US military officials announced Thursday that they have released and sent to Belize a former al-Qaeda courier who has served his sentence. Majid Khan’s transfer ended an incarceration that included torture at secret CIA sites and 16 years at the Guantanamo Bay detention center.
Khan, a Pakistani national who grew up on the outskirts of Baltimore, ended up in the Central American nation through a deal between President Joe Biden’s government and Belizean authorities. His lawyers said that their client was to be released in February last year under a pre-trial agreement.
In his early 40s, Khan said in a statement through his legal team that he deeply regretted working with al Qaeda in his early 20s. This included working as a courier and participating in the planning of various conspiracies which never came to fruition.
“I promise everyone, especially the people of Belize, that I will be a law-abiding and productive member of society,” the statement said. “I will not betray you”.
Before arriving at a military prison at a US base in Cuba in 2006, Khan spent nearly three years at so-called CIA black sites overseas. The intelligence agency used blacktops in what the United States called the “War on Terror” after the September 11, 2001, attacks by the Al Qaeda network.
Khan’s treatment was described in detail in a 2014 US Senate Intelligence Committee report, which accused the CIA of subjecting Al Qaeda prisoners far beyond their legal limits regarding interrogations conducted at its sites. She is abusing and giving false accounts to the public.
Khan revealed in court that such treatment included hanging from a ceiling beam for long periods of time, dousing him with ice water to deprive him of sleep for several days, and beatings, water torture, forced enemas, sexual assault And starvation was involved. His conviction in a military-led war crimes trial.
