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After 14 long years languishing at Guantánamo without charge or trial, Mohamedou Slahi has finally been cleared for release.

Slahi was born in Mauritania in 1970 and won a scholarship to attend college in Germany. In the early 1990s, he fought with al-Qaeda when it was part of the Afghan anti-communist resistance supported by the U.S. The federal district court judge who reviewed all the evidence in Slahi's habeas corpus case noted that the group then was very different from the one that later came into existence.

Slahi worked in Germany for several years as an engineer and returned to Mauritania in 2000.

Slahi turned himself in to Mauritanian authorities for questioning about the Millennium Plot on November 20, 2001. He was detained for seven days and questioned by Mauritanian officers and by agents of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).[5] The CIA rendered him to a Jordanian prison, where he was held for eight months. Slahi states that he was tortured by the Jordanians. After being flown to Afghanistan and held for two weeks, he was transferred to military custody and the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba on August 4, 2002.[6]

Slahi was subjected to isolation, temperature extremes, beatings and sexual humiliation at Guantánamo. In one documented incident, he was blindfolded and taken out to sea in a boat for a mock execution.