A Former Guantánamo Detainee Shares His Story

At the age of 18, a Yemeni man named Mansoor Adayfi says he was traveling in Afghanistan when he was kidnapped and sold to the CIA by Afghan warlords. The U.S. government had distributed flyers across the region offering bounties in exchange for “suspicious people.”

He became “Detainee 441” and was held without charge at Guantánamo Bay Detention Center for 14 years until his release in 2016. Adayfi tells his story in his new memoir, “Don’t Forget Us Here.” He describes torture, like when vacuum cleaners were turned on outside prisoners’ cells so that the constant roaring noise would drown out their thoughts. But he also describes moments of community and humanity between prisoners, and even between prisoners and guards.

At one point, he writes that tarps put up to block detainees’ view of the sea blew away during a storm