Guantánamo Diary: ‘I smelled the odour of a letter that had touched the hand of my mom’

[kpete]

After the disappointment of receiving a forged letter, Mohamedou Ould Slahi finally hears from his mother after more than two years’ imprisonment
• Declassified diary published at last
• Extract: The flight to Guantánamo
• Extract: Torture at sea
• Extract: False confession



In February 2004, after more than two years in captivity, Slahi had still had no contact with his family. The only letter he had received before that had turned out to be a crude forgery.

..................

On the 14th, the US Army released the first letter from my family. It was sent through the International Committee of the Red Cross. My family wrote it months before, in July 2003. It had been 815 days since I was kidnapped from my house and had all contacts with my family forcibly broken. I had been sending many letters to my family since I arrived in Cuba, but to no avail. In Jordan I was forbidden even to send a letter.

I couldn’t respond to the letter because I was still not allowed to see the ICRC
__________________ was the one who handed me that historical piece of paper



MORE:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/17/-sp-mom-letter-two-years-imprisonment-slahi