence Agency plane retrieved him on July 19, 2002, and transferred him to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. After two weeks there, he was flown with thirty-four other prisoners to Guantánamo Bay, arriving on August 5. The narrative of Guantánamo Diary begins with his transfer to Bagram, placing the reader inside the sequence that official accounts could leave obscured: detention in one country, transfer to another, and arrival at a prison whose legal and intelligence practices were still taking shape.

A changing detention system

When Slahi arrived at Guantánamo Bay, the available record did not indicate that he was regarded as an especially high-value detainee. Nearly six hundred people were held there, and reporting at the time described them as lacking the command positions that might reveal al-Qaeda’s organization. The camp’s own commander questioned the continuing designation of detainees as enemy combatants rather than prisoners of war protected by the Geneva Conventions. The Pentagon responded by replacing him and increasing intelligence operations, a change that linked the classification of prisoners to the expanding purposes of interrogation.

A dispute over methods soon divided military interrogators from Federal Bureau of Investigation and Criminal Investigation Task Force agents who had generally led interviews. In September and October 2002, the military created a Special Projects Team and prepared a written plan for interrogating Mohammed al-Qahtani despite objections from the other agencies. The plan drew on enhanced techniques already used by the Central Intelligence Agency. After Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized it, interrogators subjected al-Qahtani to a round-the-clock regime that included sleep deprivation, loud sound, cold conditions, stress positions, threats, and humiliation. This episode does not establish that every detainee experienced the same treatment; it shows the institutional conflict over how far interrogation could be intensified, and the growing authority of military operations to use methods contested by other investigators.

The book also places Slahi’s treatment beside the logic of secret detention. A 2004 Central Intelligence Agency inspector general report stated that the agency had a particular interest in isolating detainees who might otherwise disclose the circumstances of their detention. That passage gives the system’s secrecy a practical dimension: isolation could protect not only an interrogation from interruption but also the account of how a prisoner had come to be held. Slahi’s own special interrogation plan, approved by Rumsfeld and carried out in 2003 and 2004, included prolonged isolation, threats to his family, humiliation, and a simulated kidnapping and transfer. The episode marks the period’s shift from questioning tied to a specific investigation toward an organized effort to extract information under exceptional conditions.

Allegations, evidence, and legal standards

A connection to September 11 attacks entered the case after the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh on September 11, 2002. Bin al-Shibh had met Slahi in Germany in 1999 and stayed at his home. In testimony recounted by Slahi, bin al-Shibh alleged that Slahi had advised him to travel to Afghanistan for training and described him as an operative of Usama bin Laden. The allegation altered the frame through which Slahi was viewed. Yet the book distinguishes the existence of an accusation from proof that he had participated in the attacks. In 2005, the government abandoned its initial argument that Slahi was detainable because he had aided September 11 attacks, acknowledging that he probably did not even know about them.

When the government later defended his detention, its argument was not that Slahi had fought against the United States or taken part in an al-Qaeda attack. It relied instead on his oath of allegiance in 1991, his association with members, and forms of assistance that included hosting people and referring aspiring jihadists to an operative. Slahi maintained that his participation in al-Qaeda ended with the fall of the communist government in Afghanistan. Judge James Robertson considered whether Slahi was an active member when detained; the government relied on sporadic later contacts with people who remained active. Robertson found that these contacts did not amount to criminal material support and could also be understood as Slahi trying to avoid both close relations with al-Qaeda members and open hostility toward them.

Slahi handwrote his petition for a writ of habeas corpus on March 3, 2005. In 2009, Judge Robertson granted it and ordered his release. The decision came amid a wider sequence of habeas cases in which the government had lost thirty-four of forty-six by April 1, 2010. The government appealed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit adopted a broader standard for deciding whether a detainee was part of al-Qaeda. Under that standard, a court did not have to find that a prisoner was carrying out the organization’s orders at the time of capture; past connections could remain relevant to whether he was still a member. The appellate court emphasized that Slahi had not been criminally indicted for material support and that the government was not seeking detention on the basis that he aided September 11 attacks. It reversed Robertson’s release order and sent the case back for rehearing, leaving the legal question unresolved rather than confirming the public image of Slahi as a proven September 11 organizer.

Public claims and the period’s unresolved record

The public language surrounding Slahi’s case often ran ahead of the record. In March 2010, the New York Daily News urged an appeal of Robertson’s ruling and portrayed Slahi as a leading recruiter for September 11 attacks, although the editorial board had not seen the classified order, filings, or hearing. A declassified version of the order disclosed that the government had dropped its claim that Slahi aided the attacks. The contrast exposes a recurring feature of the period: severe labels circulated publicly even while the government’s formal legal theory was narrower and the evidentiary basis remained contested.

The book’s timeline makes the causal sequence visible without treating chronology as proof of guilt. Slahi was questioned about the Millennium Plot, released, detained again, and secretly transferred to Jordan; only later did an allegation based on his earlier encounter with bin al-Shibh connect him to September 11 attacks. Meanwhile, investigative agencies disagreed over interrogation methods, secret detention obscured what had happened in custody, and courts changed the test for continued detention. The War on Terror period thus appears as both a political response to the attacks and a system in which emergency claims, uncertain intelligence, and evolving legal rules shaped an individual case for years.