Majid Khan (Guantanamo captive 10020)

Majid Khan is a Pakistan-born man and legal resident of the United States who immigrated to the US in 1996. On a trip to Pakistan to visit his wife, Khan was abducted by Pakistani officials and transferred to one of the CIA’s secret prisons. He is represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights and is the only so-called "high value" detainee to have legal representation.

[edit] Early life

Khan’s family settled in Baltimore, Maryland where he attended Owings Mills High School. ^[1] Like many other American teens, Khan listened to hip-hop music and played video games. He helped out his family by working the cash register at the family-owned business, his father’s gas station. He was granted asylum in the USA in 1998. Khan was also an active member in the Muslim community, volunteering to teach computer classes for youth at the Islamic Society of Baltimore and attending Jumah services at his local mosque a mile away from home. In 2002, Khan returned to Pakistan, where he married his wife, Rabia, and subsequently returned to the United States for a short period to continue his work as a database administrator in a Maryland government office. ^[2]

[edit] Capture

Upon his second return to Pakistan on March 5, 2003, Khan, his brother Mohammed, and other relatives were abducted from their residence in Karachi by Pakistani security agents and taken into custody. Khan and his family were taken to an unknown location. After about a month the entire family, with the exception of Khan, was released.

Rabia and the rest of Khan’s family heard nothing of his whereabouts for three years until September 2006 when President Bush announced that Khan, along with 13 other so-called "high value" detainees, had been transferred from secret CIA prisons to Guantánamo to await prosecution under the new military tribunal system prescribed by the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

[edit] Legal Issues

Khan was the first of fourteen detainees transferred from the CIA black sites to military custody at Guantanamo to challenge the legality of his detention.^[3] The Center for Constitutional Rights filed the challenge on October 5, 2006 -- before President Bush signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 into law.^[4] The Military Commissions Act of 2006 disallows detainees from mounting challenges through US courts. The act is retroactive. The Center for Constitutional Rights argued against this act before the US Supreme Court in Al Odah v. United States and Boumediene v. Bush on December 5, 2007, and a decision is expected in July.

[edit] Allegations

In the government’s account, Khan was exposed to a radicalized element of Islam while in America. Khan allegedly began attending secret prayer meetings at Baltimore’s Islamic Society where he was influenced by individuals who sought out disaffected young people and encouraged them to join their Islamic fringe group. US officials assert that Khan’s first trip to Pakistan connected him to family members affiliated with Al-Qaeda. According to officials, these family members introduced Khan to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the man accused of orchestrating the September 11, 2001 attacks, who later allegedly enlisted Khan in helping to support and plan terrorist attacks against the US and Israel. Government officials also believe that Khan, under KSM’s tutelage, was being trained to blow up gas stations, poison water reservoirs and plotted to assassinate Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf. Khan's job at the family gas station played a role in the suspicions of U.S. intelligence analysts that he was part of a plot to blow up parts of the U.S. petroleum infrastructure.^[1][2]The US government also contends that Khan was aware that he was in violation of the terms of his asylum when he left the United States to visit Pakistan in 2002.

[edit] Director of National Intelligence report

On November 8, 2006 the Office of the Director of National Intelligence asserted that his experience as a gas station attendant: "...made Khan highly qualified to assist Mohammad with the research and planning to blow up gas stations."^[5]

[edit] Legal Challenge to Government Allegations

Khan’s attorneys at the Center for Constitutional Rights, a legal and educational organization devoted to the protection of human rights both in the United States and abroad, insist that he was tortured, subjected to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, and coerced into making false and unreliable confessions.^[4] Khan’s attorneys at CCR have petitioned to have his case tried in civilian court in the United States instead of by military tribunal at Guantanamo. However, a federal appeals court ruled in February 2007 that detainees at Guantanamo Bay cannot use the US court system to challenge their indefinite imprisonment.

[edit] Access to Legal Counsel

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 council, "ignores the Court's historical function under Article III of the Constitution to exercise its independent judgment," and is using its classification authority to hide illegal conduct when the court has sufficient tools to prevent disclosure of sensitive classified information.^[6]

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".^[7]

James Friedman, a professor at the Maine School of Law, wrote that the Bush administration is arguing that Khan, and the other high-value detainees held in the Black Sites, should be gagged from talking about the interrogation techniques they were exposed to, even when talking privately to their own lawyers.^[8] 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."

