be released on March 22. In his unclassified opinion, Judge Robertson wrote: "... associations alone are not enough, of course, to make detention lawful." The Department of Justice appealed the decision. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the ruling and remanded the case to the District Court on November 5, 2010, for further factual findings. The District Court never held the second habeas hearing. On July 14, 2016, Slahi was approved by a Periodic Review Board for release from detention. Slahi was freed and returned to Mauritania on October 17, 2016; he was imprisoned at Guantánamo for over fourteen years. Slahi wrote a memoir in 2005 while imprisoned, which the U.S. government declassified in 2012 with numerous redactions. The memoir was published as Guantánamo Diary in January 2015 and became an international bestseller. Slahi is the first Guantánamo detainee to publish a memoir while imprisoned. Slahi wrote four other books whilst in detention, but he has not been allowed to access these books since being removed from Guantanamo. 1988–1999 Slahi was an exceptional student in high school in Mauritania. In 1988, he received a scholarship from the Carl Duisberg Society to study in West Germany, where he earned an electrical engineering degree from the University of Duisburg. In 1991, Slahi travelled to Afghanistan to join the Mujahideen fighting against the communist central government. The United States had supported the Mujahideen against the Soviet occupation starting in 1979, and funnelled billions of dollars of weapons and aid to the "freedom fighters". After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, there was a civil war between Mohammad Najibullah's government and the Mujahideen. Slahi trained for several weeks at the al Farouq training camp near Khost, which was run by al Qaeda, one of many Mujahideen groups in the civil war. At the end of his training in March 1991, he swore bayat to al Qaeda and was given the kunya (nom de guerre) of "Abu Musab." However, he did not participate in the civil war, instead returning to Germany. In February 1992, Slahi travelled again to Afghanistan and was assigned to a mortar battery in Gardez. Six weeks later, the Najibullah regime fell and he returned to Germany. In hearings in Guantanamo, Slahi has stated that he travelled to Afghanistan twice, attended the al Farouq training camp, and fought against the Afghan central government in 1992, but that he was never an enemy