Mohamedou Ould Slahi was detained in the US prison of Guantanamo, on the island of Cuba, without trial, between 2002 and 2016.
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Her story was told in the hit movie Found guilty. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, wrongly suspected of terrorism and imprisoned for fourteen years in Guantanamo, has initiated proceedings against Canada, responsible for his detention. The Mauritanian, 51 years old today, believes that “erroneous information” provided by the country concerning the period when he was a permanent resident in Montreal are at the origin of his detention, according to the complaint filed on Friday April 22 and consulted by AFP. He is claiming 35 million Canadian dollars in damages for the damages suffered.
The man claims that it was the false information provided by the Canadian authorities that led to his detention in the American military prison, where he says he suffered “indescribable torture and ill-treatment”. Then the Canadian authorities would then have “tacitly tolerated” the torture he suffered and even “used” information from confessions obtained under torture.
“Slahi’s detention and mistreatment was prolonged because the receipt and use of coerced confessions by Canadian authorities validated the continued torture and detention”say his lawyers in their complaint.
Mohamedou Ould Slahi was detained in the American prison of Guantanamo, on the island of Cuba, without trial, between 2002 and 2016. Arrested in 2001 in Mauritania, he had been successively imprisoned in Jordan and Afghanistan, before arriving in Guantanamo, in what he called in his book a “torture and humiliation world tour”. The American authorities accused him of being a member of Al-Qaeda, having participated in the “Hamburg cell” (Germany), linked to the September 11 attacks.