The US War on Terror was central to Slahi’s captivity at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp between 2002 and 2016. The US launched this counterterrorism operation under the George W. Bush administration in response to the 9/11 attacks and targeted terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and North Africa. The War on Terror was vaguely defined and global in scope. Thus, one of its results was the detention of hundreds of majority Arab Muslim men perceived as enemy combatants in US-linked secret prisons in third-party countries as well as the Guantanamo Bay prison. This detention bypassed the country’s legal framework under the guise of military necessity. At one point, Slahi was considered the most important detainee at Guantanamo even though the governments of Germany, Canada, and the US had no definitive evidence on him and he was never charged with any crime before or after his captivity.

The War on Terror was initially a logical expression of US foreign policy born out of the Cold War period. Whether propping up the puppet government in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War or funding the right-wing extremist Contras militants in Nicaragua, backing insurgents against US opponents or “uncooperative” foreign governments has historically been a staple of US foreign policy.