In this series, we delve into the incredible story of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who was detained at the notorious Guantánamo Bay detention camp without charge for over a decade. We hear Mohamedou’s story as extracts from an event hosted by the University of Bristol’s Human Rights Implementation Centre to mark the 20th anniversary of the facilities establishment – an event that also put the spotlight on the significant role Bristol researchers have played in reducing incidence of torture around the world. Mohammedou’s defence lawyer, Nancy Hollander and Professor Sir Malcolm Evans, joined Mohamedou on stage and continue the conversation here.
As we mark the shameful 20th anniversary of Guantánamo Bay, the third episode in this series asks if torture works. We hear, first hand, from Mohamedou Ould Slahi who reflects on what pain and fear meant to his perception of truth. His criminal defence lawyer, Nancy Hollander, and Professor Sir Malcolm Evans, former chair of the UNs Subcommittee for Prevention of Torture, extend the conversation to discuss how such a barbaric approach was possible in Guantánamo, in the 21st Century.
For further reading: “Guantanamo, Torture and Mechanisms for Change.”
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Image Credit: University of Bristol
Transcript:
00:00:04 Prof Malcolm Evans
Hello and welcome. My name is Malcolm Evans, and I’m professor of public international law at the University of Bristol. I’m also Co director of its human Rights Implementation Center.
00:00:20 Prof Malcolm Evans
And I’m also the former chair of the United Nations Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture.
00:00:30 Prof Malcolm Evans
This is Guantanamo Bay. Does torture work? It is episode three of a short series of podcasts calling for the closure of Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
00:00:46 Prof Malcolm Evans
Guantanamo Bay itself opened in 2002, and so here we are, a shameful 20th anniversary of the Guantanamo detention camp.
00:01:00 Prof Malcolm Evans
Mohamedou is a Mauritanian citizen who was detained at Guantanamo for 14 years without charge.
00:01:09 Prof Malcolm Evans
In this podcast we are going to spend a little time hearing from Mohamedou of his experience of Guantanamo Bay, of the experience of being a victim of torture.
00:01:25 Prof Malcolm Evans
I should say before we start this podcast, there may be descriptions of torture and listeners should be aware of that.
00:01:36 Prof Malcolm Evans
I started by asking Mohamedou if torture works.
00:01:43 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
I get very uncomfortable.
00:01:45 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Especially with an asset of America.
00:01:48 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
With the question whether torture works? Because if they say it works, then they will come back and torture us. If they say it doesn’t work, then I have to bet on.
00:02:03 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Their verdict?
00:02:05 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Cannot. I’m not philosopher, but I can tell you.
00:02:09 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
In my experience, so when I was under pain, I did not care about the punishment that would befall me. I only wanted them to stop the pain. And this is like on record. This is not something that a story. This is on record that.
00:02:29 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Could be shown to you.
00:02:32 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
That when.
00:02:33 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
He came to me. I remember this. Richard. Julie. His name. Richard. Julie. He’s a very long call. His only qualification for Bataan. Obey that. He was involved in torturing black people and putting them in prison.
00:02:47 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Turned out, hopefully some of them spent about 20 years in prison. Hopefully conviction. He was securing wrongful conviction of black people by torturing them. He was the best candidate to come to Guantanamo Bay, taking the beautiful experience of Chicago Police Department.
00:03:07 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
He came to one.
00:03:10 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Because after 70 days of torture, I didn’t feel anything. I was like a stone. They asked me. I said nothing. No, no answer. Just like you interrogating a stone.
00:03:22 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
And he wanted really, to change the game because he want to quote UN quote, breaking. I was broken. But in a way that I was useless.
00:03:31 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
And he want really to give me a job job when they call it a job, like electricity job. Yeah. He came to. He said he would kidnap my man.
00:03:41 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
And she would be.
00:03:43 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
He inferred he didn’t say it, but.
00:03:45 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
He said in.
00:03:46 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Men only prison. I will put her.
00:03:49 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Then I was like.
00:03:51 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
00:03:53 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Anything you want, I will say anything once. I will. And then I wrote a confession of a fictional operation that never happened. He was later, like CIA later told him. And FBI turned out this didn’t happen. He didn’t do this. We know he didn’t do it.
