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Each office independently owned and operated. Previously, on Serial. What was the worst question a reporter can ask you? Um, Camp 7.
I've never had anything such to know about Camp 7. I know nothing about it. I mean, you hear rumors, but... I-I-I believe you genuinely thought like this is it.
I'm dying tonight. Like this, I'm going to die. Whatever I learn from the detainees, I pass an all to the leadership. Everything, everyone.
What am I? It's a lawless place and they can do whatever they want down there, and they did it. From Serial Productions in the New York Times, this is Season 4 of Serial. Guantanamo.
One prison camp told me Friday. I'm Dana Chivas. Majjid Khan was 16 when his family moved to Baltimore, from Pakistan. He went to Owings Mills High School, smoked weed, worked at his dad's gas station, and thought about becoming a DJ under the stage name Bob Dacey.
He listened to Eminem and watched Law & Order and paid attention in Ms. Sanford's Social Studies class, where he learned about checks and balances and due process. So when Majjid Khan found himself locked away in a cold, dark cell at a black site in 2003, he told the CIA he wanted to see a lawyer. The CIA was just shocked.
I was like, what are you thinking? Who you are? Where you are? You're talking about rights?
The sun, the bloods came off no time ago. That's what the tell me. I was like, no, no, I still believe in due process. I still believe in due process.
Right or wrong? What did I believe in due process? What he did, instead of becoming a DJ, Majjid joined Al-Qaeda, reported directly to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the admitted mastermind of 9-11. Naturally, the CIA had questions for him.
But the way they asked those questions, they tortured him at black sites for years. And when they were done, they sent him to Guantanamo in shackles and to diaper. Majjid did bad things. He joined Al-Qaeda, wore a suicide vest, tried to kill the Pakistani president.
He came up with plots targeting the American government to blow up gas stations and poison the water supply in your military installations, to sell poison medication in the United States. He delivered $50,000 to another terrorist. Money the United States says was used to fund a suicide bombing that killed 11 people and injured at least 81 others. And then we did bad things back to Majjid.
We disappeared him for three years, locked him away for 20, tortured him. This story is about two ledgers. On one side, what Majjid did to us? On the other, what we did to Majjid.
How do you weigh those against each other? In the historical accounting to come, which is worse. Majjid's case is the first time that Guantanamo, those ledgers are compared and someone has to render a verdict. Majjid's story starts with his radicalization.
Unlike so many former Guantanamo detainees, there's clear public evidence that he was in Al-Qaeda. He admits it. So this is a rare chance to hear how someone made the leap from self-described normal American teenager to self-described terrorist. It's actually quite simple to hear Majjid tell it.
The reason I joined Al-Qaeda was a Palestine issue. It begins with Palestine. I had nothing against America. I didn't have it then.
I don't have it now. Is your fucking stupid foreign policy that your leaders make, right? That I criticized. Some people might remember President George Bush explaining September 11th, saying that Al-Qaeda attacked us because they hate our freedoms, our liberty.
Actually, what Al-Qaeda really hated was our support for Israel, that we had troops in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, that we invaded Iraq the first time in 1991. When I visited Mounted last year in Belize, where he now lives with his wife and two kids in a bright green cottage, not far from the sea, it was November 2023, just weeks since the October 7th terrorist attacks on Israel, and the start of the relentless bombing of Gaza in return. He had been watching a lot of cable news coverage of the war and TikTok videos. Like so many people, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, he was fired up about the atrocities there.
The same kinds of atrocities that had spurred him to join Al-Qaeda two decades ago. What he was seeing was Americans making the same mistakes all over again, supporting Israel. You guys are so powerful, so smart, and you guys are so dumbass at the same time. No offense.
I mean, I'm not an American, okay? You know, by citizenship, but you guys amaze me every single time. What's the dumbass part? Not getting the basics.
And I'm thinking, there could be another Magetron, somewhere right now. No, imagine that. Back then, we didn't have YouTube, we didn't have Instagram, and I'm thinking, what are they thinking? These kids, and they're so stupid kids, so they could be easily misled.
And I'm thinking, how many Magetron up there right now? They would become like me. What led Maget to extremism was a confluence of events. Growing up, he wasn't very religious.
He and his parents, his seven siblings, they didn't pray regularly. He says his mother was anti-religion. When he grew beard, she made him shave it off. But in his late teenage years, after his family moved to Baltimore, he struggled with his identity.
He wanted to fit into American high school life, to be cool, but he wasn't sure that being cool was very Maget. He felt guilty that he didn't pray, that he was a bad Muslim. He started learning more about Islam from a group of proselytizers called the Tbiligi-Germat, who'd visit him at work and at the mosque. And then, when he was 21, Maget's mother died, suddenly.
