Majid Shoukat Khan (Urdu: ماجد شوکت خان, born February 28, 1980) is a Pakistani who was the only known legal resident of the United States held in the Guantanamo Bay Detainment Camp. He was a "high value detainee".
Khan originally came to the United States in 1998, where he gained asylum. He lived in a suburb of Baltimore, Maryland where he attended high school and became radicalized. He returned to his native Pakistan after the 9/11 attacks to join Al Qaeda and worked for them as a courier, according to the BBC, The Progressive, and The New York Times. Pakistani authorities captured him in 2003 and handed him over to the CIA who held him incognito in a black site in Afghanistan, interrogating him and subjecting him to “the most horrific torture.” In 2006 he was sent to Guantanamo, where in 2012 he pleaded guilty to conspiracy and the murder of 11 innocent civilians in the 2003 Marriott Hotel bombing in Jakarta, Indonesia, and also for the attempted assassination of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf. He also began cooperating with the U.S. government. In 2021 he was sentenced by Guantanamo Military Commission retroactively to 26 years in prison. His sentence was completed on March 1, 2022, and after Belize agreed to accept him he was released from Guantanamo Bay to that country on February 2, 2023.
Early life
Khan's family settled in Catonsville, Maryland, near Baltimore, where he attended Owings Mills High SchoolFrom Baltimore Suburbs to a Secret CIA Prison: Family Learned Last Week That Man Was Among 'High-Value' Terrorism Suspects Moved to Guantanamo , The Washington Post, September 11, 2006 and was "exposed to radical Islam". He was granted asylum in the U.S. in 1998, and graduated the following year.
In 2002, Khan returned to Pakistan, where he married 18-year-old Rabia Yaqoub. According to Deborah Scroggins, author of Wanted Women, Khan had become more religious, after his mother's death, and had asked his aunt to help him find a wife who was also a religious scholar. Rabia was one of his aunt's students. According to The New York Times, it was then he became a courier for Al Qaeda.
He returned to the United States for a short period to continue his work as a database administrator in a Maryland government office. He claims that he helped the FBI investigate and arrest an illegal immigrant from Pakistan during this time.
On December 25, 2002, Aafia Siddiqui made a trip from Pakistan to the U.S., saying that she was looking for a job. She left the U.S. on January 2, 2003. The FBI suspects that the real purpose of her trip was to open a P.O. box for Khan. Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women's Violence in Global Politics, Laura Sjoberg, Caron E. Gentry, Zed Books, 2007, , accessed February 12, 2010 Siddiqui registered Khan as co-owner of the box, claiming he was her husband."The intelligence factory: how America makes its enemies disappear" , Harper's Magazine, November 2009 The key to the box was later found held by Uzair Paracha, who was convicted of providing material support to al-Qaeda and was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison in 2006; fifteen years after his arrest, Uzair's conviction was deemed void on July 3, 2018, by Judge Sidney H. Stein, based on newly discovered statements made by Ammar al-Baluchi, Majid Khan (detainee) and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, bringing his involvement and intentions into question.Over "Pakistani man convicted of providing material support to Al-qaeda sentenced to 30 years in federal prison" , Department of Justice, July 2006
Arrest and detention
Khan returned to Pakistan on March 5, 2003. He, his brother Mohammed, and other relatives were arrested at 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 Khan and the rest of his family heard nothing of his whereabouts for three years. Then, in September 2006, President George W. Bush announced that Khan, along with 13 other so-called "high value detainees", had been transferred from secret CIA prisons to military custody at Guantánamo Bay detention camp to await prosecution under the new military tribunal system authorized by the Military Commissions Act of 2006.