00:04:11 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
And then they came back to, they said we want to put them on polygraph. I was so scared. I don’t want polygraph because polygraph will reveal the truth. I don’t want them to know the truth because the truth means torture.
00:04:25 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
The lie means freedom of touching, I said. I don’t want polygraph, he said. The government said you need, but I said if I do the polygraph, I will.
00:04:35 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Take back everything.
00:04:37 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Because I didn’t tell you the truth.
00:04:41 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
He was very angry, but he said the government was and then not once. Twice they did the polygraph and every single time.
00:04:50 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
I was completely and 100% acquitted by this, you know friend of mine that is a computer and this is short. I don’t know any case in Guantanamo Bay where it worked. Not one single person that I know from my code.
00:05:09 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Chemist, who was tortured, admit.
00:05:12 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Did admit to something that they did?
00:05:15 Nancy Hollander
One question that is often asked is whether it’s ever possible to come to terms with one’s experience with what has happened to you, what what is your reflection on that?
00:05:27 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
And a lot of people.
00:05:29 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Tell me, are you say you forgave people and so you just want to promote yourself, which is correct, actually.
00:05:36 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
So I really, really mean and I tell you why. When I was kidnapped, I was taken by a special unit Jordanian unit.
00:05:48 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
The one who spoke to me spoke in Jordanian accent, and there are others who didn’t speak. I don’t know from what country they were. They were those Black ninja type.
00:06:01 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Where you cannot say anything.
00:06:04 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
I stayed eight months.
00:06:06 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
In dark prison, I don’t know where later on, I think it’s in Jordan.
00:06:12 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Most of the time I didn’t know day from night and then I would count in my head.
00:06:19 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
After eight months.
00:06:21 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Later on I realized I lost 10 days. I don’t know how. No clue.
00:06:26 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
So they came to me one day after this, eight-month, one of the guards threw a garbage bag. Black. You know, those heavy duty bags? Throw it, he said. You going home.
00:06:39 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
And I start crying more like when. After eight months in darkness.
00:06:44 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
In interrogation threat meeting.
00:06:48 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
You are so vulnerable and I was crying. I didn’t know because.
00:06:54 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
I felt only safe in the cell. I didn’t want anyone I didn’t want.
00:07:00 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Any contact and then he said you go on home.
00:07:03 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
And then.
00:07:05 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
They took me, you know, blindfolded me, took me and I sat in front of middle-aged men. Little bit big.
00:07:13 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
And then he was telling me he throw my port money. I remember I had my German driver license. Canadian driver License I had, I think 30 or $80.00 on me, some more Italian change, he said count and ID card. He said count I did like.
00:07:34 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Anything I said? Yes. OK. I don’t know what he expected me actually to tell.
00:07:39 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Him. No, you need to give me my money back.
00:07:42 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Like this is like.
00:07:45 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
People who have the full backing and support of the most powerful country in the world to do whatever they need to do.
00:07:56 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
And they took me and they put me in track. And then I was again blind for the.
00:08:03 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
And earmuff.
00:08:05 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
They played Abdul Halim Havel, who knows Abdul Halim ham. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. All of those who don’t know that harem how don’t deserve to come here. It’s a very big Egyptian thing. They did this music loud music to disorientate me and not let me.
00:08:25 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Listen to their communication, you know, but I really prefer other honey than their communications.
00:08:33 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
And then I said I want to pee. But I was so scared to tell them I want to pee because I didn’t want them. See their mind and say you are not going on. So. And I kept so it was so much painful. Then all of a sudden after two hours I could hear the roar of the plane. The engine.
00:08:53 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
And then.
00:08:55 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Someone starts just like ripping through my clothes.
00:08:58 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
And then they stripped me naked completely, and then only my like, but for left. And then it seemed he is a doctor, you know, took a little bit to tell me, like to open my mouth. And I saw his arm is blunt.
00:09:15 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
So I know this is I’m in the hands of the US.
00:09:19 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
And then.
00:09:21 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
I it came to my mind those horrific documentaries I watched about American prison and the violence in American prison. I know I’m not going back home.
00:09:32 Nancy Hollander
I don’t think we’re ever going to stop torture. We’re the only species on the face of the earth that tortures its victims.
00:09:37 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Hmm.
00:09:40 Nancy Hollander
Animals kill, they kill to eat. The lion kills the lion Cubs that aren’t his because that’s what he does so that he can make more lion Cubs. But he doesn’t torture them. He just kills them. No other species tortures.
