Nation/World

In a rare move, U.S. releases ‘high-value’ Guantanamo prisoner

A longtime Guantánamo Bay detainee, who was interrogated at CIA black sites and imprisoned for more than 15 years at the top-security facility in Cuba, was released in Belize on Thursday.

The resettlement of Majid Khan, who entered into a cooperation agreement with the U.S. government in 2012, represented the first time that one of the so-called “high-value” prisoners sent to Guantánamo from the secret CIA facilities in 2006 was freed, his attorneys at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and Jenner & Block said in a statement.

The release caps a saga that began in 2003 when Khan, who was born in Saudi Arabia but spent part of his youth outside Baltimore, was captured in Pakistan before being subject to beatings, sleep deprivation and other extreme measures at the hands of CIA interrogators and later taken to Guantánamo.

The delay between the conclusion of his sentence in March 2022 and his release underscores the legal and political challenges that President Biden will face in attempting to finally shut down the high-profile prison, which now holds just 34 aging detainees but remains a charged issue on Capitol Hill.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that Khan had honored his cooperation commitment.

“We remain dedicated to a deliberate and thorough process, focused on responsibly reducing the detainee population,” she told reporters.

By his own account, Khan attempted to adopt an American identity after his family emigrated to the United States from Pakistan in the 1990s, and considered joining the Navy and working for a technology company in Virginia after high school. Later, when he returned to Pakistan, he came under the influence of al-Qaeda and took part in militant plots, including transferring $50, o00 to operatives who carried out a deadly bombing in Indonesia, he later described.

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As a captive Khan was imprisoned at multiple CIA facilities abroad, where he endured harsh interrogation tactics including being submerged in ice water until he believed he was drowning and suspended naked from the ceiling by his wrists. He said he suffers lasting ailments from that treatment, which also included being force-fed anally after he went on hunger strike.

Khan’s plea deal, which gave him a lighter sentence in exchange for providing testimony in other cases, resulted in a 10-year sentence that concluded last year.

“I have been given a second chance in life and I intend to make the most of it,” Khan said in a statement released via his attorneys. “I deeply regret the things that I did many years ago, and I have taken responsibility and tried to make up for them.”

In a statement, the Defense Department thanked the government of Belize.

Thirty-four inmates remain at Guantánamo, where efforts to prosecute suspects from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and other terror incidents have repeatedly stalled in a military court. The vast majority of the nearly 800 men held there were never charged with a crime.

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