Guantánamo Diary, the first account to be written by a current prisoner at the infamous American prison camp in Cuba, has debuted at number 14 on the New York Times bestseller list.
Mohamedou Ould Slahi, the book’s author, is a Mauritanian national who has been held in Guantánamo Bay since August 2002. He wrote the book by hand in English from the detention center.
The book, which has been serialised by the Guardian, details Slahi’s experiences of torture, threats and humiliation over the course of his 13-year incarceration, which includes an odyssey of detention from Mauritania to Senegal; Bagram air force base in Afghanistan; Jordan and finally to Guantánamo.
Slahi wrote the book while in solitary confinement in 2005, but the manuscript languished for seven years in a secure facility in Washington before it received the clearance to be released to the public – albeit with over 2,500 redactions.
The book’s editor Larry Siems told the Guardian that what struck him most was Slahi’s voice and humanity. “When he gets to Guantánamo, he gets there in time for this epic struggle for the American soul,” Siems said.
“You have the criminal interrogators for the military, and this new unit that the Pentagon sets up; defence intelligence agents, special project teams importing these enhanced interrogation methods. So Mohamedou lands right in the middle of that tug-of-war.”
“His story is one man’s journey through this huge global moment,” Siems added.
One of Slahi’s lawyers, Nancy Hollander, told the Guardian that it was unlikely that Slahi himself was aware of the book’s success. “Probably not,” she said, adding that his legal team were not going to be able to see him until mid-February.
“We don’t know what he knows,” she added. “He gets some television, he might know some of it.”
Hollander said it was too soon to know whether the book’s success would help free him. “We’re hopeful that it will make a difference,” she said.
