This memoir of a Guantànamo detainee’s appalling experiences is full of warmth, intelligence and sardonic humour. It is also a grim warning against flouting the rule of law

On 20 November 2001, Mohamedou Ould Slahi said goodbye to his mother and voluntarily drove himself from his home in Nouakchott, Mauritania, to a police station for questioning. Within days he was rendered to a Jordanian prison. After seven months of interrogation, he was stripped, blindfolded, shackled and flown to a US airbase in Afghanistan. A fortnight later, Slahi was shipped to Guantánamo Bay.

So begins a nightmare worthy of Josef K – but this story is real. Thirteen years later, its protagonist remains in a segregation cell 4,000 miles from home. He has never been charged with a crime.

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That this extraordinary book has been published is almost as remarkable as the story itself. Slahi handwrote the 466-page manuscript in his cell nearly a decade ago, after months of physical, psychological and sexual abuse. It took years for his lawyers to obtain the declassified diary. The result is by turns devastating, enraging, exasperating and – surprisingly – often very funny.

Slahi was born in a small town in Mauritania in 1970. An exceptional student, he won a scholarship to study engineering in Duisburg in 1988. He travelled twice to Afghanistan in the early 1990s, where he joined al-Qaida’s struggle against the Soviet Union-backed regime – a cause supported by the US.

He lived and worked in Germany until 1999, when he moved to Montreal. There he came to the attention of the authorities, after an al-Qaida member who attended Slahi’s mosque was caught with explosives as part of the millennium plot.

Slahi returned to Mauritania in 2000. He was arrested en route at the request of US authorities, questioned and released. After 9/11, Slahi was again detained at the US’s behest, and his world tour of imprisonment, degradation and torture began.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Yahdih Ould Slahi, the younger brother of Guantánamo Diary author Mohamedou, poses with a copy of the book during an event in London. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images

Slahi writes in English, his fourth language – much of it picked up from Guantánamo guards. He is a gifted writer, exuding warmth and a sardonic sense of humour, even as he recounts his darkest moments. Guantánamo Diary’s editor, Larry Siems, quotes a letter to his lawyer: “You asked me to write you everything I told my interrogators …How can I render uninterrupted interrogation that has been lasting the last seven years? That’s like asking Charlie Sheen how many women he dated.”

He displays a sharp eye for character and startling understanding of human nature. Describing a guard, he writes: “The man was completely terrified, as if he were drowning and looking for any straw to grasp. I guess I was one of the straws he bumped into in his flailing, and he grasped me really hard. ‘I don’t understand why people hate us. We help everybody in the world!’ he said once… ‘Neither do I,’ I replied. I knew it was futile to enlighten him about the historical and objective reasons that led to where we’re at, and so I opted to ignore his comment; besides, it was not exactly easy to change the opinion of a man as old as he was.”

The descriptions of torture are harrowing. Slahi is subjected to a Donald Rumsfeld-approved “special interrogation plan”. He lives in abject horror, suffering sleep deprivation, sexual assaults, beatings and threats against his mother’s life and his own. He is blindfolded and taken on a three-hour boat ride as part of a mock kidnapping, forced to drink salt water, viciously beaten and convinced he will be murdered. But Slahi’s narrative remains restrained and understated – the horrors, and his vivid descriptions of relentless fear, speak for themselves: “There is nothing more terrorising than making somebody expect a smash every single heartbeat.”

Slahi regularly asks during interrogations: “What am I accused of?” He never receives a straight answer, and his efforts to tell the truth only anger: “Looks like a dog, walks like a dog, smells like a dog, barks like a dog, must be a dog.” In the end, he resorts to false confessions in a desperate bid to end the torment.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Redacted passages of Guantánamo Diary. US government censors added 2,500 such redactions to Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s manuscript. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

What’s striking is Slahi’s reason, resilience and grace in the face of unimaginable violence and injustice. Fear and frustration permeate the diary, but not despair, or desire for retribution. The book ends with a recent message from its writer: “That he holds no grudge against any of the people mentioned in this book, that he appeals to them to read it and correct it if they think it contains any errors, and that he dreams to one day sit with all of them around a cup of tea, after having learned so much from one another.”

A second, shadowy voice makes its presence felt throughout Guantánamo Diary. Before the manuscript’s release, US government censors pored over it, adding 2,500 black-bar redactions. The effect is jolting, the redactions an ever-present reminder of his continuing captivity and the secrecy used to control his fate for the past 13 years. Some seem arbitrary – female pronouns are removed. Others are bizarre. At one point, among unredacted scenes of stomach-wrenching torture, Slahi describes being moved to tears by a guard’s kind words – and “tears” is blacked out.

Larry Siems has edited the diary sympathetically and intelligently, using litigation and reports to fill in redactions whenever possible. He has never met or communicated with Slahi. When he requested a meeting to ensure Slahi approved of his edits, a Pentagon response quoted the Geneva conventions: “Prisoners must at all times be protected… against public curiosity” (the same article forbids inhumane treatment, violence and intimidation).

Guantánamo Diary is a gut-punch of a reminder – for some, an inconvenient one – that Guantánamo is more than a concept, or a few photographs of faceless men in jumpsuits. Its inmates are real human beings, wondering whether they will ever see freedom again.

One question gnaws the reader throughout: why is Slahi still in Guantánamo? A federal judge ordered his release in 2010, but the US government appealed; four years on, there are no signs they plan to let him go. Slahi has his own theory. He believes the government “realised, after a lot of painful work, that it had gathered a load of non-combatants” and “is stuck with the problem, but it is not willing to… disclose the truth about the whole operation”.

But Slahi’s diary is a wake-up call for our government too. While December’s report laid bare the brutality of CIA torture, UK authorities continue to avert their eyes. Until there is a judicial inquiry into British involvement, cover-up and impunity will continue.

It is also a grave warning against flouting democracy and rule of law when faced with terrorist atrocities. Slahi quotes Benjamin Franklin: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Yet we’ve seen an ill-targeted counter-terrorism bill rushed through parliament and, following the Paris attacks, panicked calls to revive the snooper’s charter. We’ve seen human rights used as a political punchbag, and incoherent plans for a “British bill of rights”. When we retreat from human rights toward citizens’ privileges – that’s the way to Guantánamo Bay.

As Slahi concludes: “Crisis always brings out the best and worst in people – and in countries, too … So has the American democracy passed the test it was subjected to with the 2001 terrorist attacks?” That test is far from over – but, if our leaders learn the lessons of Guantánamo, the UK can still avoid failing it irredeemably.

Shami Chakrabarti is the director of Liberty.

Guantánamo Diary is published by Canongate Books, £20. Click here to buy it for £15