The conflict crimes tribunal at Guantanamo has reached a milestone with a sentencing listening to for Majid Khan, who pleaded responsible to terrorism and different offenses and agreed to cooperate with U.S. authorities prosecuting 5 males charged within the Sept. 11, 2001, assaults.
Heart for Constitutional Rights by way of AP
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Heart for Constitutional Rights by way of AP
The conflict crimes tribunal at Guantanamo has reached a milestone with a sentencing listening to for Majid Khan, who pleaded responsible to terrorism and different offenses and agreed to cooperate with U.S. authorities prosecuting 5 males charged within the Sept. 11, 2001, assaults.
Heart for Constitutional Rights by way of AP
FORT MEADE, Md. — A Guantanamo Bay prisoner who went by the brutal U.S. authorities interrogation program after the 9/11 assaults described it overtly for the primary time Thursday, saying he was left terrified and hallucinating from methods that the CIA lengthy sought to maintain secret.
Majid Khan, a former resident of the Baltimore suburbs who turned an al-Qaida courier, informed jurors contemplating his sentence for war crimes how he was subjected to days of painful abuse within the clandestine CIA services referred to as “black websites,” as interrogators pressed him for data.
It was the primary time any of the so-called excessive worth detainees held on the U.S. base in Cuba have been in a position to testify about what the ushas euphemistically known as “enhanced interrogation” however has been broadly condemned as torture.
“I believed I used to be going to die,” he mentioned.
Khan spoke of being suspended bare from a ceiling beam for lengthy durations, doused repeatedly with ice water to maintain him awake for days. He described having his head held beneath water to the purpose of close to drowning, solely to have water poured into his nostril and mouth when the interrogators let him up. He was crushed, given pressured enemas, sexually assaulted and starved in abroad prisons whose areas weren’t disclosed.
“I’d beg them to cease and swear to them that I did not know something,” he mentioned. “If I had intelligence to present I’d have given it already however I did not have something to present.”
Khan might be sentenced by a army court docket for conflict crimes
Khan, studying from a 39-page assertion, spoke on the primary day in what is anticipated to be a two-day sentencing listening to on the U.S. base in Cuba.
A panel of army officers chosen by a Pentagon authorized official referred to as a convening authority can sentence Khan to between 25 and 40 years in jail, however he’ll serve far much less due to his intensive cooperation with U.S. authorities.
Underneath a plea deal, which the jurors weren’t informed about, Khan’s sentence by the jury might be decreased to not more than 11 years by the convening authority, and he’ll get credit score for his time in custody since his February 2012 responsible plea.
Meaning he ought to be launched early subsequent 12 months, resettled in a 3rd, as but unknown nation as a result of he cannot return to Pakistan, the place he has citizenship.
Khan’s remedy was featured in a Senate investigation
A few of Khan’s remedy is detailed in a Senate Intelligence Committee report, launched in 2014, that accused the CIA of inflicting ache and struggling on al-Qaida prisoners far past its authorized boundaries and deceiving the nation with narratives of helpful interrogations unsubstantiated by its personal information.
Khan agreed with that evaluation. “The extra I cooperated and informed them, the extra I used to be tortured,” he mentioned.
He spent about three years in CIA black websites earlier than he was taken to Guantanamo in September 2006. He mentioned he by no means noticed the sunshine of day within the black websites and had no contact with anybody apart from guards and interrogators from his seize till his sixth 12 months on the detention heart on the bottom in Cuba.
Khan, 41, has admitted to being a courier for al-Qaida and collaborating within the planning of a number of plots there have been by no means carried out. He pleaded responsible in February 2012 to fees that embrace conspiracy, homicide and offering materials assist to terrorism in a deal that capped his sentence in change for cooperating with authorities in different investigations, together with the case in opposition to the 5 males held at Guantanamo who’re charged with planning and offering logistical assist for the Sept. 11 assault.
A citizen of Pakistan who was born in Saudi Arabia, Khan got here to the U.S. along with his household within the Nineteen Nineties they usually have been granted asylum. He graduated from highschool within the Baltimore suburbs and held a know-how job within the D.C. space at an workplace the place he might see the smoke billowing from the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.
He says he turned to radical ideology following the loss of life earlier that 12 months of his mom, whom he described as an important particular person in his life.
Khan apologized for his actions and mentioned he takes full accountability. He mentioned he now simply desires to reunite along with his spouse and the daughter who was born whereas he was in captivity. He mentioned he has forgiven his captors, and his torturers.
“I’ve additionally tried to make up for the unhealthy issues I’ve achieved,” he mentioned. “That is why I pleaded responsible and cooperated with the USA authorities.”
Different detainees are nonetheless within the trial course of
Khan is the primary of the high-value detainees, those that went by the interrogation program, to be convicted and sentenced on the army tribunals held on the bottom.
The 5 males charged within the Sept. 11 assaults embrace Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, who has portrayed himself because the architect of the plot. That case stays within the pretrial stage and a choose has mentioned it is going to begin no ahead of subsequent 12 months.
The U.S. holds 39 males on the detention heart on Naval Station Guantanamo Bay.