Legal issues Khan was the first of the fourteen high-value detainees to challenge his detention in court.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 The Center for Constitutional Rights filed the habeas corpus challenge on October 5, 2006 — before President Bush signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 into law.New lawsuits challenge Congress's detainee act , Christian Science Monitor, October 6, 2006
But, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 restricted detainees from mounting challenges through U.S. courts and was retroactive. The Center for Constitutional Rights and others argued against this act before the U.S. Supreme Court in Boumediene v. Bush on December 5, 2007. Justice Kennedy held in the case that the MCA could not deny detainees and other petitioners, including Khan, their right to petition United States courts for writ of habeas corpus.
Allegations In the government's account, Khan was exposed to a radicalized element of Islam while in the United States. Khan allegedly began attending secret prayer meetings at Baltimore's Islamic Society, where he was recruited by individuals who sought out disaffected young people. U.S. 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. Allegedly Mohammed later enlisted Khan in helping to support and plan terrorist attacks against the U.S. and Israel.
Government officials assert that Khan, under KSM's tutelage, was being trained to blow up gas stations and poison water reservoirs, and that he 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. The U.S. government contends that Khan was aware that his visit to family in Pakistan in 2002 violated the terms of his asylum granted in 1998.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) asserted that Khan helped Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (mastermind of the September 11th attacks) plan attacks against gas stations and water reservoirs in the United States. ODNI alleges Khan was first introduced to al Qaeda through family and that Khan's experience working in his family's gas station "made Khan highly qualified to assist Mohammad with the research and planning to blow up gas stations."
Legal challenge to government Khan's attorneys at the Center for Constitutional Rights insist that he was tortured, subjected to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, and coerced into making false and unreliable confessions.
Khan's appeal points out that although he had been in U.S. custody for more than three and a half years, he had never had any kind of review of the legality of his detention. Khan's attorneys at CCR petitioned to have his case tried in civilian court in the United States instead of by military tribunal at Guantanamo. A federal appeals court ruled in February 2007 that detainees at Guantanamo Bay could not use the U.S. court system to challenge their indefinite imprisonment.
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 counsel, "ignores the Court's historical function under Article III of the Constitution to exercise its independent judgment," and used its classification authority to hide illegal conduct when the court had sufficient tools to prevent disclosure of sensitive classified information.
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".
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.Secrecy, Interrogation and the Rule of Law , The Jurist, November 13, 2006 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:Christopher Brauchli, When the Secret is the Question: Secret Prisons, Top Secret Interrogations , CounterPunch, December 22, 2006 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, part of the CIA, 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.
Habeas corpus submission
Khan is one of 16 Guantanamo captives whose amalgamated habeas corpus submissions were heard by U.S. District Court Judge Reggie B. Walton on January 31, 2007. Walton ruled that the cases be administratively closed (or stayed) until the District of Columbia Circuit resolved the issue of jurisdiction.
Pakistan's International News reported Khan's wife's lawyer told the Sindh High Court that she was not informed that Khan was in U.S. custody for the first three years after he disappeared.
Timeline of Majid Khan's Combatant Status Review Tribunal February 7, 2007 The Summary of Evidence memos prepared for most of the other 14 high value detainees' Tribunals were finalized on February 7, 2007. March 28, 2007 The version of the Summary of Evidence memo released for Majid Khan's Tribunal is dated March 28, 2007. April 15, 2007 Majid Khan requested the testimony of his brother and father, because the allegations against him quoted them. His relatives, who were political refugees in the United States, were told that if they left the United States to testify on Majid Khan's behalf, they would not be guaranteed re-entry into the United States. The unclassified sessions of his Tribunal convened on April 15, 2007. His tribunal reportedly sat for a further four days in classified session. May 15, 2007 The Summary of Evidence memo, and the verbatim transcript, were not made public until May 15, 2007.
The press release quoted from Gitanjali Gutierrez, Khan's lawyer:
According to the press release, Khan's Tribunal was scheduled to start on April 10, 2007, and to finish by April 13, 2007. Ali Khan made the affidavit on April 6, 2007, when the family confirmed they would not be allowed to testify in person.
According to Department of Defense spokesman Commander Jeffrey Gordon, Khan's Tribunal concluded April 15, 2007.