Judge ruled in 2009 that the government can no longer interrogate Slahi, who was previouslysubjected to sleep deprivation and rape threats to his mother

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

A Guantánamo Bay detainee who recently published a bestselling memoir is alleging that US authorities at the detention facility have confiscated most of his legal mail and family correspondence to pressure him into submitting to further interrogations.

In a declassified letter written to his attorney on 17 April, Mohamedou Ould Slahi cryptically referred to Guantánamo officials offering to help him retrieve his “so-called comfort items” if he would allow the resumption of interrogations that a judge ordered to end approximately six years ago.

“When I was moved about six months ago with neither my consent nor even informing me, I was deprived of my so-called comfort items,” Slahi wrote in his letter, recently submitted to a federal court.

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Slahi alleged that the military “prosecuting team” pursuing confessed terrorist Ahmed al-Darbi “offered to help me on condition to ask the court to lift its order regarding my interrogation”.

In 2009, as part of Slahi’s habeas case challenging his detention in federal court, Judge James Robertson ruled that the government can no longer interrogate Slahi, a prohibition that has held for five years. Slahi had previously been subject to sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures, stress positions, death threats and rape threats to his mother.

The Joint Task Force at Guantánamo has yet to proffer an explanation for cutting off substantial amounts of Slahi’s ability to communicate with counsel and even review his letters with his family, attorney Nancy Hollander told the Guardian.

Among the materials confiscated from Slahi, first reported by the Miami Herald, are letters from his mother, who died in March 2013.



“They took all legal papers in October and have not returned them,” Hollander said on Wednesday.



Hollander said that Guantánamo authorities “took took away items that he was entitled to have, including legal papers and family letters, for the purpose of then using them as a way to get him to ask the court to allow the continued interrogation that the court had ordered ceased in 2010”.

The US Justice Department is due to file an explanation on Wednesday in federal court before Judge Royce Lamberth.

“While in DOD custody he has always received his mail according to Standard Operating Procedures in the same manner all detainees receive mail and has always had access to all authorized possessions upon request,” said Captain Christopher Scholl, a spokesman for Joint Task Force-Guantanamo.

Despite torturing Slahi, a Mauritanian, in the early years of a Guantánamo detention that began in August 2002, the US government does not seem to treat Slahi as a current security risk. A 30 June filing before Lamberth revealed that Guantánamo authorities permit Slahi to keep “a stand-alone computer” in his cell, unusual for detainees. The computer does not have an internet connection.

But according to Slahi attorney Theresa M Duncan, around January, the Guantánamo taskforce “deprived Mr. Slahi of numerous personal items he had been permitted to have in his cell for many years”. Among them: “legal documents”, the computer, “family correspondence and photographs, and gifts that departing prison guards had given him out of friendship”.

Since then, Duncan averred before Lambeth, Guantánamo officials returned to Slahi “three envelopes containing government exhibits from Mr Slahi’s original habeas proceedings”, leaving the “vast majority” unreturned. They also returned a book and some family photographs to him.

In April 2010, Robertson ruled in Slahi’s original habeas case that the Obama administration could not continue to detain him merely out of concern Slahi could associate with terrorist groups post-release. A government appeal has kept Slahi at Guantánamo for the intervening five years.

Hollander and her legal team are pressing the Obama administration to provide Slahi with Guantánamo’s version of a parole hearing, known as a Periodic Review Board. Those hearings are a key component of an initiative Obama is reviving to whittle the Guantánamo population, which currently stands at 116 detainees.

Amidst both persistent congressional opposition and even internal Pentagon skepticism, the White House claimed last week to be in the “final stages of drafting a plan” to close the detention facility at Guantánamo, press secretary Josh Earnest said on 22 July.

In a motion before the federal judge filed last month, Slahi’s lawyers charge that the government has prolonged Slahi’s detention and thus far not provided him with a Periodic Review Board “for the purpose of interrogation”.

Guantánamo and Pentagon officials did not respond to requests for comment.

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In January, after years of delay, Slahi was able to publish his “Guantanamo Diary” memoir. The book detailed his torture, extended detention and unlikely rapport with some Guantánamo guards. It became an international bestseller.

The Joint Task Force at Guantánamo declassified Slahi’s April letter to Hollander so it could be entered into his federal habeas case. In it, he expresses deep frustration with the most recent developments in his 13-year detention.

“No matter how much cooperation I offer, no matter how honest and positive I am on other detainees, I always end up working against myself. Ich bin ratlos, as a German would say,” Slahi wrote, using a phrase that translates to mean “I’m at a loss.”