According to an article by Christopher Brauchli:^[9]

• Kathleen Blomquist, a Justice Department Spokeswoman explains:

"information regarding the former C.I.A. detainees [like Mr. Khan] was classified as top secret. She said the information he shares with his counsel should "be appropriately tailored to accommodate a higher security level."

• The D.I.A. told the court that if Mr. Khan told just any person what the [interrogation] procedures were, it would cause "extremely grave damage to the national security."
• Marilyn A. Dorn, an official at the National Clandestine Service that is part of the C.I.A. told the court that "If specific alternative techniques were disclosed, it would permit terrorist organizations to adapt their training to counter the tactics that C.I.A. can employ in interrogations."

[edit] Habeas corpus submission

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Gherebi, et al. v. Bush, January 31st 2007

Majid Khan is one of the sixteen Guantanamo captives whose amalgamated habeas corpus submissions were heard by US District Court Judge Reggie B. Walton on January 31, 2007.^[10] Walton ruled that the cases be administratively closed until the District of Columbia Circuit resolves the issue of jurisdiction.^[11]

Main article: Gherebi, et al. v. Bush

[edit] Combatant Status Review Tribunals

Detainees at Guantanamo Bay are determined to be “enemy combatants” or “non-enemy combatants” during what are known as Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs). Many critics have pointed out the flaws of the process, including:

• The government controls what evidence and witnesses are permitted.
• Evidence obtained by torture is admissible.
• The detainees have no lawyer representing them.
• There is no guarantee of due process.
• The process is designed to get the government the results it wants—-some detainees were sent through the CSRT process as many as three times until they were found guilty.

[edit] Timeline of Majid Khan's Combatant Status Review Tribunal

[edit] Transcript

The first 558 Combatant Status Review Tribunals were convened in this small trailer. The captive's hands and feet were shackled to a bolt in the floor.^[18][19] The three chairs on the left hand side constituted the press gallery. The press was not allowed to attend the Tribunals of the fourteen high-value detainees. Only 37 of the 558 earlier Tribunals were observed by the Press.^[20]

The neutrality of this section is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page.(December 2007) Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved.

Majid Khan chose to attend his Tribunal. The verbatim transcript from the unclassified sessions of Majid Khan's Tribunal is 39 pages long.

[edit] Ali Khan's affidavit

On April 16, 2007 the Center for Constitutional Rights released an affidavit from Majid Khan's father, Ali Khan, and an accompanying press release.^{[12][13][14][15]} The Press Release quoted from Ali Khan's affidavit, which stated:

• Majid Khan was subjected to twenty days of beatings, binding in stress positions, hooding, sleep deprivation, at the end of which he was forced to sign a confession he wasn't given an opportunity to read.
• Majid Khan's brother Mohammed, sister-in-law, and infant niece were captured at the same time as he was. His brother Mohammed was released after a month, but during his month in captivity, Pakistani guards allowed him to have contact with his brother, and this is how his father, Ali Khan, was able to report details of his first month of interrogation.
• Mohammed's guards told him that at the same facility that the Khan brothers were being held at the children of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who were only 6 and 8 years old, were being deprived of food and water and subjected to abusive interrogation in order to coerce them to cooperate in revealing where their father was
• Mohammed Khan repeated that guards told him that two teenage boys, aged 14 and 16, were stripped naked and abused during their interrogation, then bound, and loaded on a plane to Guantanamo, "like garbage".

In addition the Press Release stated:^[15]

• That Majid Khan's family were not allowed to testify at his Tribunal.
• That Majid Khan's family had offered to fly to Guantanamo at their own expense, to testify at his Tribunal, "but the government refused to guarantee the family safe return to the U.S. if they traveled to Guantánamo to testify in person."
• That Khan was not allowed to be present when witnesses testified before the Tribunal, which it called a violation of its own rules.

The Press Release quoted his brother Mohammed:^[15]

"Our imprisonment in Karachi and interrogation by Americans was a terrifying experience, I still cannot believe that for the last four years the U.S. government has held my brother in secret detention and now won't even let him see our family or his lawyer. When I think about the detention of my newborn daughter, Majid's torture that made him sign a confession without reading it, and his disappearance into a secret prison, I feel our family is caught in a nightmare. No human being should have to go through what my brother endured - and is still enduring."

