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.
Kicking off this extraordinary series, we hear first-hand from Mohamedou Ould Slahi who exposed the use of torture at Guantánamo, smuggling out facts about his experience in letters to his lawyer, Nancy Hollander. Nancy joins with Professor Sir Malcolm Evans to extend the conversation and discuss her role in sharing the story, the first and only memoir by a still-imprisoned Guantánamo detainee, that helped secure his freedom.
For further reading: “Guantanamo, Torture and Mechanisms for Change.”
If you’re interested in related study or research, please have a look at our LLM Human Rights Law and our PhD in Law.
Image Credit: University of Bristol
Transcript:
00:00:05 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. And I’m also the former chair.
00:00:21 Prof Malcolm Evans
Of the United Nations Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture.
00:00:30 Prof Malcolm Evans
This is Guantanamo Bay, a prisoner story.
00:00:34 Prof Malcolm Evans
It is episode one of a short series of podcasts from the University of Bristol calling for the closure of Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
00:00:49 Prof Malcolm Evans
In March 2022, the human Rights Implementation Centre at Bristol hosted Mohamedou Ould Slahi
00:00:57 Prof Malcolm Evans
and Nancy Hollander. Mohamedou is a Mauritanian citizen who was detained at Guantanamo for 14 years without charge.
00:01:10 Prof Malcolm Evans
Nancy Hollander, an internationally renowned criminal defence lawyer, represented him across much of that time.
00:01:20 Prof Malcolm Evans
Mohammadu during his time in Guantanamo, was able to write a book, Guantanamo diary, that was published in 2015.
00:01:31 Prof Malcolm Evans
And in 2021 it was adapted into the film the Mauritanian.
00:01:39 Prof Malcolm Evans
Nancy Hollander will be joining me later. But first, let’s listen to an extract of the tour.
00:01:47 Prof Malcolm Evans
I started by asking Mohammadu what his motivations were for writing the book.
00:01:54 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
I always tell people that I’m a writer by accident. You know, the circumstances forced me to be a writer. I never wanted to do anything with what they’re calling German guys this with the Shafter.
00:02:07 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
That is the human sciences because.
00:02:11 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
They were not measurable for me, but they have a saying in Africa until the line.
00:02:19 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Learns to write.
00:02:22 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
The hunter will always write the story.
00:02:25 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
And I found myself the people telling me I’m a bad person every day, taking me to interrogation. And they tell me I’m a killer. And that’s not my family raised me to be a good guy. My grandmother told me that if I give charity one, I get back from about 10.
00:02:45 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
And then if I do good deed then allow rewarding if I have a very long life, I go to Amma, then I will go to heaven. Why should I do bad things when so much at?
00:03:00 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Stake for me.
00:03:02 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
And I just want because there was only one story, the story that the US chose to put out there. And I want to counter it. I wasn’t allowed to have pen or paper. I used to steal from my neighbor.
00:03:16 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
You know nothing. Say, thou shalt not steal from thy neighbor. I love him, but I.
00:03:21 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Steal from it.
00:03:23 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
So and of course this is like a deliberate act from the interrogative team to put people in the same blood, and some of them give them food.
00:03:33 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Their next no food. Some give them pen and paper next, but they we answer the game and my brothers called detainees know that they would let me borrow their present. I keep writing. Writing, right. I didn’t speak enough English to write, but I wrote in Arabic, German and French and a little bit.
00:03:56 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
English, but just to learn, and I was completely confused because I have British code detainees who spoke in a completely different way than the American. I was saying who is right?
00:04:10 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Then I would write these sentences and I would.
00:04:12 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Like memorize? Memorize more, right?
00:04:15 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Then one day.
00:04:17 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
In May of 2003, they came to me. They took everything.
00:04:22 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
I had written to up to that point, and then they took me to the torso program and then everything stopped until Nancy came before they told me she was coming. They told me you can write her. And then I started writing, writing, and then I managed to write 162 or 63 pages.
00:04:42 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
How how many pages?
00:04:43 Nancy Hollander
00:04:44 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
363 and then I came to her because I used to watch two of my favorite shows.
00:04:51 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Law and order.
00:04:53 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
With there is offence. Who is his law and order?
00:04:56 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
This is very fake. American are not like that. If you don’t have a lot of money, you ain’t gonna win, you know. So. And I was. Yeah. This is America. You know what? I will win and I will get a lot.
00:05:10 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Of money, you.
00:05:11 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Know actually I was very materialistic, still a little bit.
