http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/us/guantnamo-diary-writer-mohamedou-ould-slahi.html 2016-10-17 21:39:15 ‘Guantánamo Diary’ Writer Is Sent Home to Mauritania Mohamedou Ould Slahi, whose memoir detailing abuse at the prison was a best seller, denied any involvement with terrorism and was never charged. === WASHINGTON — The Pentagon on Monday announced that it had repatriated a prominent Guantánamo detainee who wrote a best-selling memoir recounting his abuse by American interrogators. The transfer reduced the remaining detainee population to 60. The ex-detainee, “I feel grateful and indebted to the people who have stood by me,” Mr. Slahi said in a Born in Mauritania, Mr. Slahi studied electrical engineering in Germany and then joined Al Qaeda in the early 1990s, a time when Osama bin Laden’s mujahedeen fighters were helping the anti-Communist resistance in Afghanistan, backed by the United States, after the Soviet invasion. He eventually returned to Germany and later crossed paths with one of the accused plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. By the time of those attacks, Mr. Slahi was back in Mauritania. He was arrested and sent to Jordan, which later transferred him to the custody of the United States. Taken to Guantánamo Bay, Mr. Slahi was subjected in 2003 to a special interrogation approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Mr. Slahi wrote of sleep deprivation, beatings, dousings with ice water and being shackled for days in a freezing cell. But he denied involvement with terrorism and was never charged with a crime. He wrote a memoir by hand about that period, and his lawyers fought for years for permission to have it published. After it appeared, with many redactions, under the title “Guantánamo Diary” in 2015, it became a best seller and was optioned for a movie. When Mr. Slahi’s memoir was published, Mark Danner At his parole-like hearing in June, a representative In deciding to release him, the panel also cited “the extensive support network available to the detainee from multiple sources, including strong family connections, and the detainee’s robust and realistic plan for the future.” Nancy Hollander