The Press Release quoted from Gitanjali Gutierrez, Khan's lawyer:^[15]

"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.^[15] According to the Press Release Ali Khan made the affidavit on April 6, 2007, when the family confirmed they would not be allowed to testify in person.

According to DoD spokesman Commander Jeffrey Gordon his Tribunal concluded April 15, 2007.^[12]

The Department of Defense announced on August 9, 2007 that all fourteen of the "high-value detainees" who had been transferred to Guantanamo from the CIA's black sites, had been officially classified as "enemy combatants".^[21] Although judges Peter Brownback and Keith J. Allred had ruled two months earlier that only "illegal enemy combatants" could face military commissions, the Department of Defense waived the qualifier and said that all fourteen men could now face charges before Guantanamo military commissions.^[22][23]

[edit] Legal Action

[edit] First meeting with a lawyer

On October 15, 2007 Gitanjali Gutierrez wrote about her upcoming first meeting with Majid Khan.^[24] Gutierrez wrote that she was scheduled to meet with Khan later that day. Khan is the first of the "high value detainees" to meet with a lawyer.

[edit] Order to preserve evidence

A Federal appeals court in Washington DC ordered the DoD to preserve evidence that would show the nature of Majid Khan in December of 2007.^[25] The motion predates publication that, contrary to earlier claims, the CIA had taped the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah and Abdul Al Nashiri, including their waterboarding, in 2002 -- and destroyed those tapes, in spite of a court order not to destroy this kind of evidence, in late 2005.^[26] In an email to the Washington Post Wells Dixon, one of Khan's lawyers, wrote:

"The order is significant because the D.C. circuit would have no reason to issue interim relief, by its own initiative, if it were absolutely certain that no torture evidence would be lost or destroyed before the preservation motion is fully briefed and decided on the merits."

"At a bare minimum, General Hayden is not fully informed about the CIA torture program."

The Baltimore Sun quoted a CIA spokesman, George Little, who repeated that the CIA stood by its assertion that it had stopped videotaping captives' interrogations in 2002.^[27] But his lawyers claimed Khan's interrogations have been taped more recently than that.

[edit] Motion to declare torture

A motion filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights was declassified in redacted form in December 2007. 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 government's response to the motion is due to the court on December 20.

"Majid Khan was subjected by U.S. personnel to a ruthless program of state-sanctioned torture," said CCR Attorney Wells Dixon. "This motion will require the government to state its position for the first time in front of a real court as to whether they think the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques used on Majid are torture under U.S. and international law." CCR's reply brief is due January 4, 2008. ^[28]

Some of the notes of CCR attorneys Gitanjali Gutierrez and Wells Dixon that were collected from conversations with Majid Khan in November were also declassified. They contain information such as:

• Majid chewed through the artery in his left arm until it bled last January and still has a scar.
• Majid has been on hunger strikes to protest for his rights to see his lawyers and to protest his conditions and being kept in isolation. Hunger strikes were the only way he knew how to assert his rights. One of his teachers at Owings Mills High School in Baltimore taught him about checks and balances, and he learned that if you do not assert and protect your rights, you do not deserve to be in the United States.
• Majid also went on hunger strike to get The Washington Post.
• The attorneys were initially angry because they thought perhaps the guards had brought the wrong detainee in to meet with them, which has happened in the past—Majid has lost so much weight that they did not recognize him from the photos and video they had seen; he was painfully thin and pale. He immediately looked at them and said, “Dixon? Gita? I’ve been waiting a long time to meet you. It’s good to see you.”
• He is suffering from symptoms of PTSD – concentration, memory loss, frantic expression, etc.
• He requested books and a subscription to The Washington Post.
• He wishes he had gone to college.^[29]

[edit] Letters from Guantanamo

Khan is the first of the 14 high value detainees to have been able to get mail to his relatives.^[30] The Washington Post reports that four letters from Khan have been received, three to his relatives in Maryland, and one to his wife. The letters were delivered to his family through the International Committee of the Red Cross, whose contact with detainees is contingent on the agency's promise not to publicly disclose any information received during the meetings. Khan's letter to his wife was written in Urdu, and was published on the BBC's Urdu web site. Khan's Maryland relatives have also decided to make the letters public to bring more attention to his case. These letters, written on December 17, 2007 and December 21, 2007 were made public on January 18, 2008.^[27][31] The letters were filed as part of a petition in the Washington DC Federal Court of Appeal. The petition asks the court "to rule that he was tortured in U.S. custody."

