Larry Siems

I'm recommending this to everyone -- Slahi is the first and so far only person to have been held in Guantánamo and tortured by the US to have written about and published a memoir. Mark Danner in the New York Times wrote that the diary "is the most profound account yet written of what it is like to be that collateral damage" mentioned by our torturer in chief Dick Cheney. This harrowing tale is but one of what will someday be many direct accounts by victims.
Originally from Mauritius, Slahi, 45, was detained on a journey home in January 2000 and questioned about the so-called Millennium plot to bomb the Los Angeles airport. Slahi admitted that he'd fought against Afghanistan's communist government with the mujahedin, at that time supported by the US. But he never opposed the United States. Authorities released him. A year later, the young engineer was again detained and again released. Months later, Slahi drove himself to a local police station to answer questions. This time, Americans forced him onto a CIA plane bound for Jordan, where he claims he was tortured. On August 5, 2002, Americans brought him to Guantánamo. Slahi is among the detainees whose horrific torture there is the centerpiece of the Senate report. None other than then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld signed the "special interrogation plan" authorizing his brutal ordeal. Slahi divides his imprisonment into pre-torture, when he truthfully denied any involvement in terrorism; and post-torture, "where my brake broke loose. I yessed every accusation my interrogators made. I even wrote the infamous confession about me planning to hit the CN tower in Toronto, based on SSG [redacted] advice. I just wanted to get the monkeys off my back."
His captors beat and threatened him, subjected him to bitter cold and sleep deprivation, stress positions and repulsive sexual abuse by female interrogators. Yet with astonishing grace, Slahi seems more traumatized by the torture he witnessed. He saw teenagers who could barely lift their heads, confused old men and others like him who said anything to get the pain to stop. Slahi taught himself English so he could write his 466-page memoir, long kept secret. Once his lawyers got his manuscript released, authorities refused to let Slahi’s editor, journalist Larry Siems, meet him. Siems calls the memoir "a journey through the darkest regions of the United States' post-9/11 detention and interrogation program."… (más)