Really good writing for someone who learned english in GTMO. Soooo interresting yet terrifying that this sort of treatment exists. This book made me so mad at the world but I enjoyed learning about all this stuff we don't hear quite enough of.

You need to be reading this. It was really intense and I had to stop reading a couple of times (to cry, yes) but I also didn’t want to put it down at the same time.

Slahi doesn’t actually go into detail about any of the torture he’s experienced if that’s putting anybody off. Rather it focuses on the relentless and repetitive interrogations he’s had to go through (and is still going through) for over 10 years in GTMO.

Not that it’s the purpose of the book and that definitely shouldn’t be the only takeaway from the book but it puts your own life into so much perspective.

Slahi still has so much humanity, compassion and understanding for his torturers and Americans in general. I know I wouldn’t have even an ounce of that capacity to be so forgiving.

I'm recommending this to everyone -- Slahi is the first and so far only person to have been held in Guantánamo and tortured by the US to have written about and published a memoir. Mark Danner in the New York Times wrote that the diary "is the most profound account yet written of what it is like to be that collateral damage" mentioned by our torturer in chief Dick Cheney. This harrowing tale is but one of what will someday be many direct accounts by victims.
Originally from Mauritius, Slahi, 45, was detained on a journey home in January 2000 and questioned about the so-called Millennium plot to bomb the Los Angeles airport. Slahi admitted that he'd fought against Afghanistan's communist government with the mujahedin, at that time supported by the US. But he never opposed the United States. Authorities released him. A year later, the young engineer was again detained and again released. Months later, Slahi drove himself to a local police station to answer questions. This time, Americans forced him onto a CIA plane bound for Jordan, where he claims he was tortured. On August 5, 2002, Americans brought him to Guantánamo. Slahi is among the detainees whose horrific torture there is the centerpiece of the Senate report. None other than then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld signed the "special interrogation plan" authorizing his brutal ordeal. Slahi divides his imprisonment into pre-torture, when he truthfully denied any involvement in terrorism; and post-torture, "where my brake broke loose. I yessed every accusation my interrogators made. I even wrote the infamous confession about me planning to hit the CN tower in Toronto, based on SSG [redacted] advice. I just wanted to get the monkeys off my back."
His captors beat and threatened him, subjected him to bitter cold and sleep deprivation, stress positions and repulsive sexual abuse by female interrogators. Yet with astonishing grace, Slahi seems more traumatized by the torture he witnessed. He saw teenagers who could barely lift their heads, confused old men and others like him who said anything to get the pain to stop. Slahi taught himself English so he could write his 466-page memoir, long kept secret. Once his lawyers got his manuscript released, authorities refused to let Slahi’s editor, journalist Larry Siems, meet him. Siems calls the memoir "a journey through the darkest regions of the United States' post-9/11 detention and interrogation program."

This book was shocking in more ways than one. The behavior and torture carried out against the prisoners were horrifying, and the redactions made by the U.S. government were completely absurd in many places. Something else that I found shocking was how Mohamedou Ould Slahi, after having endured severe torture for so many years without being charged with a single crime, was able to write so beautifully, humorously, and illustrating the humanity and kindness present in such a hellish place. This is one of the saddest, frustrating, but most essential reads of today.

Repetitive. Boring. Although it did provide (typical) insight when it comes to torture and what he endured. He leaves a lot out because he said he doesn't want to "offend the reader." Gitmo is a horror show and needs to be closed. What he experienced should not be done to American prisoners and those who did it to him should be in jail. All this being said, after reading the book I am not 100%convinced that this guy is totally innocent.

Absolutely brilliant loved this book so much
Truly inspirational

ان كمية الظلم التي تعرض لها "محمدو" وجميع المعتقلين في غوانتانامو سمعنا عنها، وشاهدنا جزءً منها، ولكن كل ذلك لا ينقل اي جزء من ما ورد في هذه اليوميات.
ما حدث لهم من ظلم وقمع على الجميع معرفته وعلى الجميع ان يطلع على ما ورد في هذا الكتاب لاني الحقيقة مؤلمة ولكن من تعرض لها كانت اكثر ايلاماً له وعليه. الظلم لا يدوم واذا كانت هذه اليوميات بين ايدينا اليوم فلربما سيستطيع كل من ظلم ان يحصل على حريته رغم كل شيء.

يجب قراءة هذا الكتاب.