She was the most important person in his life, the center of their family. He says he was devastated. He started asking the big questions about life and death. He felt like he'd send up until that point, and wasted his life.
He decided to devote himself to Islam, no more partying, no more smoking weed. And it was at this point that he started getting more political. At the mosque, they talked about Palestine. The world seemed black and white to him.
At some point in my life, I had to choose paths. Do you want to be sighted with oppressed or oppressed? I chose to be sighted with oppressed. Nine months after his mother's death, he went to Pakistan for a bunch of family weddings.
His family wanted to arrange a marriage for him too. And secretly, he also had a fantasy of joining the Jihad, maybe training at the camps in Afghanistan. Growing up in Pakistan, Maget heard a lot about the Mujahideen, how honorable they were, how brave, like the Navy sales in the United States, he says. He didn't particularly care which Jihadi group he joined.
There were a bunch of them. I'll be honest with you, I didn't go to Pakistan to join Al-Qaeda. They came to me. Our billion people, billions of Muslims, I happened to have a cousin and an uncle.
They are the leaders. It was January 2002, four months after 9-11. Bin Laden had denied responsibility for the attacks, though the American government had quickly concluded Al-Qaeda was behind them. Maget didn't believe it.
And then part of me is like, come on, Muslims could do it. And I'm into conspiracy theories. I was like, no way. I told my uncle and my cousin, I knew the Jews were behind it.
I saw on the internet. I saw CIA were behind it. They were laughing at me. His uncle and cousin convinced him.
No, it wasn't an inside job. The Jews didn't do it. It was Al-Qaeda. It was us.
But instead of being horrified by this information, Maget joined them. I was already pissed off about the Palestine thing. Somehow, the word I understood that happened, you know, I got to be careful when I'm about to say it could be misguised. It could be misconstrued almost in my mind.
I was not alone. I was sometimes Islamic community members that I was with. They did not appreciate it, but almost had it coming. United States had it coming?
Because what they were doing in Palestine and in Islamic countries. And that's how you felt about it? That's how I felt about it at the time. I didn't like it.
But I was so mad at what was happening in Palestine. It's just hard to explain that I've never killed before. I've never seen suffering before. But somehow, what was happening in Palestine affected me so much.
That somehow I was okay to say, well, they had it coming. I was just watching Fox News yesterday. And everybody in Fox News, well, if the Palestinians didn't like it, well, they had it coming. They were the one who selected Hamas to be operated in Gaza.
Same thing. I was in that mindset. I must tell you, I know I'm being honest with you, but I make a comic-girls callus. But this is a brutal truth.
So please bear with me and try to understand. I am not trying to offend you guys. I know you guys, an American and patriotic American, I hope you are. And you should be.
And you should get irritated about these statements. And you should be. But I am just telling you, I can't sugarcoat my statements so I can please you. Let me be clear.
Majd says he has long since rejected extremism. He left Al Qaeda while he was still locked up at Guantanamo. He says he doesn't think 9-11 was righteous or good or justified. But he does understand the twisted logic behind Al Qaeda's attacks.
Because at the age of 21, he believed in that logic himself. He has a unique perspective of a person who has lived fully immersed in both the culture of the United States and the culture of Al Qaeda. He can explain both worlds with fluency. Once he was in Al Qaeda, arguably the worst thing Majd did is what Majd did not do.
He did not assassinate Pakistani President Pervas Musharraf in a suicide attack. But he tried to. When he joined Al Qaeda, Majd volunteered to be a suicide bomber. I had shown my willingness to my cousin and to my uncle.
But hey, by the way, if there's an option, let me know. Did you say that with any kind of thought or did you just sort of like offer yourself up without really thinking it through? No, I mean I was sincere. I truly believed that this is the way to go to heaven.
Beyond how sure are you as knight right now? It's very dark out, yeah. Yeah, I was that sure. That's the way to go.
And you wanted that why? Who doesn't want to go to heaven? I mean you were 20, like you had so much of your life ahead of you. Yeah, the test is over.
See, this life is test. The test is over. Majd's family had arranged a marriage for him to Rabia. They're still married today.
He says their wedding was the happiest day of his life. But while they're on their honeymoon, KSM, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed called Majd's cousin. He had a job for Majd to do back in Karachi. The job was a suicide mission.
Majd would wear an explosive vest to a mosque with a Pakistani President Musharraf was expected to attend Friday prayers. At a safe house in Karachi, Majd tried on the vest. KSM told me how to wear it and how to reach out to him, how close to get to blow him up. And basically training like you know, I wear it to sit when he reaches, try to get as close as possible.