00:09:58 Nancy Hollander
I don’t know what it is about humans, but I think you have to just take one case at a time. Change one person’s life. That person goes out and does other things. Muhammad, who succeeded his book, I believe, helped get him out and then.
00:10:16 Nancy Hollander
The movie was supposed to help get him out, but then it didn’t happen and I gave up. I wasn’t interested in the movie anymore and all of a sudden it it came back and we realized Mohamedou, who and I realized this movie can make a difference.
00:10:30 Nancy Hollander
This movie can get the conversation of Guantanamo out there again so that the government gets pushed to get the other 39 out, and that’s our goal. It won’t stop torture in another country. But if we can close Guantanamo, we will have changed the lives of the 39.
00:10:51 Nancy Hollander
People who are there and that’s huge and that’s what lawyers can do.
00:10:56
Well.
00:10:57 Prof Malcolm Evans
That was Mohammedou Ould Slahi and Nancy Hollander speaking at the University of Bristol’s human Rights Implementation Centre in March 2022.
00:11:11 Prof Malcolm Evans
The human Rights Implementation Centre is one of the world’s most prominent organisations working for the prevention of torture and ill treatment around the world.
00:11:23 Prof Malcolm Evans
Please use bristol.ac.uk/research, hyphen, Guantanamo or the link in the podcast description to find out more about this work.
00:11:38 Prof Malcolm Evans
And I would like to welcome back Nancy.
00:11:40 Prof Malcolm Evans
Hollander to the podcast.
00:11:43 Prof Malcolm Evans
To reflect and to comment on what we’ve heard about torture, I’d like to start Nancy by referring to something that Mohamedou said.
00:11:54 Prof Malcolm Evans
In his book.
00:11:56 Prof Malcolm Evans
And that is that he and I quote, yes, every accusation. Now I think this is important because many claim that torture was.
00:12:07
Books.
00:12:08 Prof Malcolm Evans
I would like to start.
00:12:09 Prof Malcolm Evans
Off by asking you to comment on the claim that is sometimes made that torture may be an evil, but sometimes it’s a necessary evil, or indeed the lesser of two evils. How would you respond to that?
00:12:25 Nancy Hollander
Thanks, Malcolm. That’s such an important question because first of all.
00:12:30 Nancy Hollander
Torture, in my view, is morally abhorrent and can’t be used. Secondly, it is illegal under federal law. In the US state law in the US, International law, treaties, etcetera. It can’t be used and I want to go back to that in a minute when we.
00:12:49 Nancy Hollander
Talk about whether it is being used.
00:12:52 Nancy Hollander
But the issue of does it work?
00:12:56 Nancy Hollander
Historically, it does not work.
00:12:59 Nancy Hollander
People will say just about anything to make the torture stop.
00:13:04 Nancy Hollander
In Mohamedou’s case, he was emphatically denying everything correctly because he was innocent, and then they started torturing him. But then they also asked questions like this. I can tell you some that are public, for example.
00:13:22 Nancy Hollander
Mohamedou you intended to blow up the tower in Toronto, didn’t you? Yes. And that was for Al Qaeda, wasn’t it? Yes. Well, in the 1st place, Mohamedou was being tortured and hoped that answering these questions, yes, would make the torture stop. And in the second place, he didn’t even know if there was a tower.
00:13:43 Nancy Hollander
In Toronto and.
00:13:44 Nancy Hollander
Act there’s no evidence that anyone was going to blow up a tower in Toronto, and those were the kinds of questions they were asking. What finally broke him? I think more than anything, more than taking him out on a boat more than breaking his ribs more than telling him he was going to be put in a hole and no one was gonna ever know where he was at.
00:14:05 Nancy Hollander
Mr. Ex told them more than the physical pain of the torture was when a man who in Guantanamo and in the film is known as Captain Collins, who in reality is Richard Zuli, a cop from Chicago and indeed a bad cop.
00:14:25 Nancy Hollander
From Chicago, and he brought the methods he had used there to torture people and get innocent people to confess to Guantanamo. And he brought a letter to Mohamedou . The letter itself is not public, but we know what it says and can talk about that. And the letter said in essence.