00:05:16 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
So then I watch married with children.
00:05:21 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Anyone know that too so?
00:05:24 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Face.
00:05:25 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Funny and the American rule of law. And this was only a very big mix up mistake and nice. You know, I was so happy when she came to me and then I want to hand her my story because I kept writing because I couldn’t tell her that because the time was limited. And then I gave it to her and she told.
00:05:46 Nancy Hollander
Me.
00:05:47 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
I remember, she said. Keep writing and then I went back and then I kept writing.
00:05:53 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
And then and then I repeated what I gave her, and within three months.
00:05:58 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
I smuggled everything I wrote because I know they may come back and take it from me and I sent it in a very small right.
00:06:08 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Thing and then in different letters, so they would think this is just normal correspondence you really.
00:06:14 Prof Malcolm Evans
Wrote it really in the context of communications with Nancy.
00:06:19 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Correct as letters.
00:06:20 Prof Malcolm Evans
As letters. So in a way, the text of the book, one might wonder, well, how do you write a book in those circumstances? In a way, it was sort of smuggled out.
00:06:29 Prof Malcolm Evans
You know, under the veil of client confidentiality in the sense because you were able to communicate with your lawyer and this was one way of getting your, should we say the other part of your story out. So it’s not just writing a book, it’s writing a book in the clandestine way. It’s communicating it in a clandestine way.
00:06:49 Prof Malcolm Evans
So what did it feel like trying to do that when you were actually not reflecting on your experiences you were describing what was happening to you at that time? How did it feel?
00:07:00 Prof Malcolm Evans
Deal looking back on it to be trying to write a book about your experiences when what you were recording and reflecting on was what was going on around you at that time.
00:07:12 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
I I was so assisted.
00:07:14 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
To tell my family and the world I am not a bad guy because.
00:07:19 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
In my country, it’s very bad to be bad. So. So I just won’t tell them I’m not what Americans say because my family at some point, they told me later on they didn’t know what to believe because everybody was telling I was involved in this horrific acts that had so many innocent.
00:07:39 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Lives taken.
00:07:40 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
And the the propaganda machine of.
00:07:45 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Any government, let alone the United States government, it’s very powerful, you know, they.
00:07:50 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
They create, you know, story. They create fake narrative. And I felt good because.
00:07:58 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
I was telling my story. At least one person was listening. Nancy, at least one person was listening.
00:08:05 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
You know, honestly, I I felt good, you know, and I was hiding. I didn’t let anyone read anything. And then.
00:08:12 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Put it very quickly in letters, then gave it to. I have to.
00:08:16 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Con special guards.
00:08:19 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
They call them the privileged team, no?
00:08:21 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
I love Americans because.
00:08:23 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
They are so fake words, you know, like Patriot Act.
00:08:28 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
It’s not like I’m gonna screw really bad act Patriot Act. Who is going to be against patriotism?
00:08:38 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
And then privileged team, you know what privileged team means previously mean people between me and my lawyer who can see what I write to my lawyer. Privilege team.
00:08:51 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
But there there are certain conditions, but the bottom line they have so much control they should not have in the.
00:08:58 Mohamedou Ould Slahi
You know, those people are governments who stand between me and my privileged communication.
00:09:04 Prof Malcolm Evans
That was Mohammed UID Slahi, speaking at the University of Bristol’s human Rights Implementation Center in March 2022. The human Rights Implementation Center is one of the world’s most prominent organizations, working for the prevention of torture and ill treatment.
00:09:25 Prof Malcolm Evans
Around.
00:09:25 Prof Malcolm Evans
World.
00:09:26 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.
00:09:42 Prof Malcolm Evans
But now we want to move on to discuss both a talk and some issues arising from the talk and joining me to do that is criminal defence lawyer Nancy Hollander. She represented Mohamedou at Guantanamo Bay and was one of the first people to read what is now.
00:10:02 Prof Malcolm Evans
Guantanamo diary.
00:10:04
00:10:05 Prof Malcolm Evans
And there is a story as to why she was one of the first to read what is now Guantanamo diary.
00:10:13 Prof Malcolm Evans
Nancy.
00:10:14 Prof Malcolm Evans
That book is an extraordinary work, and it is extraordinary in so many ways.
00:10:21 Prof Malcolm Evans
It’s extraordinary because how it came to be about as well As for what it is.
00:10:27 Prof Malcolm Evans
Theirs, and indeed the impact that it has had, what I’d like to do is to start by asking you.
