That we are hosting an event for a book guantanamo diary, without the author. That is because the author, Mohamedou Slahi is still imprisoned at one time about. He has been mayor since 2002 and he is still in the same cell he was where he wrote the book back in the summer and fall of 2005. He is spared even though he has never actually been charged with a crime and even though a federal judge ruling on habeas corpus ordered his release five years ago. The u. S. Government has appealed the judges decision and said the case continues to grind its way through the court. So we have members from a couple members of Mohamedou Slahi week overpeer mlb moderating script should among them. I will take a few minutes to buy some background to the case. They handwritten account of how he ended up at guantanamo and has extrude treatment there constitutes the only diary via serving detainee that has been published. It is immensely revealing and descriptive, quite scary and disturbing in many places, but also ironic and humorous at times and astonishingly gracious. In a recent conversation with one of his lawyers mohamedou said he holds no grudge against the people and he appeals to them to read it and corrected if they think it contains any errors in that he dreams to one day set with all of them around a cup of tea after having learned so much from one another. That gives you some hint of mohamedou voice in the kind of thoughtful humane way comes across. 44 years ago in mauritania, he was the first member of his large family to attain university the first to travel on a plane. He went to germany to study Electrical Engineering though he ended up in afghanistan in may 291 entering the insurgent be against the communist government there. That is when he swore an oath to al qaeda which was operating the camp for u. S. Trade. Once the communists are out there to fight each other, mohamedou had left. They said that marks the end of the clip committed to al qaeda appeared in germany he completed his degree in Electrical Engineering and worked in germany for most of the 1990s. During that time he remained friends are kept in touch with companions from his time in afghanistan. Some of whom maintained their own al qaeda ties. Mohamedou also had a direct association with the former brotherinlaw who was a prominent member of al qaeda. In late 1999 mohamedou moved to montreal got involved with the large mosque there. Another person who attended the mosque in algeria and immigrants cannot qaeda member was arrested shortly after mohamedou arrival for plotting to bomb the airport on new years day. Investigating the millennium plot mohamedou questioned by canadian authorities by possible connections then in early 2000 he decided to return to mauritania and was detained twice on the way back in senegal and once he got back to mauritania questioned by fbi agents but the investigators couldnt find anything linking him to the millennium plot and he was released. But then, within days of the 9 11 attacks he was detained for two weeks and again questioned by the fbi, but again released. In november, 2001 several months after 9 11, he was summoned by the Mauritanian Police and taken in a cia plane to a person and a mom jordan where he was interrogated and held for nearly eight months. In july 2002 he was flown to Bagram Air Force base in afghanistan. After a couple weeks there he was transported to guantanamo, arriving in august 2002. Like guantanamo, mohamedou was subjected to take being spurred by then defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld who was deprived of food and sleep, held in extreme temperatures, spent long days in isolation beaten chained to the floor and agonizing position and confronted with threats to kill him and to kidnap his mother and other family members. He says that he began to make concessions in order to stop the torturous treatment. In the summer and fall of 2005 three years after arriving in cuba mohamedou out the pages that would become the guantanamo diaries. The pages were written in english. A fourth anguish which he learned mostly in europe. The pages were expressly intended for public leadership that they were classified by the government and not released for seven years. And then, with many redactions. You know, if you leaf through the book, you can see many many places where sentences and phrases, sometimes even whole pages have been crossed out. One of my favorites in this regard starts on page 301 and continues for another seven pages where there is not a word that you can read. The responsibility of the manuscript ended up with larry seems to was a poet and Nonfiction Author who has written extensively on immigration and crosscultural issues. For a number of years, there has direct to the freedom to write an International Programs at the pan american center. Hes also the author most recently of the torture report, with the documents say about the post9 11 torture program. Remarkably, larry has never met mohamedou. The pentagon denies that his requests come even to go over at it but mohamedou did authorize publication of the book with the sight unseen. Souter do we have here this evening . We have two people have been very closely involved with enough for premohamedou. Immediately to my right is nancy hollander, who was based in new mexico and has brought this criminal law for more than 30 years and has considerable experience defending clients charged with defense is related to terrorism and National Security. Next to her is director of the aclu director project which helps litigate cases are mated to national, Civil Liberties and human rights. So lets begin talking a little bit about the legal team. The two of you constitute quite a formidable pair your self but there are others on the team. How many others are on the team and how does a guantanamo prisoner and that having such a skillful legal representative . Well, i can explain how we got this case. And i started in 2005 when a voyeur and and sent me an email. He is a lawyer i had met because we had them doing some training together. He sent me an email saying that a lawyer in mauritania, mr. Abbate asked him if perhaps they could find