Majid Khan, who was tortured by the CIA earlier than his switch to the US navy facility in Cuba, says he feels ‘reborn’.
Washington, DC – A Guantanamo Bay jail detainee who endured torture in CIA custody has been transferred to Belize almost a yr after ending his sentence on the US-run detention facility.
The Pentagon introduced on Thursday that Majid Khan was freed, bringing the variety of prisoners at Guantanamo to 34, together with 20 who’re eligible for switch.
Khan, who was captured in Pakistan in 2003 and brought to Guantanamo three years later, mentioned he was trying ahead to starting a brand new chapter within the Central American nation of 400,000 folks.
“As we speak, I really feel like I’m reborn. I’ve reentered the world,” Khan mentioned in a press release.
“I’m in a bit little bit of shock as a result of I’ve been ready so lengthy to be free, and I can hardly consider it has lastly occurred.”
Khan, who went to secondary college within the US state of Maryland, returned to his native Pakistan to affix al-Qaeda after the 9/11 assaults in 2001. He pleaded responsible in 2012 to conspiracy to commit homicide, spying and “offering materials help for terrorism”.
“He was sentenced in 2021 to a time period of confinement for over 10 years with credit score for the years he spent cooperating with US personnel,” the Pentagon mentioned on Thursday. “He has subsequently accomplished his sentence.”
The Guantanamo detention facility opened in 2002 to accommodate detainees captured throughout the “conflict on terror“.
Situated at a US navy base in Cuba, the jail operates below a authorized system led by navy commissions that don’t assure the identical rights as conventional US courts. Detainees cleared for launch typically spend years at Guantanamo as Washington appears for international locations to take them in after they’re freed.
On Thursday, the Pentagon expressed gratitude to Belize for supporting “ongoing US efforts centered on responsibly lowering the detainee inhabitants and finally closing the Guantanamo Bay facility”.
The jail as soon as housed almost 800 detainees, lots of whom initially hung out at covert CIA areas often known as black websites, the place they had been tortured below a so-called “enhanced interrogation” programme authorised by former President George W Bush’s administration.
A 2014 US Senate report detailed a few of the torture methods used on prisoners, together with Khan, at these amenities.
“I used to be a ghost, a strolling useless man,” Khan mentioned in his assertion on Thursday. “The CIA wished me to stay this fashion without end. In truth, once I was being tortured, I usually wished for dying to flee the fear and the ache.”
Wells Dixon, a senior lawyer on the Heart for Constitutional Rights who represented Khan, mentioned the authorized advocacy group was “thrilled” by his launch.
“Belize has completed an impressive job to arrange for his resettlement, and their success serves as a mannequin for different international locations to just accept males who nobody thinks ought to stay at Guantanamo however who can not return to their dwelling international locations for humanitarian causes,” Dixon mentioned in a press release.
Khan was launched days forward of the first-ever go to by a United Nations skilled to Guantanamo.
Fionnuala Ni Aolain, the particular UN rapporteur on the promotion and safety of human rights and elementary freedoms whereas countering terrorism, will share her findings and suggestions after the journey, which is anticipated to start subsequent week.
Ni Aolain may even interview survivors of the September 11, 2001, assaults within the US in addition to former Guantanamo detainees over the following three months, the UN Human Rights Workplace mentioned.