Majid Khan (detainee)
Majid Shoukat Khan (Urdu: ماجد شوکت خان, born February 28, 1980) is a Pakistani who was the only known legal resident of the United States held in the Guantanamo Bay Detainment Camp.
[6] Pakistani authorities captured him in 2003 and handed him over to the CIA who held him incognito in a black site in Afghanistan, interrogating him and subjecting him to “the most horrific torture.”[6] In 2006 he was sent to Guantanamo, where in 2012 he pleaded guilty to conspiracy and the murder of 11 innocent civilians in the 2003 Marriott Hotel bombing in Jakarta, Indonesia, and also for the attempted assassination of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.
[10] Khan's family settled in Catonsville, Maryland, near Baltimore, where he attended Owings Mills High School[11] and was "exposed to radical Islam".
[16] The key to the box was later found held by Uzair Paracha, who was convicted of providing material support to al-Qaeda and was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison in 2006; fifteen years after his arrest, Uzair's conviction was deemed void on July 3, 2018, by Judge Sidney H. Stein, based on newly discovered statements made by Ammar al-Baluchi, Majid Khan (detainee) and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, bringing his involvement and intentions into question.
[18] The Center for Constitutional Rights filed the habeas corpus challenge on October 5, 2006 — before President Bush signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 into law.
Justice Kennedy held in the case that the MCA could not deny detainees and other petitioners, including Khan, their right to petition United States courts for writ of habeas corpus.
Khan allegedly began attending secret prayer meetings at Baltimore's Islamic Society, where he was recruited by individuals who sought out disaffected young people.
According to officials, these family members introduced Khan to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the man accused of orchestrating the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Government officials assert that Khan, under KSM's tutelage, was being trained to blow up gas stations and poison water reservoirs, and that he plotted to assassinate Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf.
"[21][22] Khan's attorneys at the Center for Constitutional Rights insist that he was tortured, subjected to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, and coerced into making false and unreliable confessions.
The Center for Constitutional Rights argued against the government's efforts to deny CCR attorneys access to Khan in a response brief filed November 3, 2006.
In the brief, CCR argued that efforts by the Bush administration to deny Khan access to counsel, "ignores the Court's historical function under Article III of the Constitution to exercise its independent judgment," and used its classification authority to hide illegal conduct when the court had sufficient tools to prevent disclosure of sensitive classified information.
[23] On November 4, 2006, the Justice Department said that Khan should not be allowed to speak to an attorney because he might "reveal the agency's closely guarded interrogation techniques".
[25] Friedman pointed out, "His combatant status was never reviewed as required by the U.S. Supreme Court in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004) nor as outlined in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005."
can employ in interrogations.Khan is one of 16 Guantanamo captives whose amalgamated habeas corpus submissions were heard by U.S. District Court Judge Reggie B. Walton on January 31, 2007.
[28] The press release quoted from Gitanjali Gutierrez, Khan's lawyer:[32] The government is denying Majid any access to his attorneys solely to keep his torture and abuse secret, even from his lawyers, His father's testimony sheds light on the U.S. government's system of secret detention and makes clear that U.S. officials are trying to hide their own criminal conduct.According to the press release, Khan's Tribunal was scheduled to start on April 10, 2007, and to finish by April 13, 2007.
[29] The Department of Defense announced on August 9, 2007 that all 14 of the "high-value detainees" who had been transferred to Guantanamo from the CIA's black sites, had been officially classified as "enemy combatants".
In December 2007, a Federal appeals court in Washington DC ordered the Department of Defense to preserve evidence in Khan's case.
This motion aims for the Court of Appeals to declare that interrogation methods used against Majid Khan by the CIA "constitute torture and other forms of impermissible coercion.
The CCR attorneys Dixon Wells and Gita S. Gutierrez released some of their declassified notes from their conversations with Majid Khan in November 2007.
Wells Dixon, Gitanjali S. Gutierrez, Shayana D. Kadidal, of the Center for Constitutional Rights, filed a "petitioner's status report" on behalf of Majid Khan, in Civil Action No.
His lawyers argue that expiration of his sentence means he should be promptly released, although the U.S. had yet to reach a deal with a country to receive him.Iyman Faris told authorities that Khan had referred to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as an "uncle" and spoken of a desire to kill Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.
Khaled el-Masri, a citizen of Germany held for five months in the CIA black site in Afghanistan known as the "Salt Pit" in 2003 and 2004, a victim of mistaken identity, reported that Majid Khan was one of his fellow captives there.
[7] In the CIA black site, which he described as resembling a dungeon, "he was kept naked with a hood on his head, his arms chained in ways that made sleep impossible".
Torture Report, released December 9, 2014, revealed that Khan was one of the detainees subjected to "rectal feeding", which his lawyers described as a form of rape, as part of his ″torture regime″ at the black site prison.
Khan's "lunch tray", consisting of hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts, and raisins was pureed and rectally infused," says the report.
