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Over ten years ago, on February 29, 2012, Majid Khan, a Pakistani national held at Guantánamo since September 2006, and previously held and tortured in CIA “black sites” for three and a half years, agreed to a plea deal in his military commission trial at Guantánamo, admitting that, as an Al-Qaeda recruit, he had taken $50,000 from Pakistan to Thailand as funding for the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah, whose attack on a hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia in August 2003 killed 12 people.

Khan, who had already been in a CIA “black site” for five months when the attack happened, was thoroughly remorseful about his actions, and agreed to cooperate with the US authorities, providing information that would help in the prosecution of others involved in terrorism, both at Guantánamo and elsewhere. In exchange, it was promised that his sentence would be capped at 19 years from the time of his capture; in other words, that it would be served by March 5, 2022.

At the time, his sentencing was due to take place in four years’ time — in 2016 — but delays in the broken military commission system, which I wrote about here and here, meant that he was not finally sentenced until October last year, when he was finally allowed to describe, in harrowing detail (as I posted here and here), his horrendous treatment at the hands of the CIA, and the authorities in Guantánamo, and also to explain at length how, as a young man distraught at the death of his mother, he was preyed on by Al-Qaeda members, taking advantage of his vulnerability. He also, as has been apparent throughout his imprisonment, once more apologized profusely for his crimes.

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I wrote the following article 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 to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

As we settle into the third decade since the 9/11 attacks, and the US’s brutal and counter-productive response to it — the establishment of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, and a global program of kidnapping, rendition and torture in CIA “black sites” — the US government is still furiously engaged in efforts to hide the evidence of what it did to whom, and where, even though much of that information is in the public domain, and has been for many years.

A case in point is a recent Supreme Court ruling in the case of Abu Zubaydah, for whom the post-9/11 torture program was first developed, in the mistaken belief — which the US government has since walked back from — that he was a major player in Al-Qaeda. Zubaydah, a stateless Palestinian, whose real name is Zain al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, was seized in a house raid in Pakistan on March 28, 2002, and was taken to the CIA’s first black site, in Thailand. He was then moved to further “black sites” in Poland, in Guantánamo itself, and in Morocco and Lithuania, before ending up back at Guantánamo in September 2006, with 13 other “high-value detainees,” where he has been held ever since without charge or trial.

The case before the Supreme Court didn’t involve the question of whether, after 20 years, Abu Zubaydah should be released, as one of a number of “forever prisoners” who have never been charged, although that is a perfectly valid question — and one that, in the last year, prompted 99 lawmakers to write to President Biden to urge him to release everyone still held at Guantánamo who hasn’t been charged, a total of 26 of the 38 men still held, including Abu Zubaydah.

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I wrote the following article 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 to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

On Monday (March 7), Mohammed al-Qahtani, a Saudi prisoner at Guantánamo, who was shamefully tortured at the prison in 2002-03, despite suffering from schizophrenia, related to a car accident as a child, was released from Guantánamo, and sent back to Saudi Arabia to receive appropriate mental health care in a rehabilitation facility. His release brings to 38 the number of men still held at the prison.

Al-Qahtani had been tortured, over many months in Guantánamo’s first year of operations, because it had emerged that he had tried to get into the US in August 2001 to be the 20th hijacker for the 9/11 attacks, but had been turned away by the authorities, presumably because he was incapable of disguising his already existing mental health problems. He then made his way to Afghanistan, where he was seized and sent to Guantánamo.

At Guantánamo, US personnel had been persistently unable to cope with his profound mental health problems, exacerbated by his torture, and yet it had taken until March 2020 for anyone in a position of authority to recognize that a valid case could be made that he should be sent back to Saudi Arabia because the authorities at Guantánamo were unable to adequately deal with his illness.

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On Wednesday (January 26), I was delighted to take part in “Reaction to 9/11: Dialing Back Civil Rights, Violation of Human Rights,” a discussion about 9/11, Guantánamo and the US’s post-9/11 torture program with former Guantánamo prisoner, torture victim and best-selling author Mohamedou Ould Slahi, and Elizabeth Miller, a Rule of Law Fellow for September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, which describes itself as “an organization founded by family members of those killed on September 11th who have united to turn our grief into action for peace.” Miller lost her father, a firefighter, on 9/11, but like all the other Peaceful Tomorrows members, believes fervently that the U.S. lost its way in its response to the attacks.

