Nancy Hollander has taken on many difficult cases in her career, but none quite like that of the Guantánamo detainee Mohamedou Ould Salahi
By the time Mohamedou Ould Salahi was brought from his home in Mauritania to the Guantánamo Bay detention facility in Cuba in 2002, he had already experienced a series of harsh interrogations in Jordan and Afghanistan. Now he was in the hands of the Americans he thought his experience might improve, but he quickly discovered he was wrong. In Guantánamo, Salahi was tortured and held without charge for 14 years. His story, first published in his 2015 memoir Guantánamo Diary, is the subject of a new Hollywood film, The Mauritanian.
In the second of two episodes about his story, Salahi’s lawyer, Nancy Hollander tells Anushka Asthana how she came to represent the man who was, at one time, Guantánamo’s most high-value detainee. And Salahi’s friend and former prison guard, Steve Wood, wonders what it will take to close his former workplace for good. Wood’s friendship with Salahi is the subject of a new Bafta-longlisted Guardian documentary, My Brother’s Keeper.
