[An interview with the attorney for the former al Qaeda operative,
who testified to the CIA’s ‘enhanced interrogation’ and more
torture at the prison camp. That torture was a war crime that should
have been—and should in the future be—prosecuted as a criminal
act.]
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LESSONS FROM MAJID KHAN’S RELEASE FROM GUANTÁNAMO  
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David Rosen
February 16, 2023
The Progressive
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_ An interview with the attorney for the former al Qaeda operative,
who testified to the CIA’s ‘enhanced interrogation’ and more
torture at the prison camp. That torture was a war crime that should
have been—and should in the future be—prosecuted as a criminal
act. _

Majid Khan in 1999, during his senior year in high school in
Maryland, Photo via Center for Constitutional Rights/Khan family

 

On February 2, U.S. prisoner and former al Qaeda courier Majid Khan
was released from the Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp in Cuba after
more than sixteen years of imprisonment. “We are very pleased with
Majid’s release,” says J. Wells Dixon, a senior staff attorney at
the New York City-based Center for Constitutional Rights
[[link removed]] (CCR).  

“Majid’s transfer to Belize is the culmination of nearly twenty
years of work by the CCR and the law firm Jenner & Block
[[link removed]],”
Dixon tells _The Progressive_ “Our only regret is that he was not
released sooner.”

On October 7, 2001, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the United
States, together with Great Britain, launched
[[link removed]] “Operation
Enduring Freedom,” the war in Afghanistan and the beginning of the
“global war on terror
[[link removed]].”
It was followed, in March 2003, by the U.S_._ invasion of Iraq
ostensibly to end Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and to destroy his
alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD). 

On January 11, 2002, the first twenty detainees were delivered from
CIA black sites to the Guantánamo military prison, known as Camp
X-Ray, on the island of Cuba. Over the following two decades,
approximately 780 detainees would be held there. Today, thirty-four
detainees remain imprisoned
[[link removed]] in
the detention facility. Most troubling, this prison held more than
150 innocent men
[[link removed]] for
years. The Guantánamo prison and associated military courts
currently cost U.S. taxpayers about $540 million a year (with about
$13.5 million being spent on each detainee).

Khan was born in Pakistan, where he lived as a child, and later grew
up in a suburb of Baltimore, Maryland. After 9/11, he returned to
Pakistan and became a courier for al Qaeda. He was arrested in
Karachi in March 2003 and spent about three years in CIA black sites.
He was then taken to Guantánamo in September 2006, which is when CCR
began to represent him. He was charged by a military commission in
2012, pleaded guilty, and agreed to cooperate with U.S. authorities. 
 

“I have a story that I have waited almost two decades to tell, so I
want to start by thanking you for taking the time to listen to my
statement,” Khan begins
[[link removed]] in
his October 2021 personal statement
[[link removed]] before his
sentencing by a Guantánamo military commission. Khan said, “I want
you to know what I did, what happened to me, and what I hope for the
future.” 

Khan’s testimony was also included in a report by the U.S. Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence. He was the first former prisoner of
a CIA black site to openly describe the violent and cruel torture he
suffered under what was infamously dubbed
[[link removed]] “enhanced
interrogation.” “The more I cooperated and told them, the more I
was tortured,” he said.

The Committee’s report
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approved on December 13, 2012, but not declassified until 2014.  

Kahn admitted to helping finance the 2003 bombing of a Marriott hotel
in Jakarta, Indonesia, that killed eleven people. The Senate
report notes
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he was “an operative who could enter the United States easily and
was tasked to research attacks against U.S. water reservoirs.”
And, according
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Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is considered to be the principal
architect of the 9/11 attacks, Khan was “to deliver $50,000 to
individuals working for a suspected terrorist leader named Hambali,
the leader of al-Qaida’s Southeast Asian affiliate known as
‘J-I.’ . . . Khan confirmed that the money had been delivered to
an operative named Zubair . . . .”

According to Khan, the CIA black site had dungeon-like conditions in
which he was kept naked with a hood on his head, his arms chained in
ways that made sleep impossible. The report chronicles that at the
“[b]eginning in March 2004, and continuing until his rendition to
U.S. military custody at Guantanamo Bay in September 2006, Majid Khan
engaged in a series of hunger strikes and attempts at self-mutilation
that required significant attention from CIA detention site
personnel.” 