mohamedou, but the family believes him to be in guantanamo. I found that is where he was an agree to represent in. But i also then discovered the center for constitutional bias had assigned a lawyer to him. They were assigning lawyers just as quickly as they could to all the prisoners. They had assigned a woman named sylvia breweries and they picked philly because she spoke and we assumed that mohamedou spoke french because mauritania had done a french colony and that way she wouldnt need an interpreter. I talked to sylvia. We agreed we would both represent him and we started making arrangements for her first trip to guantanamo. We went. We met on the way they are and we walked to to see him. The guard took us to the hat where they had him it wasnt the hut where he lives, but theyre rare during the interviews. He sat up and he smiled and he put his times out as though to embrace us. But he didnt move. I stood there wondering why he didnt move and then realized and some order that he was chained to the floor and couldnt move and literally sylvia and i walked into his embrace and he gave us 90 pages which was the beginning of this book. Some point later, sylvia left our seamen decided to represent someone now. Another lawyer and albuquerque agreed to work with me, Theresa Duncan and so she started that same year. In 2009 the aclu joined us. Hannah and her team with john and he fits who is now a professor that still works with us and ours spitzer in washington. And then we needed a lawyer to go sit with mohamedou during his testimony. So i recruited another friend of mine linda marino from tampa to go and sit with him. All of this is pro bono. When i asked harry to do it and i asked linda to do it of course the aclu didnt require being paid, but linda and terry i said i have a great assignment for you. By the way, theres no money. So that is how it all started enough how he ended up at this big team. Plus he has a lawyer in mauritania who works with us also. That is how it started and one of our cocounsel is here today, ours spitzer. I also wanted to recognize that it is one of many that have been brought with guantanamo detainees and it has the nature madness job recruiting people to represent the population. Remember theres over 774 people there at the time and it is heartening to see many of our colleagues in what is sometimes referred to with dark humor that you bring to the situation that mohamedou brings to a situation and im really back to see so many of you here tonight. Adding a mac or are they going . We set up a trust for mohamedou and they were going to that tries to help him rebuild his life but as his instruction, weve also use some of that i need to send one of his nephews to a college and he wants to get all of the people of college aged in his family educated and then he would like to, if there is enough money and we sell enough books, started foundations to actually educate girls in mauritania. Or would like him to have the money to rebuild his life when he gets out. Lets talk a bit about the case that the government had against mohamedou. Again they have the charges filed against them and there are suspicions about them that have been clear over time. Those cases seem to have evolved treating from the damning allegations. Initially the claims was mohamedou had aided in the 9 11 attacks any materially support forces associated with al qaeda. The government isnt claiming that anymore. Is that right . At the very beginning mohamedou was accused of being involved with what was called the millennium bombing plot. This was a plot to bomb Los Angeles International airport in the 99. That was because he actually came to montreal just as the person who was ultimately arrested for the plot was leaving montreal. They didnt know each other. There is no reason to think they ever had any connection except they prayed at the same mosque. A runt who prayed at the mosque was under suspicion. The government learned that mohamedou couldnt have been and was not involved in that. That was after eight months of torture in jordan where we sent him. Instead of sending him home the United States arranged for him to go to Bagram Air Force base in afghanistan and then to cuba in august of 2002 and surely after that, the accused him of being one of the recruiters as a pilot in 9 11. Ultimately the government couldnt prove that is and the judge ruled that mohamedou could not have even known about 9 11. For that allegation is gone. So all were left with is here one time part of al qaeda. It is important to remember that the al qaeda that he filed with in 1990 and 1991 against the soviet union the United States is supporting that were at millions of dollars with munitions and weapons and theres no secret about that. If youve seen the movie Charlie Wilsons war, you know all about it. So the judge found which is also correct, that was not the al qaeda it came and attacked this many years later. But that is where we are with the government. You know, the judges decision in 2010 was brilliant start it. He is the first person who was a neutral person to have reviewed all the evidence in the case. He decided that the evidence in the case was either not credible because it was obtained through torture or coercion or for other reasons. I remember reading the first time i was able to read the diary years ago, so much more became clear to me because mohamedou talks about the torture he was subjected to but resulted in him providing false information about himself and others. Essentially he was told what they wanted him to say. And so he was also in a position in the book of the more incriminating fiction he could make out, the happier his interrogators were. Theres one point he talks about whenever they ask me about somebody in canada i have been incriminating information about that person, even if i didnt know him. Whenever he thought about the word i dont know i got not just because i remember the words of redacted. All you have to say is i dont know. I dont remember and will add a few and that is the obscenity that was used. He says i erased these words from a dictionary. That passage comes after you read about the pain he goes