“Black Sites” of the CIA
“I thought I was going to die”: inmate reports on torture methods in secret CIA prisons
39 men are currently detained in the detention center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay
© Mladen Antonov / AFP
After the terrorist attacks of September 11th, Majid Khan al Qaeda joined and was caught in 2003. Now he is the first prisoner to report publicly about years of torture in secret CIA prisons.
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda courier Majid Khan went through the US government’s brutal interrogation program. On Thursday, the 41-year-old spoke to a US military jury for the first time openly about the years of torture he had to endure during his imprisonment – including in the notorious Guantanamo camp. Several US media reported about it.
It was the first time a prisoner of “high value” reported to a military jury what the US government euphemistically calls “enhanced interrogation”. For more than two hours, according to the New York Times, Majid Khan talked about dungeon-like conditions, waterboarding, sexual abuse and force-feeding. Khan was detained in various secret CIA prisons overseas between 2003 and 2006 – the so-called “Black Sites”. As “NBC News” reports, the 41-year-old still suffers from anxiety and hallucinations.
Born in Saudi Arabia, the Pakistani national lived as a high school student in a Baltimore suburb in 2001. He described the 9/11 attacks and his mother’s death months earlier as a turning point in his life as a result of which he turned to radical Islamic ideology. At the time of the terrorist attacks – in the meantime he had got a job in Washington DC – he was working as a courier for the terrorist organization al Qaeda. He was also involved in planning several attacks – none of which were actually implemented.
Horrific insights into CIA torture methods
According to the New York Times, Khan came into contact with al Qaeda in 2002 while on a family trip to Pakistan. There he met relatives who had already joined the jihad in Afghanistan in previous years and had ties to the terrorist organization. “I was lost and vulnerable and they were after me,” he said at the hearing on Thursday.
The following year he was captured in Pakistan and taken to a secret CIA prison. There he cooperated from the start, said Khan. But: “The more I cooperated, the more I was tortured.”
He spent the next three years in various CIA facilities. In these secret “black sites”, so Khan, he never saw the light of day. In 2006 he was finally transferred to the notorious Guantanamo prison camp in Cuba, where he was detained until 2012. During those six years, he had no contact with anyone other than the guards and interrogators.
On Thursday, Khan read to the jury deliberating on his war crimes conviction from a 39-page document and gave a detailed account of his ordeal. He was hung naked on a ceiling beam for a long time and poured ice water over him to keep him awake for days. He was also tortured using the waterboarding method, with the prisoner being drowned until shortly before death. During his imprisonment in the “Black Sites” he was brutally beaten, given enema, starved and sexually abused.
“I begged them to stop and swore to them I knew nothing,” he said on NBC News. “If I had information to pass on, I would have passed it on, but I had nothing to pass on.”
Khan forgives tormentors – and asks forgiveness himself
On Friday, the eight-member jury, which consists exclusively of military officers, is to discuss Khan’s sentence. In 2012, Khan pleaded guilty to all terrorism charges brought before him. He faces between 25 and 40 years in prison.
What the jury did not know, however: Khan and his lawyers reached a secret agreement this year with a high-ranking Pentagon official, such as the “New York Times”, citing US government officials previously reported. Because the Pakistani has cooperated with the government since his admission of guilt almost ten years ago, his actual prison sentence will end in February 2025 at the latest – probably earlier.
According to the US newspaper, the 41-year-old has forgiven his torturers. “I hope that Allah will do the same for you and me on Judgment Day. I ask forgiveness from those whom I have wronged and who I have hurt,” Khan said. His father and sister sat just a few meters away while he made his statement. It was the first time since he left the United States that Khan saw his family again, according to the New York Times. The US is currently holding 39 men in the detention center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay.
sources: “New York Times“;”NBC News“