The Odyssey of Prisoner 760
by John Kendall Hawkins
Salahi... spoke fluent Arabic, French, and German. English was his fourth language. Since he had learned it in captivity, some of his earliest phrases were "I ain't done nothing," "cavity search," "f*ck this," and "f*ck that."
- Ben Taub, "Guantanamo's Darkest Secret," New Yorker, April 15, 2019
It didn't take guard Steve Wood very long to draw the conclusion that his highly secluded prisoner was not the monster his government said he was. In 2004, as a member of the Oregon National Guard, he was deployed to the Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo) and assigned security duty in "a secret, single-occupancy unit" of the detainee camp, Echo Special, where he spent all of his time guarding Mohamedou Ould Salahi, Prisoner 760, regarded then as the crown jewel of al Qaeda mastermindfullness. As New Yorker writer Ben Taub explains in his excellent, and unusual account of doing time together, "Guantanamo's Darkest Secret," when Wood first met Salahi the detainee "reached for a handshake, and said, 'What's up, dude?'" Not too long afterward, Wood began to suspect that the US government had nicknamed "Pillow" and "Forrest Gump," was totally wrong about the guy.
Salahi was detained at Guanta'namo Bay detention camp without charge from 2002 until his release on October 17, 2016. Taub writes, "Military officials considered him 'the poster child for the intelligence effort at Guanta'namo.'" A Department of Defense rap sheet, dated March 2008, and posted on Wikileaks, tells us that Salahi "enemy combatant status was reassessed in December 2004 and he remains an enemy combatant." The sheet notes that "He is highly intelligent and has been cooperative, as long as it does not link him to terrorist activities beyond what he has already conceded: that he is an admitted member of al-Qaida." It justifies his detention by alleging that Salahi "is an associate with and probable recruiter of several 11 September 2001 terrorist attack hijackers." We're told the rationale for his continued detention: "Detainee still has useful information regarding extremist activity in North Africa, Europe, and Canada, as well as information concerning the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks." Sounds like a slam duck.
In 2008, the German magazine Der Spiegel ran an article that essentially indicted Salahi, although no charges had yet been laid. Salahi had spent considerable time in Germany and earned an electrical engineering degree there at Duisberg University. In a long piece, "The Career of Prisoner No. 760," Spiegel, employing die Stimme Gottes reporting, alleged all kinds of things it didn't support. It was a Nuremberg libel rally. They claimed, without attribution or substantiation, that "It is beyond doubt that Slahi was a promoter of global jihad." Spiegel goes on a Nazi-esque rant:
Agents at the FBI and CIA, as well as former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, view Slahi as a central figure in international terrorism, a man partly responsible for murderous attacks on New York and Washington. Rumsfeld, who left office in 2006, was familiar with the Slahi file, and it was Rumsfeld who issued a direct order to interrogate the prisoner -- using torture, if necessary -- until he revealed what he knew.
And in a gaffe reminiscent of the film Brazil (Buttle/Tuttle), Spiegel misspelled his name -- it's Salahi not Slahi -- keeping a clerical error applied to his file by a near-illiterate clerk in Mauritania.
At the time of the rap sheet, in June 2008, the Supreme Court had ruled in Boumediene v. Bush that the Military Commission's Act (MCA) of 2006 could not remove detainees' right to habeas and access to the federal court system. In 2010, a judge ordered Salahi freed on the grounds of habeas corpus, but the Obama administration appealed and in remand Salahi remained. Provided privileges and rewards for his cooperation, Salahi had a TV and computer and was provided paper, with which he penned a few books, including what would become a bestselling 2015 memoir of his plight, Guantanamo Diary. The book is the basis for the new film, The Mauritanian.
In the New Yorker piece, Taub tells us that what attracted Steve Wood to the position at Gitmo:
A job posting depicts life as an intelligence officer in Guanta'namo Bay as "a rewarding challenge with incredible surroundings" -- sunsets, beaches, iguanas, pristine Caribbean blue. "After a hustled day of tackling a myriad of issues and directly contributing to the global war on terrorism," it reads, "fun awaits."
Not only that, but an opportunity to keep economic growth alive is provided in the form of the military operating several fast food franchises, including McDonald's, two Subways, KFC, A&W Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and an ice cream shop that sells Starbucks coffee. All the trappings you would need to feel pleasantly trapped.
Near the beginning of The Mauritanian, during the first Gitmo prison scene with Salahi meeting his legal reps for the first time, the viewer is presented with a sense of surreality. So much security -- pat downs, screenings -- to see a client, but the Mickey D's bag comes through unscathed and unmolested by overprying surveillance (who wants to eat a burger that porno eyes have looked at?). There they are in the single-occupancy unit, sliding a take-away bag of fast food -- Filet O' Fish sandwich, alleged to be halal -- over to Salahi, who sniffs it and slides it back. Taub tells us that Salahi's "cooperation" has led to special privileges: "books, a television, a PlayStation, and an old laptop, on which he killed time playing chess and watching DVDs." Supposedly, cooperating detainees get a taste of the Good Life, but Salahi takes one whiff of the bag and declines, saying it's not halal, and pushes it back. The legal pair now know that they're dealing with a committed Muslim.
The Mauritanian stars Jodie Foster (lawyer Nancy Hollander), Benedict Cumberbatch (military prosecutor Stuart Couch), Shailene Woodley (Hollander's assistant Teri Duncan), and Tahar Rahim (Mohamedou Ould Salahi). The screenplay was written by M. B. Traven and Rory Haines & Sohrab Noshirvani based on Salahi's memoir. It was directed by Kevin Macdonald whose previous work has included several documentaries, including the recent 2020: The Story of Us, which tells personal tales of Covid-19, and Marley (2012), a well-received biopic of the reggae singer, as well as political thriller State of Play (2009), and the Academy Award-winning The Last King of Scotland (2006), featuring Forest Whitaker's stellar performance as Idi Amin.
The plot involves three focal journeys -- that of Salahi, Hollander and Couch. Kind of a Left-Right rock 'em sock 'em partisan battle Americans have become accustomed to now, and which the MSM reinforces with constant carping that distracts from what the Bastards are up to while everyone's opining. The film is, of course, primarily about Salahi's journey. In December 1990, Salahi went to Afghanistan and joined al Qaeda in their US-supported insurrection against the Russians, and the communist government of Mohammad Najibullah. (The circumstances under which he joined the mujahideen would become important later during an analysis of his membership creds.) Salahi says he dropped his membership when, after the ouster of the Soviets, the mujahideen began in-fighting and wanting to take on the US next. As indicated earlier, the US military believed that he was a significant recruiter for al Qaeda.
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