Mohamedou Ould Slahi

Mohamedou Ould Slahi was born in Rosso, Mauritania, the ninth of twelve children of a camel herder. In 2001, he was living in Mauritania when he was detained and renditioned to Jordan, beginning an ordeal that he would chronicle in his Guantánamo Diary. The manuscript, which he wrote in his isolation cell in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, remained classified for almost eight years; it was finally published in heavily redacted form in 2015. After 15 years of detention, Slahi was released on October 17, 2016, to Mauritania. The following year, he published a “restored edition” of Guantánamo Diary, filling in the U.S. government’s redactions, and his book became the basis of Kevin Macdonald’s 2021 award-winning film “The Mauritanian.” That year, after years of travel restrictions, Slahi was able to accept an arts residency in the Netherlands, and he recently became a Dutch citizen. His novel, The Actual True Story of Ahmed and Zarga, was published in 2021.