My Guantánamo nightmare detainee makes publishing history

In August 2003, the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, authorised a plan to subject Guantánamo Bay detainee Mohamedou Ould Slahi to "special interrogation", whereby he would be put through a fake rendition process and led to believe he had been delivered to another country to be subjected to more brutal treatment. On August 24, an interrogation team burst into his isolation cell. In his diary, Slahi describes what followed:

"Blindfold the motherf***er if he tries to look ..." One of them hit me hard across the face, and quickly put the goggles on my eyes, ear muffs on my ears, and a small bag over my head. I couldn't tell who did what. They tightened the chains around my ankles and my wrists; afterwards, I started to bleed.

All I could hear was _____ cursing, "F-this and F-that!" I didn't say a word, I was overwhelmingly surprised, I thought they were going to execute me.

Thanks to the beating I wasn't able to stand, so _____ and the other guard dragged me out with my toes tracing the way and threw me in a truck, which immediately took off. The beating party would go on for the next three or four hours before they turned me over to another team that was going to use different torture techniques.

"Stop praying, motherf***er, you're killing people," _____ said, and punched me hard on my mouth. My mouth and nose started to bleed, and my lips grew so big that I technically could not speak any more. The colleague of _____turned out to be one of my guards, _____________________________.

_____ and __________ each took a side and started to punch me and smash me against the metal of the truck. One of the guys hit me so hard that my breath stopped and I was choking; I felt like I was breathing through my ribs. I almost suffocated without their knowledge ...

After 10 to 15 minutes, the truck stopped at the beach, and my escorting team dragged me out of the truck and put me in a high-speed boat ... Inside the boat, _____ made me drink salt water, I believe it was directly from the ocean. It was so nasty I threw up. They would put any object in my mouth and shout, "Swallow, motherf***er!", but I decided inside not to swallow the organ-damaging salt water, which choked me when they kept pouring it in my mouth. "Swallow, you idiot!" I contemplated quickly, and decided for the nasty, damaging water rather than death.

_____ and ____________ escorted me for about three hours in the high-speed boat.

The goal of such a trip was, first, to torture the detainee and claim that "the detainee hurt himself during transport," and second, to make the detainee believe he was being transferred to some far, faraway secret prison. We detainees knew all of that; we had detainees reporting they had been flown around for four hours and found themselves in the same jail where they started. I knew from the beginning that I was going to be transferred to ____________ ______, about a five-minute ride. __________________ had a very bad reputation: just hearing the name gave me nausea. I knew the whole long trip I was going to take was meant to terrorise me. But what difference does it make? I cared less about the place, and more about the people who were detaining me ...

When the boat reached the coast, _____ and his colleague dragged me out and made me sit, crossing my legs. I was moaning from the unbearable pain.

"Uh ... Uh ... ALLAH ... ALLAH ... I told you not to f*** with us, didn't I?" said Mr X, mimicking me. I hoped I could stop moaning, because the gentleman kept mimicking me and blaspheming the Lord. However, the moaning was necessary so I could breathe. My feet were numb, for the chains stopped the blood circulation to my hands and my feet; I was happy for every kick I got so I could alter my position. "Do not move motherf***er!" said _____, but sometimes I couldn't help changing position; it was worth the kick.

"We appreciate everybody who works with us, thanks gentlemen," said ____________ _____. I recognised his voice; although he was addressing his Arab guests, the message was addressed to me more than anybody. It was night time. My blindfold didn't keep me from feeling the bright lighting from some kind of high-watt projectors ...

After about 40 minutes, I couldn't really tell, ___________ ___ instructed the Arabic team to take over. The two guys grabbed me roughly, and since I couldn't walk on my own, they dragged me on the tips of my toes to the boat. I must have been very near the water, because the trip to the boat was short. I don't know. They either put me in another boat or in a different seat. This seat was both hard and straight.

"Move!"

"I can't move!"

"Move, f***er!" They gave this order knowing that I was too hurt to be able to move. After all I was bleeding from my mouth, my ankles, my wrists, and maybe my nose, I couldn't tell for sure. But the team wanted to keep the factor of fear and terror maintained.

"Sit!" said the Egyptian guy, who did most of the talking while both were pulling me down until I hit the metal. The Egyptian sat on my right side, and the Jordanian on my left.

"What's your f***ing name?" asked the Egyptian.

