Majid Khan

An important update from the military commissions at Guantánamo, normally a ‘Groundhog Day’ of broken justice, where a judge has ruled that Majid Khan, a “high-value detainee” who agreed to a plea deal in 2012, should be allowed to have his sentence reduced because of the torture he was subjected to in CIA “black sites.” This is the first time such a decision has been taken, and it is to be hoped that Khan will now be released before the previously agreed date of 2031.

Good news for a change, as Uzair Paracha, convicted of terrorism-related charges in 2005, and given a 30-year sentence, has been freed and repatriated to Pakistan. In 2018, the judge who presided over his initial trial ordered a new trial after concluding that allowing the existing conviction to stand would be a “manifest injustice,” a decision based on serious doubts about the veracity of testimony against him that had been provided by prisoners at Guantánamo, previously held in CIA “black sites,” including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Sadly, although Uzair has been freed, his father, Saifullah, held on the basis of similar discredited testimony, is still held at Guantánamo, with no sign of when, if ever, he too will be freed.

Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months of the Trump administration.   I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary […]

Please support my work! I’m currently trying to raise $2700 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo for the next three months.   At Guantánamo, as I have been reporting recently, the military commissions, a broken trial system ill-advisedly dragged out of historical retirement for prisoners seized in the “war on terror,” have […]

Please support my work! I’m currently trying to raise $2800 (£2100) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo for the next three months.   In the 15 years since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States has systematically undermined many of the key values it claims to uphold as a nation […]

I wrote the following article (as “Tortured “High-Value Detainees” Arrived at Guantánamo Exactly Ten Years Ago, But Still There Is No Justice”) for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required […]

The November 2015 issue of The American Lawyer featured a “Special Report: The Guantánamo Bar,” consisting of six interviews with attorneys who have worked on Guantánamo. I’m cross-posting them below, as I think they will be of interest, and I also estimate that many of you will not have come across them previously. The six […]

When is a war crime not a war crime? When it is invented by the executive branch and Congress, and implemented for six years until a profoundly Conservative appeals court strikes it down. The invented war crime is “providing material support to terrorism,” and on October 16, 2012, a panel of three judges in the […]

On Friday, I was delighted to be asked by Scott Horton of Antiwar Radio to discuss the ongoing shame of a world in which the prison at Guantánamo continues to remain open for business. The springboard for our interview was last week’s plea deal in the trial by military commission of Majid Khan, a Pakistani […]

Guantánamo briefly emerged from the shadows on Wednesday, when Majid Khan, a Pakistani national described as one of 14 “high-value detainees” when he arrived at Guantánamo in September 2006, after three and a half years in secret CIA prisons, appeared in public for the first time since his capture almost nine years ago. Khan, now […]