00:14:46 Nancy Hollander
If you don’t talk to us, we’re going to bring your mother to Guantanamo and he says to Mohamedou , I can’t promise that she’ll be safe here with all these men and at that.
00:14:59 Nancy Hollander
White. It was over for him, he said. I’ll say anything you want and they stopped torturing him while he, yes.
00:15:08 Nancy Hollander
But he was always till the moment he left Guantanamo, afraid that the torture could begin again. And that fear itself was in many ways torture. He was put into solitary confinement, which the UN has decided his torture after a number of days.
00:15:28 Nancy Hollander
And he was there for me.
00:15:30 Nancy Hollander
But the bottom line is I don’t care whether it works or not, we can’t do it. And in reality there is no evidence historically that it does work.
00:15:42 Prof Malcolm Evans
And as a lawyer, what use possibly could such information be resulting from such treatment if it were, for example, to be tried to use be used within courts within the US legal process, for example?
00:15:57 Nancy Hollander
That raises another.
00:16:00 Nancy Hollander
There have been incidents in the US they’ve tried to use it and have failed, but recently in another case in Guantanamo, not Mohamedou ‘s that I’m involved in, Ibrahima Lasri, the judge in the military Commission, said that it was OK to use tortured.
00:16:19 Nancy Hollander
Evidence in pretrial.
00:16:21 Nancy Hollander
If the judge thought it was reliable and that is now being litigated as we speak, the government backed off it to some degree. But where he came up with that, nobody knows. But talking about the military commissions as a whole, other discussion about what we in the US would call a kangaroo.
00:16:42 Nancy Hollander
Port it’s not a real court under the US legal system.
00:16:48 Prof Malcolm Evans
Could that be the very reason why they think it might be? Because, of course, the UN Convention against Torture prohibits the use of evidence acquired through torture, and particularly confession evidence being used in court proceedings.
00:17:03 Nancy Hollander
Yes, it does, and the judge took that to mean in trial. That treaty also says that when someone has been tortured, the torturers or suspected tortures are supposed to be prosecuted.
00:17:18 Nancy Hollander
And that the people who’ve been tortured are supposed to receive damages. Now, this is not the first treaty the United States has broken. It has a history of breaking treaties and violating treaties. But this is a very clear requirement of the Convention against Torture that the US.
00:17:38 Nancy Hollander
Has simply ignore.
00:17:40 Prof Malcolm Evans
And to your knowledge, has the interrogation tactics that were used at Guantanamo actually contributed to the securing of any convictions at a criminal trial?
00:17:50 Nancy Hollander
No, they have not. There was a film that came out thirty dark 30 something because I hated it so much. I can never remember its name, which tried to argue that torture worked. But it does not and it has not.
00:18:04 Prof Malcolm Evans
So I think I know what you’re going to say, but I want to ask you the question anyway. What has the use of these torture tactics actually achieve then?
00:18:13 Nancy Hollander
Well, I don’t think they’ve achieved anything now. There may have been cases in the US historically where torture was used and it wasn’t described as torture, which is what the government has tried to do here that has been used historically, fear as a torture method has certainly been used in the past in legal cases.
00:18:35 Nancy Hollander
But.
00:18:36 Nancy Hollander
We that should not be the precedent that the US follows. We hope that the United States government has learned from that and will not continue to use it, but on the other hand, the US will never admit fully except Obama said. We tortured some folks, which I found an offensive way to refer to people as some folks.
00:19:00 Nancy Hollander
We tortured men and in one case.
00:19:03 Nancy Hollander
Woman and probably other women and his response then was well, we’re not going to do any reconciliation. We’re not going to prosecute anyone even though we know who did these things.
00:19:17 Nancy Hollander
We’re going to look forward and my response as a criminal defense lawyer to that was, well, maybe I can just go into court with a client who robbed a bank or raped a woman and say, Your honor, we’re not gonna prosecute. We just should look forward.
00:19:34 Nancy Hollander
And of course, that’s ridiculous.
00:19:36 Nancy Hollander
But that’s the position that President Obama took admitted people have been tortured and then failed to prosecute anyone. And we.
00:19:46 Nancy Hollander
Know who tortured Mohamedou .
00:19:49 Nancy Hollander
They’ve spoken out.
00:19:50 Prof Malcolm Evans
And don’t you think it’s?
00:19:52 Prof Malcolm Evans
A little odd? Or how do you respond?
