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Join us for a student-led conference featuring Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a 14-year former Guantánamo detainee, author of Guantánamo Diary, and protagonist of The Mauritanian, alongside Dr Don E. Walicek, Professor at the University of Puerto Rico with a research focus on Guantánamo Bay.

This event will explore the human cost of indefinite detention, the evolution of Guantánamo, and the parallels between U.S. detention practices and immigration enforcement. The conference offers a critical discussion on detention, human rights, and accountability.

The discussion will be moderated by Ginevra Angioni, a Master's student who is organising the event in collaboration with the Human Rights, Conflict, and Peace (HRCP) Initiative and the Geneva Graduate Institute Association (GISA).

      

Open to all IHEID students and the public!

Mohamedou Ould Slahi is a former Guantánamo Bay detainee held without charge for over 14 years. Born in 1970 in Mauritania, he earned a scholarship to study electrical engineering in Germany, where he lived and worked for several years before returning to his home country in 2000. In 2001, following the response of 9/11 attacks, he was kidnapped at the request of the United States and subjected to a series of renditions that took him to Guantánamo in August 2002. There, he was subjected to years of abuse and torture. During his imprisonment, he wrote Guantánamo Diary, a powerful memoir that brought international attention to his case. Although a U.S. federal judge ordered his release in 2010, bureaucratic delays prolonged his detention until October 2016. Never formally charged, Slahi has since become a key advocate for justice, fundamental rights, and accountability of state abuses under the rule of law.

Professor Don E. Walicek has written extensively on U.S. empire, race, and incarceration, with particular attention to Guantánamo Bay. He is the co-editor of Guantánamo and American Empire: The Humanities Respond, a volume that brings together critical scholarship on the legal, historical, and ethical dimensions of the Guantánamo detention regime. Walicek has served as a fellow at the American Council of Learned Societies and has worked on projects addressing linguistic rights and social justice in the Caribbean and beyond.