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 and working 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 the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, remained classified for almost eight years and was released, with substantial redactions, in 2013. It was first published in January 2015 and has since been published in 25 languages. 

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. His writings directly inspired Kevin Macdonald's 2021 award-winning film “The Mauritanian.” His first novel, The Actual True Story of Ahmed and Zarga, was published by Ohio University Press in 2021.