Most alarming was how the CIA responded to these actions:

Majid Khan was then subjected to involuntary rectal feeding and rectal
hydration, which included two bottles of Ensure. Later that same day,
Majid Khan's “lunch tray,” consisting of hummus, pasta with sauce,
nuts, and raisins, was “pureed” and rectally infused. Additional
sessions of rectal feeding and hydration followed. In addition to his
hunger strikes, Majid Khan engaged in acts of self-harm that included
attempting to cut his wrist on two occasions, an attempt to chew into
his arm at the inner elbow, an attempt to cut a vein in the top of his
foot, and an attempt to cut into his skin at the elbow joint using a
filed toothbrush. 

Majid also said
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his sentencing that he was raped with a garden hose: “While I was
hanging for these three days, I recall one instance where I saw a
guard or interrogator’s face,” he said. “This man sexually
assaulted me while I was hanging naked. He touched my private parts
while we were alone. I told this man to stop and that I wanted to see
a lawyer. He responded, ‘Are you kidding, a lawyer? You are in no
man’s land. No one even knows where you are.’”

“Let me be very clear, enhanced interrogation techniques are
torture. And torture is—and always has been in modern
times—illegal,” insists Majid’s attorney, Dixon. “There is no
exception under U.S. and international law for torture. And the
torture that was inflicted on Majid was a war crime that should have
been—and should in the future be—prosecuted as a criminal
act.” 

Colonel Douglas K. Watkins, a judge at the Guantánamo military court,
considered Khan’s treatment “shocking.” In his June 2020 ruling
on Khan’s case, he wrote
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“there is no serious dispute that Mr. Khan was tortured and suffered
other illegal pretrial punishment both in CIA detention and at
Guantanamo.”

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, in November 2001, President George W.
Bush issued
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executive order establishing
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commissions in Guantánamo. They had no legal obligation to grant
basic U.S. Constitutional protections to prisoners because the prison
was outside of the United States. In addition, they did not have to
adhere to the Geneva Conventions because these treaties
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not apply to “unlawful enemy combatants.” 

In 2006 the U.S. Supreme Court found
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system of military commissions that was to be used to try selected
prisoners held at Guantánamo was in violation of the Geneva
Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Dixon points out that “when Majid Khan was brought to Guantánamo in
September 2006, the assumption by the Bush Administration was that the
U.S. military would go along with what the CIA had done, and would
help to cover up what the CIA had done.” He then adds, “But when
push came to shove when Majid got in front of a military judge and a
military jury, that military judge said this was torture—and the
military jury condemned it.”

“There are thirty-four men who remain, and the overwhelming majority
of those men have been approved for transfer,” Dixon adds.
“Belize’s offer of humanitarian resettlement [for Khan] is a model
for other countries to offer [resettlement to] the remaining
men.”  

Going further, he notes that “there [are] a small number of men who
are still involved in the military commission system including the
so-called 9/11 defendants—i.e., the five men who are accused of
plotting the 9/11 attacks. So, what do we do about those men?”

“I’m not involved in those cases but having been through the
military-commission system with Mr. Khan,” Dixon argues. “I can
say this, the military-commission system has failed to bring anyone to
justice for anything through contested proceedings. The only success
the military commission system has seen is through guilty pleas like
that of Mr. Khan.”  

Dixon adds, “My point is that we will never have accountability for
9/11 if those cases continue toward trial because they will never get
to trial, and if they get to trial, they will be overturned on appeal
because of issue of the torture.” He goes further, pointing out,
“negotiated resolutions of the remaining military commission cases
is the only way to obtain any modicum of justice and accountability.
And it’s the only way Guantánamo is going to close.”

_David Rosen of New York City is the author of the book Sin, Sex &
Subversion: How What Was Taboo in 1950s New York Became America’s
New Normal (Skyhorse, 2016)._

_Since 1909, The Progressive has aimed to amplify voices of dissent
and those under-represented in the mainstream, with a goal of
championing grassroots progressive politics. Our bedrock values are
nonviolence and freedom of speech._

_Based in Madison, Wisconsin, we publish on national politics,
culture, and events including U.S. foreign policy; we also focus on
issues of particular importance to the heartland. Two flagship
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to resist the privatization of public education, and The Progressive
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* Guantanamo
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* Torture
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* CIA
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* 9/11
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* Afghanistan
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