through. One of the things again as i think about this book in the last year that we had with more information coming out about torture, our debate about torture in the last few months has been defaced in a way because it focused on effectiveness. Its unlawful, immoral. This book shows yet again that there is meant to think that torture absolutely guarantees. One is pain and the other is false information. What are the things suspected of mohamedou in 9 11. Could someone incriminate him under torture or otherwise quiet the mac well, there was an avid and that he had met in his home two years earlier. And the judge he is one of the people who is currently charged with being one of the 9 11 defendant. He will be on trial in the military commissions in guantanamo. He is in one town. The judge found that all that proved was that they had made two years before 9 11. That is when judge robertson said in his opinion, that is no evidence that mohamedou knew anything about 9 11. The government in 2003 was just desperate to find people to charge and was convinced that everyone that they have must be guilty of some pain. They were determined to do that. The other thing that we have learned just recently if they were also experimenting on torture tactics. What is it we can do to get people to talk or to get people to fail to resist. Saturday against another example that they said we know you were conspiring to blow up the tower in toronto. He tacks about this in the book is that i didnt even know there was a tower in toronto, but i said yes to wars i was involved in that. They asked him about another young man in florida. The mohamedou talks about how terrible he felt to be sent all of these terrible things about this man who he didnt even now and was relieved to hear later that ultimately he was released. But what this book brings in my view is that we know about the torture and the reason that this book came out and the government allotted out is that the governments own investigations have talked about mohamedou starcher specifically. Theres a Sunrise Service committee that devoted 11 pages and describes what he describes. Though weve never heard it from his side, from the side of the person who is the victim. You can feel it. You can taste it. He gives us such vivid accounts and yet even with that he still maintains his humor and his humanity and he understands that there are good people and bad people. And he even talks about how you dont get to choose your family. He didnt get to choose this family, but as Prison Guards and interrogators really became his family. So you really get a sense from him of the pain of the torture and yet at the same time the humanity that drives than and keeps him sane. You know, even though it seemed like the government is no longer sees mohamedou as patenting connected to 9 11. There is still the issue of connections to some members of al qaeda. The mohamedou had through the 90s and especially tied to his former brotherinlaw who was abu barzani who was a senior al qaeda member. How problematic do you think that might be for head quiet you want to talk about it . Goahead. Abu morris tommy is a very interesting situation. He is a distant cousin and was related. He supposedly was with Osama Bin Laden as a spiritual leader, but he laughed and 2001. In the 9 11 report, it actually says that he disapproved of the 9 11 bombings because he said they were a violation of the quran. We now know and we didnt know for a long long time that he left at that time and went to a rant where he was under some kind of a house arrest for many years. Ultimately, in about 2013, he showed up back in mauritania in jail and was released after he was interrogated or the americans. So although all throughout the years that weve been battling the government they said it is because mohamedou was connected to his cousin and is now out in a free man. And mohamedou is still they are. We dont know what he and the government discussed because the government has been on willing to turn on over to us. That i can relate to goes back to your question about what is the basis for continuing to hold him when all of these allegations have been discredited or rejected in dont really start your day seems at this point that the basis has his guilt by longago association that he disembarked not of actual wrongdoing. Here i think it is particularly telling that at one point around 2006 2007, maybe earlier than that, that the government southwell, what are we going to do and assigns the former top military junior at guantanamo colonel moe davis to figure out whether their work charges that could be filed against him. Moe davis has given interviews saying he wasnt able to come up with any criminal charges to file against mohamedou, yet he continues to be held. Im going to because im a lawyer talk about the legal issues here. When you look at the legal basis there is no basis because mohamedou never actually engaged in any kind of hostility to the United States. We are going to have more bass attention. Its got to be a violation of the order. He wasnt even near any kind of battlefield because he was picked up in mauritania. He turn himself into his National Police in order to answer questions they might have. And so one of the things that we have been hoping for in looking for in conjunction with the publication of this book is seeking his release. There are two Different Things that the government can do. One is prisoner review boards bed are especially if im going to talk about a lock, right click prisoner review boards that have been set up within the administration to determine whether people continue to pose a threat and clear them for release. Weve got some criticisms. Theyre excessively secretive. But that is a possible way out for people. Another way is the department of defense to no longer can test a hideous case. Let it go. That is get a court order that puts an end to this years long purgatory that he has been. Are the socalled confessions which were made under duress were announced, are a problem for him . I dont think they are. The government agreed realizing they tortured him without saving it. Not to use any of his statements