00:10:34 Prof Malcolm Evans
What it was like to be a part, a crucial part of the story of bringing that book and Muhammadu story to the world.
00:10:44 Nancy Hollander
Thank you, Malcolm. The book had a long history. It started right after I saw Mohamedou for the first time in around July of 2005. I wrote to him and said, could you please tell me right everything your interrogators have ask.
00:11:04 Nancy Hollander
You I was mostly trying, I’d learned because he had given me a book already of 100 odd pages that he I knew he could write, and I knew he could write in English, even though his vocabulary at that time was quite limited and I was basically I I wanted the answers. But more than that I wanted to give him something to do.
00:11:27 Nancy Hollander
I wanted him to feel that we were cooperating, that we were a team. Well, he was a little bit angry at me.
00:11:35 Nancy Hollander
And he wrote a letter which was later published saying I was interrogated for 18 hours a day for almost a year. That’s like asking Charlie Sheen how many girlfriends he’s had. Then I realized.
00:11:49 Nancy Hollander
That he also had an incredible sense of humor. But he started doing it anyway. I told him to send it to me in small letters, dear Nancy, and send it up four or five pages at a time because it had to clear a privileged team and it had to be a part of his defense.
00:12:11 Nancy Hollander
Otherwise it would have to go through regular mail and we would never get it and he proceeded to do it, and after a few months we had 466 pages and he and I and my Co counsel Terry Duncan realized that it was a book and I.
00:12:30 Nancy Hollander
Proceeded to talk to a couple journalists about it, and then we decided that we wanted to get it out. They have to understand that everything Mohammadu said everything, any of the Guantanamo detainees said was presumed to be classified.
00:12:47 Nancy Hollander
So the privilege team had sent it with some redactions, but they marked it as protected. This was a category that was made-up. It is not an executive order deciding what is or is not classified. They basically made it up and it means we can read it.
00:13:06 Nancy Hollander
They can send it via fax.
00:13:08 Nancy Hollander
Packs.
00:13:09 Nancy Hollander
But no one else outside the team can read it. Basically, we couldn’t show it to the press. And so we began a long series of litigation arguing that we wanted it released.
00:13:21 Nancy Hollander
And the government kept coming back and saying it’s too long. It could have codes in there that we don’t know about and other ridiculous things. Finally, we gave up and we said to Mohammed, if you want this out, you’re going to have to give up the attorney-client privilege and.
00:13:38 Nancy Hollander
He did, and then it went. Who knows where to what equity owners? NSA, CIA, DOJ. We don’t know. It came back two years later.
00:13:50 Nancy Hollander
Still marked protected.
00:13:53 Nancy Hollander
And we had another argument with them, and it went back again. And then finally, after five years, it came back with 2500 redactions. But basically in a form that we could publish, we found an editor. We found a publisher. But that’s the story of why what he wrote in 2000 and.
00:14:13 Nancy Hollander
Five could not get published until 2015.
00:14:19 Prof Malcolm Evans
It is an incredible story. Why did you find it so important to persevere with this aspect? Because presumably this isn’t something that’s normal in your work as a defence attorney.
00:14:32 Nancy Hollander
Well, nothing is normal in my work as a defense attorney, Malcolm, it’s always different. One never knows. But this one we felt was extremely important because Mohammed, who was not making any progress getting out. You have to recall that by that time, the judge.
00:14:52 Nancy Hollander
In his hearing.
00:14:53 Nancy Hollander
Had already decided that he should be immediately released. That was in 2009, because the government could not show almost anything.
00:15:06 Nancy Hollander
To make him detained, I think governments burden was very, very slight, not beyond a reasonable.
00:15:14 Nancy Hollander
Just more likely than not, and the judge found in Mohammed who’s favor. We had appealed the cases back in front of the District Court again, and we were making no progress and we thought that the book might help get him out. And we argued that the Court of public opinion.
00:15:34 Nancy Hollander
Might be the only court he would get, which is a quote from a US Supreme Court case. And we kept saying it.
00:15:41 Nancy Hollander
Over and over.
00:15:42 Nancy Hollander
And hoping that the book would make a difference.
00:15:45 Prof Malcolm Evans
And do you think the book really did make a difference?
00:15:48 Nancy Hollander
I do think that the book made a difference. I think that in the course of time, by the time he got out, it was not through a court of law, but through something called a periodic review board. And I think that they’re reading the books and reading what had happened to him and the torture that he had gone to.