According to the Washington Post Khan's letters were heavily redacted by military censors.^[30]

Khan wrote that he is in solitary confinement, but he can talk to nearby captives through the cell walls.^[30] Once a day he is permitted to leave his cell "to get sunburn" during an hour of solitary access in an exercise yard. His relatives say the letters show he has become much more religious.

According to the Baltimore Sun^[27]:

"In one five-page handwritten account from Khan to his lawyers, only a single sentence survives the censor's pen. It says, 'I was practically an American who lived a comfortable live [sic] under freedoms of America, who never lived in caves or Afghanistan.'"

Other quotes from Khan's letters include:

"Think of me as a human being ... not a terrorist."[27] "I ask you to give me justice ... in the name of what U.S.A. once stood for and in the name of what Thomas Jefferson fought for ... allow me a chance to prove that I am innocent."[27] “Why would I ever want to harm U.S.A., who has never done anything but good to me and my family?”[31]

The Baltimore Sun reported that Khan said that when he lived in the USA he paid $2,400 per month in US taxes.^[27] It also reported that the only other captive he has had any contact with since he arrived in Guantanamo was Abu Zubaydah.

[edit] Pakistani cooperation

Khalid Khawaja, a spokesman for a Pakistani human rights group named Defense of Human Rights, cited the examples of Majid Khan and Saifullah Paracha as proof that the Pakistani government had lied about whether it had handed over Pakistani citizens to the US. ^[32] The Associated Press quotes Khawaja as stating that: "Pakistan has sold its own people to the United States for dollars."

Related case Uzair Paracha, the son of Saifullah Paracha, another Guantanamo detainee, stood trial, and was convicted of terrorism charges in a US court. Paracha had requested Majid Khan as a witness. The US government declined to produce him, even though he was in US custody.^[2][33]