The show was broadcast by WVIA, a PBS-affiliated channel in Pennsylvania, and is part of an ongoing series of shows, “Conversations for the Common Good,” produced in conjunction with Bloomsburg University. The moderator was Larry Vojtko, and the show — 72 minutes in total — is available here on WVIA’s website. I’d like to thank William Hudon, a history professor at the university, and a long-time supporter of the Close Guantánamo campaign, for first approaching me last year about this event, and for helping to make it happen.

It’s always good to hear Mohamedou talk, especially when he discusses the power of forgiveness, and I was pleased to finally meet Elizabeth, who articulated well the feeling of betrayal when her government embarked on a program of kidnap and torture after 9/11, betraying the values her father held dear. It was also interesting to hear about the friendship that developed between Mohamedou and Elizabeth, who found common ground in how the US government failed them after 9/11, and, for my part, I was pleased to have been given the opportunity to explain in detail quite why the prison is, and always has been such a legal, moral and ethical abomination, and why it must be closed.

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Last week, I was delighted to be interviewed by Chris Cook for his weekly show ‘Gorilla Radio’ in Victoria, in British Columbia. Chris and I have spoken many times before, and it’s always a great pleasure to be on his show. Our interview is available here on Substack, in a show also featuring eco-poet Kim Goldberg, and another version, featuring CovertAction Magazine’s Jeremy Kuzmarov, is here.

We began by talking about Abu Zubaydah, and the US torture program, prompted by my recent article, “The Forever Prisoner”: Alex Gibney’s New Documentary About CIA Torture Victim Abu Zubaydah, and I briefly summarized the whole horrible story of his four and a half years in CIA “black sites”, his 15 years (to date) in Guantánamo, and his status as one of Guantánamo’s “forever prisoners” — 14 of the 39 men still held, none of whom have ever been charged with a crime.

Chris also asked me about who has been held at Guantánamo throughout its history, enabling me to explain how, far from being “the worst of the worst”, as alleged, most of the men — and boys — held at Guantánamo over the last 20 years were nothing more than foot soldiers or, in many cases, civilians seized by mistake. I didn’t mention it, but I could have repeated my assertion, which I first made many years ago, that no more than three percent of the 779 men held by the US military at Guantánamo since the prison first opened have had any connection with the leadership structures of al-Qaeda, the Taliban or associated groups.

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With just twelve days to go until the 20th anniversary of the opening of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, this would seem like a good time to make available some of the videos from ‘Guantánamo: 20 Years After’, the online conference on November 12 and 13, hosted by the University of Brighton, which I helped to organize.

The conference featured two keynote speakers (myself and former prisoner Shaker Aamer, standing in at the last minute for Mohamedou Ould Slahi), guest speakers Mansoor Adayfi (another former prisoner) and Antonio Aiello (who worked with Mansoor on his memoir, Don’t Forget Us Here, published this summer), ten academics delivering papers, and three panel discussions.

I posted a report about the conference just after it had taken place, although at the time videos of the presentations weren’t available, so I’m delighted to be able to present them now for those of you who weren’t able to attend the conference — or even for those of you who were, and will appreciate seeing them again.

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I wrote the following article 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 to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

In the long litany of torture and abuse inflicted by the US government on prisoners in the brutal “war on terror” that the Bush administration declared after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, few have suffered as much as Abu Zubaydah (Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn), for whom, mistakenly, the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program was invented.

For as long as I have been studying and writing about Guantánamo, it has been apparent that Abu Zubaydah’s story is one of the darkest in the entire sorry saga of how the US lost its moral compass after 9/11.

Seized in a house raid in Faisalabad, Pakistan, in March 2002, in which he was shot and badly wounded, he was then flown to the CIA’s first post-9/11 torture prison, in Thailand. This was the start four and a half years in CIA “black sites” — including in Poland, in a “black site” in Guantánamo Bay that existed for six months in 2003-04, in Morocco, in Lithuania and in Afghanistan — before his eventual transfer back to Guantánamo, with 13 other “high-value detainees,” in September 2006.

