Directed by Kevin Macdonald; written by M.B. Traven, Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani; based mostly on the ebook by Mohamedou Ould Salahi

The Mauritanian, directed by Kevin Macdonald, is predicated on the 2015 memoir Guantánamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Salahi, held for 14 years with out cost within the American navy’s Guantánamo Bay, Cuba detention camp.

Scripted by M.B. Traven, Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani, the movie powerfully exposes the truth of America’s “battle on terror.” It lays naked the systematic criminality, together with the usage of unlawful detention, torture and homicide, of the Bush and Obama administrations, the US navy, the CIA and different businesses.

By the person nightmare of Salahi’s decade-and-a-half ordeal, one comes to grasp extra deeply and viscerally the “volcanic eruption” of American imperialist violence with which humanity has come head to head.

The occasions chronicled in The Mauritanian had been set instantly into movement by the September 11, 2001 terrorist assaults. It ought to be clearer at the moment than it was 20 years in the past that the Bush administration took benefit of the outrage produced by 9/11 to launch long-prepared, long-term invasions and occupations of Central Asia and the Center East.

The September 2001 occasions additionally served because the event for a frontal assault on democratic rights within the US, together with the passage of the 2001 Patriot Act, the proliferation of unchecked spying, “extraordinary rendition,” indefinite detention, torture and navy tribunals related to Guantánamo and CIA black websites, together with the militarization of police businesses and the persecution of Muslims and immigrants.

Mohamedou Ould Salahi, an harmless particular person, was tragically caught up on this international maelstrom.

Justifying its conduct on the premise of the September 18, 2001 joint decision of Congress authorizing President George W. Bush to make use of pressure in opposition to those that deliberate and carried out the 9/11 assaults, “the U.S. authorities,” writes Salahi in Guantánamo Diary, “began a secret operation geared toward kidnapping, detaining, torturing, or killing terrorist suspects, an operation that has no authorized foundation. I used to be the sufferer of such an operation, although I had finished no such factor and have by no means been a part of any such crimes.”

Salahi was born within the northwest African nation of Mauritania in 1970. An distinctive pupil, he acquired a scholarship to check engineering in Duisburg, Germany in 1988. In 1991, he traveled from Germany to Afghanistan to affix the mujahedin motion, swearing allegiance to Al Qaeda. After the central authorities fell, he returned to Germany and claimed he had no additional involvement with Al Qaeda. He later hung out in Montreal working as {an electrical} engineer.

Salahi was subsequently detained and interrogated by the authorities of varied international locations—Canada, Mauritania, the US and Senegal—however every time he was launched for lack of proof in opposition to him. Nevertheless, in November 2001, he was requested to voluntarily report back to a police station in Nouakchott, Mauritania for questioning, which he did.

The film opens at this level, as a title explains, “two months after 9/11.” Mohamedou (Tahar Rahim) is picked up by the Mauritanian authorities as a result of “the Individuals wish to discuss to you.” He shortly deletes the contacts in his mobile phone and says goodbye to his mom, who’s greedy her Muslim prayer beads. He won’t ever see her once more.

In his ebook, Salahi writes: “As to my arrest, it was kind of like political drug-dealing: the FBI requested the U.S. president to intervene and have me arrested; in flip George W. Bush requested the vanishing Mauritanian president for a favor; on receiving the U.S. president’s request, his Mauritanian colleague moved his police forces to arrest me.” What occurred to Salahi in his first years of imprisonment we solely study later.