00:19:55 Prof Malcolm Evans
And to ohh how really did the US respond to it rather than you given that the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil Political Rights, just about every single human rights instrument that has ever been drafted, many of which, of course are binding on the the United States, says that quote.
00:20:15 Prof Malcolm Evans
No one shall be subject to torture in human or degrading treatment or punishment without exception.
00:20:21 Nancy Hollander
Without exception, you’re absolutely right, without exception.
00:20:25 Nancy Hollander
So as I said at the beginning, it is in my view, morally, law. It’s illegal under the US criminal system to torture someone and every single instrument and treaty that the US has signed. Common article three of the Geneva Convention.
00:20:45 Nancy Hollander
And of course the ones you mentioned and specifically the Convention against Torture the US has signed all of these, but yet the US will.
00:20:54 Nancy Hollander
Not agree to let itself be prosecuted under the International Criminal Court.
00:21:01 Nancy Hollander
And we know the reason for that is that it’s afraid that.
00:21:06 Nancy Hollander
That court will prosecute people.
00:21:09 Prof Malcolm Evans
And isn’t it possibly one of these strangest things? Oddest and most frightening things about the construction of Guantanamo, its placement, etcetera, was that it was deliberately designed to try to avoid lawful scrutiny in the first place.
00:21:24 Nancy Hollander
Absolutely. I understand. They looked at some other places.
00:21:29 Nancy Hollander
And they picked Guantanamo because it is, although under US rents it from Cuba into perpetuity. And I guess it’s a lease. But the government took the position that it wasn’t the US, it was Cuban. And of course, the United States Supreme Court knocked that down.
00:21:48 Nancy Hollander
On every time it came up, but at first they said there would be no petition for writ of habeas corpus. The prisoners can file them, but they don’t get any relief. And finally, the US Supreme Court, in the fifth of the series of cases, a case called Bolivian, that was the name of the prisoner.
00:22:08 Nancy Hollander
Brought the case that they could not only petition in the US District Court, but they could have hearings and those hearings would matter. And yet then.
00:22:21 Nancy Hollander
When they began to have these hearings and the judges were finding in favor of the detainees because the government had no or almost no evidence against them.
00:22:33 Nancy Hollander
The Obama administration’s Justice Department appealed almost all of them. Most people could have walked out. Muhammadu could have walked out. I attribute the fact that he spent the another, what, seven years in prison after the judge ruled in his favor. I attribute that to.
00:22:53 Nancy Hollander
Obama.
00:22:54 Nancy Hollander
Because it was Obama who said his Justice Department under his attorney general, appealed virtually all of them. The government can’t speak out of both sides of its mouth. But in fact, that’s what it did.
00:23:08 Prof Malcolm Evans
And there has been a lot of attempting to justify that, which must have been known to have simply been unjustifiable.
00:23:16 Nancy Hollander
Yes, absolutely, absolutely. And then we come to, we’ll skip over Trump because there’s no point in talking about what he did. And we come to President Biden, who also.
00:23:30 Nancy Hollander
Said he wanted to close Guantanamo and only just now has set up a procedure to start to do that. Half of the 37 people who are still there have already been cleared or released.
00:23:43 Prof Malcolm Evans
Well, perhaps we’ll leave it on the this podcast there for now, and we’ll pick up on that in the last podcast in this series, looking at the potential options for the closure of Guantanamo. Why perhaps it doesn’t happen, and some of the broader questions concerning how we treat people in detention and oversee.
00:24:04 Prof Malcolm Evans
And scrutinised to try to make sure that people are not tortured and ill treated whilst they’re in detention, but for now, thank you very much, Nancy.
00:24:12 Nancy Hollander
Thank you, Malcolm.
00:24:14 Prof Malcolm Evans
If you’ve been.
00:24:15 Prof Malcolm Evans
Inspired by the conversations in this podcast.
00:24:19 Prof Malcolm Evans
And want to find.
00:24:20 Prof Malcolm Evans
Out more about the torture prevention work of the University of Bristol’s human Rights Implementation Centre.
00:24:27 Prof Malcolm Evans
And the role you could play as a researcher, as a student, or as a potential partner.
00:24:34 Prof Malcolm Evans
Please use Bristol ac.uk/research Guantanamo or the link in the podcast description to find out more about this world.
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