00:16:08 Nancy Hollander
Grew and then that the prosecutor had refused to prosecute the case that they had never even tried to get another prosecutor, which is very unusual. It’s not that unusual that a prosecutor says for various reasons. I won’t prosecute this case 1 judge asked at one point to the government.
00:16:28 Nancy Hollander
Why have you not had another prosecutor and the response was?
00:16:34 Nancy Hollander
We didn’t, period. And I do think the book made a difference.
00:16:39 Prof Malcolm Evans
Clearly it was hugely influential in Mohammadi’s case itself, but did it have any other impact on bringing the realities of what was taking place at Guantanamo in the situation of other detainees there to light? And do you think that has had any impact on the debates about the future of Guantanamo Bay itself?
00:17:02 Nancy Hollander
Book has been published in 27 languages.
00:17:05 Nancy Hollander
In as many countries, it started a tremendous discussion. It was a New York Times bestseller. It was a front page story on the New York review of books.
00:17:19 Nancy Hollander
And.
00:17:21 Nancy Hollander
We certainly hoped that it would make a difference. The other thing was the.
00:17:25 Nancy Hollander
Ill when we were approached Terry and I about a film and Lloyd and Baya Levin, initial producers came to visit us in Albuquerque and said they wanted to make this film at that point. Mohammed, who was still in and we thought this film would have a big impact on getting him out.
00:17:45 Nancy Hollander
He got out before the film was out, but Muhammadu and I and Terry also now believe that the film can continue to make an impact because more people watch movies than read.
00:17:57 Nancy Hollander
Books and we want people to know that Guantanamo still exists. We want the conversation to continue because it was practically dead and.
00:18:08 Nancy Hollander
That’s our hope with this film.
00:18:10 Prof Malcolm Evans
In a sense, I think you’ve almost answered my next question, but let’s see. Do you think that attitudes not just to Guantanamo Bay, but to detention and treatment of detainees more generally might be different if there were more such books, films, or personal accounts of the reality of what happened?
00:18:32 Prof Malcolm Evans
In places of detention, having read the book yourself, being part of the genesis of that and of the film, we see many so-called portrayals of what takes place in places of detention. But do you think they really are as real as they should be and convey the the truth in the way that it should be conveyed if it is going to?
00:18:53 Prof Malcolm Evans
Change hearts and minds to what really goes on in such places.
00:18:58 Nancy Hollander
Well, you made a good point there. When you talk about the truth, there are some films that came out that were not true. That said that torture works, for example, and that were simply not correct. There have been a couple other books now written by former detainees. There’s a documentary.
00:19:18 Nancy Hollander
In addition to Mohammadi’s film about him and a guard, Steve Wood, who has become his good friend, that’s called my Brother’s keeper, and it’s available on YouTube 20 minutes and it’s extremely powerful also.
00:19:34 Nancy Hollander
But yes, I think the more we talk about it, the more we have a handle like the film or the book or other films or other books, the more people will know about it and understand what’s going on. And we have to hope that makes a difference.
00:19:51 Prof Malcolm Evans
And first hand accounts generated under such circumstances of these are truly rare.
00:19:57 Prof Malcolm Evans
They.
00:19:58 Nancy Hollander
They they are rare and of course muhammadu’s is rare because he didn’t have a ghost writer yet an editor. But the editor, Larry seems did not change any of his words, and I know that because Terry and I went through every bit of the galleys to make sure that was true. And now Mohammadu has written what’s called the restored.
00:20:21 Nancy Hollander
Addition, I cannot confirm or deny or make any statement about whether the unredacted parts of that book are accurate, but it is what I would suggest people read.
00:20:35 Nancy Hollander
Because he went back and did that after he got out.
00:20:39 Prof Malcolm Evans
Thank you. We’ll come back to further aspects of the book. The film Guantanamo Bay and the question of torture in subsequent podcasts. Thank you, Nancy.
00:20:53 Nancy Hollander
Thank you, Malcolm.
00:20:58
If you’ve been inspired by the conversations in this podcast.
00:21:02 Prof Malcolm Evans
And want to find out more about the torture prevention work at the University of Bristol’s human Rights Implementation Centre and the role you could play as a researcher as a student.
00:21:16 Prof Malcolm Evans
Or as a potential partner.
00:21:18 Prof Malcolm Evans
Please use Bristol.ac.uk/research Guantanamo or the link in the podcast description to find out more about this world.
Leave a Reply