Guantanamo Bay prisoner and Pakistani citizen Majid Khan has narrated publicly for the first time how he was tortured by the US government while being a detainee at a facility, which has long concealed its torture techniques.
According to Middle East Eye, Khan was speaking before a panel of military jurors, while reading from a 39-page statement on Thursday. Khan said that the techniques used on him were sleep deprivation, suspension from the ceiling while naked for long periods of time and waterboarding. He added that he was sexually assaulted, and mashed food was administered to him through his anus as well.
Khan detailed that he used to insist for the torture to end but it never ceased, even though he was willing to cooperate with US authorities if he had intelligence that could serve them.
He remains to be formally sentenced by the jury, yet the procedure is a mere formality since he reached a plea bargain with the US government, which will reduce his sentence due to his cooperation with them. Despite being a Pakistani citizen, he cannot return to Pakistan, but will be settled in a third unknown country.
Khan immigrated to the US in 1990s and later graduated from a Baltimore high school before joining the telecommunications sector in Washington DC. The New York Times also reported that he got radicalized during a family visit to Pakistan in 2002 and offered himself willingly as a recruit, something he admitted he did in ‘stupidity’.
He was apprehended in 2003 and finally sent to Guantanamo in 2006 to stand trial. He admitted being a conduit for al-Qaeda and in 2012 pleaded guilty to abetting conspiracy, murder and providing support to extremist actions. Khan agreed to cooperate with the US authorities in other similar investigations involving prisoners at Guantanamo, who planned and became couriers for activities that resulted in the 9/11 attacks.
Khan has apologized for his actions and said that he forgave those who imprisoned and tortured him in overseas prisons that are known in the US Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA’) parlance as ‘black sites’.