[edit] References

1. ^ ^{a b} From Baltimore Suburbs to a Secret CIA Prison: Family Learned Last Week That Man Was Among 'High-Value' Terrorism Suspects Moved to Guantanamo, Washington Post, September 11, 2006
2. ^ ^{a b c} Terrorism suspect has Balto. Co. ties, Baltimore Sun, September 11, 2006
3. ^ Suspect challenges detention: The detainee is the first transferred from secret CIA prison to argue he is being wrongfully held, Kansas City Star, October 5, 2006
4. ^ ^{a b} New lawsuits challenge Congress's detainee act, Christian Science Monitor, October 6, 2006
5. ^ "Detainee Suspected of Plot to Destroy Gas, Water Supplies", The Nature of the Enemy, November 8, 2006. Retrieved on 2008-02-22. "This experience made Khan highly qualified to assist [Khalid Sheikh] Mohammad with the research and planning to blow up gas stations. Khan is also suspected of working with Mohammad on plans to poison water reservoirs throughout the United States, and plans to assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf." 
6. ^ Khan v. Bush / Khan v. Gates. Center for Constitutional Rights. Retrieved on 2008-02-29.
7. ^ http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/11/04/terrorism.detainees.ap/index.html
8. ^ Secrecy, Interrogation and the Rule of Law, The Jurist, November 13, 2006
9. ^ Christopher Brauchli, When the Secret is the Question: Secret Prisons, Top Secret Interrogations, Counterpunch, December 22, 2006
10. ^ Reggie B. Walton (January 31, 2007). Gherebi, et al. v. Bush. United States Department of Justice. Retrieved on May 19, 2007.
11. ^ Pantesco, Joshua. "Federal judge halts Guantanamo habeas cases pending appeals ruling", Jurist, February 1, 2007. Retrieved on 2008-02-26. (English) 
12. ^ ^{a b c} Michael Melia. "Father of Pakistani Alleges U.S. Torture", Associated Press, Monday, April 16, 2007. Retrieved on April 18. 
13. ^ ^{a b} Natalie Hrubos. "Guantanamo detainee's father says son tortured in secret CIA prison", The Jurist, Tuesday, April 17, 2007. Retrieved on April 18. 
14. ^ ^{a b} Ali Khan (April 16, 2007). Statement of Ali Khan. Center for Constitutional Rights. Retrieved on April 18, 2007.
15. ^ ^{a b c d e f} New testimony on Majid Khan's torture submitted to Guantanamo Combatant Status Review Tribunal: Khan forced to sign confession he had not read. Center for Constitutional Rights (Monday, April 16, 2007). Retrieved on April 18, 2007.
16. ^ Summary of Evidence for Combatant Status Review Tribunal — Khan, Majid. OARDEC (March 28, 2007). Retrieved on May 15, 2007.
17. ^ Verbatim transcript from Combatant Status Review Tribunal for ISN 10020. OARDEC (April 15, 2007). Retrieved on May 15, 2007.
18. ^ Guantánamo Prisoners Getting Their Day, but Hardly in Court, New York Times, November 11, 2004 - mirror
19. ^ Inside the Guantánamo Bay hearings: Barbarian "Justice" dispensed by KGB-style "military tribunals", Financial Times, December 11, 2004
20. ^ Annual Administrative Review Boards for Enemy Combatants Held at Guantanamo Attributable to Senior Defense Officials. United States Department of Defense (March 6, 2007). Retrieved on 2007-09-22.
21. ^ Lolita C. Baldur. "Pentagon: 14 Guantanamo Suspects Are Now Combatants", Time magazine, Thursday, August 9, 2007.  mirror
22. ^ Sergeant Sara Wood. "Charges Dismissed Against Canadian at Guantanamo", Department of Defense, June 4, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-06-07. 
23. ^ Sergeant Sara Wood. "Judge Dismisses Charges Against Second Guantanamo Detainee", Department of Defense, June 4, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-06-07. 
24. ^ Gitanjali S. Gutierrez. "Going to See a Ghost: Majid Khan and the Abuses of the 'War on Terror'", Washington Post, Monday, October 15, 2007, p. A15. Retrieved on 2007-10-16. 
25. ^ ^{a b} David McFadden. "US Court Grants Motion on Gitmo Suspect", Washington Post, Tuesday, December 11, 2007. Retrieved on 2008-01-25. "A U.S. appeals court said it ordered the preservation of evidence so that it can have 'sufficient opportunity to consider the merits of the motion' by the defense seeking a ruling on preserving evidence in Khan's case. It should not be construed as a ruling on the motion's merits, the court said in its written order." 
26. ^ "CIA destroyed tapes despite court orders, but secret prison system could provide legal cover", Rinf, Wednesday, December 12, 2007. Retrieved on 2008-01-25. "The Bush administration was under court order not to discard evidence of detainee torture and abuse months before the CIA destroyed videotapes that revealed some of its harshest interrogation tactics.
    "Normally, that would force the government to defend itself against obstruction allegations. But the CIA may have an out: its clandestine network of overseas prisons." 
27. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Carol Rosenberg. "Ex-Md. resident writes from Guantanamo about CIA torture", Baltimore Sun, January 22, 2008. Retrieved on 2008-01-22. 
28. ^ Redacted Motion to Declare Interrogation Methods Used on Majid Khan Are Torture Cleared By CIA. Center for Constitutional Rights (December 2007). Retrieved on 2008-02-26.
29. ^ CCR Attorneys Release Revelations of Torture of Former Ghost Detainee Majid Khan. Center for Constitutional Rights (December 2007). Retrieved on 2008-02-26.
30. ^ ^{a b c} "Detainee's Letters Give Peek at Life At Guantanamo: Bush Named Ex-Maryland Man One of 14 'High-Value' Prisoners", Washington Post, Thursday, January 18, 2007. Retrieved on 18 January. 
31. ^ ^{a b} Scott Shane. "Detainee’s Lawyers Rebut C.I.A. on Tapes", New York Times, January 19, 2008. Retrieved on 2008-01-18. 
32. ^ 2 Pakistanis in Guantanamo Bay should be released, rights group says, International Herald Tribune, November 23, 2006
33. ^ Maryland Man Named As High-Value Terror Suspect, WBAL-TV, September 11, 2006