"M-O-O-H-H-M-M-EE-D-D-O-O-O-U!" I answered. Technically I couldn't speak because of the swollen lips and hurting mouth. You could tell I was completely scared. Usually I wouldn't talk if somebody starts to hurt me. In Jordan, when the interrogator smashed me in the face, I refused to talk, ignoring all his threats. This was a milestone in my interrogation history. You can tell I was hurt like never before; it wasn't me any more, and I would never be the same as before. A thick line was drawn between my past and my future with the first hit _____ delivered to me.

"He is like a kid!" said the Egyptian accurately, addressing his Jordanian colleague. I felt warm between them both, though not for long. With the co-operation of the Americans, a long torture trip was being prepared.

I was literally suffocating inside the bag around my head. All my pleas and my begging ended in a cul-de-sac ...

I couldn't sit straight in the chair. They put me in a kind of thick jacket which fastened me to the seat. It was a good feeling. However, there was a destroying drawback to it: my chest was so tightened that I couldn't breathe properly. Plus, the air circulation was worse than the first trip. I didn't know why, exactly, but something was definitely going wrong.

"I c... a ... c ... n't ... br ... e ... a ... the!"

"Suck the air!" said the Egyptian wryly. I was literally suffocating inside the bag around my head. All my pleas and my begging for some free air ended in a cul-de-sac.

I heard indistinct conversations in English, I think it was _____ and his colleague, and probably _________________. Whoever it was, they were supplying the Arab team with torture materials during the three- or four-hour trip. The order went as follows: They stuffed the air between my clothes and me with ice cubes from my neck to my ankles, and whenever the ice melted, they put in new, hard ice cubes. Moreover, every once in a while, one of the guards smashed me, most of the time in the face. The ice served both for the pain and for wiping out the bruises I had from that afternoon.

Everything seemed to be perfectly prepared. People from cold regions might not understand the extent of the pain when ice cubes get stuck on your body. Historically, kings during medieval and pre-medieval times used this method to let the victim slowly die.

The other method, of hitting the blindfolded victim at inconsistent intervals, was used by the Nazis during World War2. There is nothing more terrorising than making somebody expect a smash every single heartbeat.

• Redactions marked in the text were made by the US government when Slahi's diary was cleared for public release
• Guantánamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi will be available in South Africa from next month (Canongate, R295)

A  terrifying glimpse

In Guantánamo Diary, the first book written by a detainee still imprisoned in the notorious detention centre, prisoner Ould Slahi describes the frightening details of the US rendition and torture programme from the perspective of one of its victims.

The publication follows a six-year battle for the manuscript to be declassified.

Slahi describes the torture and humiliation that began in his native Mauritania, North Africa, more than 13 years ago and progressed through Jordan and Afghanistan before he was flown to the US for detention in Guantánamo, Cuba, in August 2002 as prisoner number 760.

Despite many legal battles to free him, Slahi is still being held in Guantánamo with no imminent hope of release.

Slahi is being held on suspicion of being involved in an unsuccessful plot to bomb Los Angeles international airport, nicknamed the Millennium Plot, while living in Canada in 1999.

Slahi travelled to Afghanistan in December 1990 "to support the mujahideen". At that time, the mujahideen in Afghanistan were attempting to topple the Soviet-backed regime.

Slahi trained in an al- Qaeda camp and swore allegiance to the group in March 1991. He claims that he later severed all ties with al-Qaeda.

The US government maintains that Slahi "recruited for al-Qaeda and provided it with other support".

Slahi turned himself in to Mauritanian authorities for questioning about the Millennium Plot on November 20 2001.

He was detained for seven days and questioned by Mauritanian officers and by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Eventually, the CIA rendered him to Jordan where he was held for eight months at a black site, a CIA prison abroad.

Slahi claims that he was tortured by the Jordanians.

After being flown to Afghanistan and held for two weeks, he was transferred to military custody and the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba in 2002.

In 2004 a military lawyer refused to play any further part in the prosecution on the grounds that the evidence against him was the product of torture.

The American Civil Liberties Union has launched an online petition calling for Slahi's release. Hina Shamsi, director of the organisation's national security project, said: "Mohamedou Slahi is an innocent man whom the United States brutally tortured and has held unlawfully for over a decade.

"He doesn't present a threat to the US and has never taken part in any hostilities against it."

The detainee's lawyer, Nancy Hollander, said: "Mohamedou has never been charged with anything. The US has never charged him with a crime. There is no crime to charge him with.

"It's not that they haven't found the evidence against him - there isn't evidence against him.

"He's in what I would consider a horrible legal limbo, and it's just tragic: he needs to go home." - Source: The Guardian, Wikipedia