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Yesterday, I posted a transcript of the first part of the extraordinary statement that Guantánamo prisoner and CIA “black site” torture victim Majid Khan read out at his sentencing hearing two weeks ago, in which he recounted his early life, how he was preyed on by al-Qaeda supporters following the death of his mother, and the horrendous torture to which he was subjected in the “black sites,” despite having made it clear from the time of his capture that he intended to be as cooperative as possible.

Today, I’m posting the rest of his statement, which covers his time in his final CIA “black site,” another facility in Afghanistan, code-named “Orange,” where, despite having already cooperated with his interrogators, his hunger strikes in protest at his seemingly unending imprisonment without charge or trial, or access to a lawyer, were dealt with by what he describes as being “raped by the CIA medics,” who “inserted tubes or objects into my anus against my will.”

Majid explained how the executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee report into the CIA torture program, released in December 2014, accurately described what happened to him as follows: “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.” When the executive summary  was released, this was one of the new and shocking details that I picked up on in an article for Al-Jazeera. Majid proceeded to explain how this vile abuse led to him still experiencing “extreme discomfort from the hemorrhoids as a result of my treatment.”

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It’s nearly two weeks since Majid Khan, held and tortured in CIA “black sites” for over three years before his transfer to Guantánamo, where he has been held since September 2006, was allowed to read out a detailed statement at his sentencing hearing, held nearly ten years after he agreed to a plea deal in his military commission, in which, in exchange for assisting in a number of ongoing cases, both at Guantánamo and elsewhere, he was promised his eventual freedom. I wrote about his sentencing and his statement last week, in an article entitled, Is This Justice? After 18 Years of Torture, Isolation and Unprecedented Co-Operation, CIA and Guantánamo Prisoner Majid Khan Should Be Released in Feb. 2022.

Majid’s statement combined an account of his early life, including his life in the U.S. as a teenager and a young man, with a graphic account of his torture and abuse, and with effusive apologies on his part for having been recruited by Al-Qaeda when he was at a particularly low point in his life, distraught at the death of his mother, and it was noticeable that, at his sentencing, seven of the eight military jurors signed a hand-written letter to the commissions’ Convening Authority calling for clemency, decrying the torture to which he was subjected, which they compared to “torture performed by the most abusive regimes in modern history,” and clearly expressing disgust at how he was treated when, throughout his long imprisonment, he has made a point of being as cooperative as possible.

In the interests of keeping Majid’s testimony in the public eye — to expose the depravities of the torture program, and the way so much of its focus seemed to be on torture for its own sake, rather than for any practical outcome, and to contrast this with Majid’s own compliance, for which he doesn’t seem to have been adequately rewarded — I’m posting his entire statement in two articles; this and one to follow.

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On Thursday evening, in a military courtroom at Guantánamo Bay, Majid Khan, a Pakistani national who was held and tortured in CIA “black sites” for three years and four months after his initial capture in Pakistan in March 2003, and has been held at Guantánamo since September 2006, was finally allowed to tell the world the gruesome details about his treatment in the “black site” program, and at Guantánamo, in a statement that he read out at a sentencing hearing.

Some of the details of the torture to which Khan was subjected were made public nearly seven years ago, when the executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report about the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program was made public — in particular, the shocking revelation that he was one of several prisoners subjected to “rectal feeding,” whereby, as the report described it, his “‘lunch tray,’ consisting of hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts, and raisins was ‘pureed’ and rectally infused.”

In his sentencing statement, however, which, as his lawyers at the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights explain, made him “the first so-called ‘high-value detainee’ at Guantánamo who has been able to speak publicly about the CIA torture program,” he revealed much more than was ever previously known publicly. As Vince Warren, CCR’s Executive Director, said, “We knew about some of the horrors he was subjected to, like the so-called ‘rectal feeding,’ from the Senate torture report, but the new details in his own words were chilling. From the ice-bath waterboardings to the ‘Torture Doctor’ who put hot sauce on the tip of his IV, the acts committed by our government shock the conscience — yet no one has ever been held accountable.”

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