The idea was if you can just hug him, it will be perfect. And he told me like, you just remember that the idea was to do less damage to the people. If you can get clothes and shake hands and just hug him in the present button, perfect. He says he did ask ASM.
What about all the civilians who would be killed? I did ask him. I did ask him, what about the civilians? He justified, there was some hadis was done where the profit was at war and in nighttime, there was unintentionally some civilian were killed.
Basically in American language it was collateral damage. We don't want to do it unless we have no option. But somehow when you end this cycle that I was in, it's like being turned into, you know, there's not much time. You're not thinking.
You're not saying, oh by the way, let's just think about this. If I could go back and change it, I would. I wish I could go back and sit down and myself is coming on cowboy. You know, think what you're doing.
There's a consequences of your actions. I didn't think about my family and all that stuff. On that Friday morning, KSM drove Majed to the mosque in a red Suzuki. He sat there all of Friday prayers in the suicide vest.
He told me he was calm. He even fell asleep at one point because he was a little bored. He just wanted to get on with it. But Musharraf never showed up.
After the failed suicide attack, Majed continued plotting with KSM to blow up gas stations to import explosives into the United States. They talked about Majed becoming a sleeper agent back home. He returned to Baltimore for a few months where he was supposed to recruit others to join Al-Qaeda. But once he was home, his new path and his new identity, Jihadi Majed, were not so clear.
When I was in the States, I was like, okay, you know, life is not that bad. You know, I was like, I'm living an American life. And then I talked to my cousin and uncle and then they said, look, your heart has been poisoned again with the rest and the love of the rest. So come back to us.
We will purify your heart. I just, I didn't cry. I says, I don't know what you want to call it. I love living in America in a sense that my family and friends were there.
That's great. But part of me said, like, they're right too. Like, I want to be part of my identity as well. According to the United States government and to Majed himself, he never directly physically injured anyone.
The Plots he and KSM jumped up were abandoned. He never wore a suicide vest again. The most clear of his crimes, the grievous consequences, according to the US government, was delivering the $50,000 to another terrorist group, which prosecutors say was used to fund the JW Marriott Hotel bombing in Jakarta. Majed says he didn't know about the bomb plot or what the money would be used for.
He was just told to deliver it. But of course, the person who asked him to deliver it was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of 9-11. By the time the bombing happened, Majed was already an American custody. Early one morning in March 2003, he'd been woken up by his brother.
He was staying at his apartment in Karachi. They heard shouting and banging on the door. It was Pakistani intelligence. Are you Bob Dacey?
They shouted at him. He'd used his DJ name on a Hotmail account. They took him in the custody and paragated him and beat him. There were FBI agents and some other unidentified Americans there too.
And then, after months of this, he was turned over to the CIA. This is where the story of what Majed did ends and the story of what we did to Majed begins. That's after the break. The Ford is a big deal.
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The details of Majed's time in the CIA Black sites have been covered in the news and in the Senate's report on the CIA's rendition, detention, and interrogation program, the so-called Torture Report. The Torture he endured was intense and brutal, which is why I was surprised to learn that he came away from it all with respect for the CIA, a kind of opponents' respect. It was one of the first things he told me when I arrived in Belize. We were sitting on a couch in his living room.
His daughter just made us some tea. Two fans were blowing the sticky Caribbean air around. And he just launched into it. How he appreciated the candor of the CIA.
We had a wave of Frank conversation. I mean, and they won't be asked with us. I mean, they were so honest with us. Dude, I'm going to torture you tomorrow.
They're going to torture me tomorrow. And they're going to torture me tomorrow? After one of these, they're done. Okay.
We're not going to torture you anymore. I mean, they were wave of Frank, you know, straightforward. He said all the prisoners with him in Camp 7. That's the secret prison at Guantanamo where he was eventually held, along with KSM and other men who had been tortured by the CIA.
All the prisoners in Camp 7 felt that way. I mean, I've talked to KSM. I've talked to all the brothers in Camp 7. We actually had a lot of respect for CIA.
We understood why they're torturing us. We understood they want intelligence as part of the business. It comes with a job. And our job is to hold intelligence as much as possible, as much as bearable.
And we had a mutual respect for that. It's not that Majid was okay with being tortured, of course. The CIA did horrifying things to him at the Black sites. He was held underwater, hanged, force-fed, short shackled.
He was left naked, and the cold and the dark was music blasting. He didn't see the sun for two years, except in the brief moments when he was transported between buildings. He had barely any human contact, just as guards his interrogators and his tortures. One of the reasons why Majid wanted me to understand his respect for the CIA was so I would understand how he felt about his treatment at Guantanamo, to contrast it.
Because for Majid, his time in Camp 7 was worse. He wasn't being interrogated anymore. Sometimes that P.I would pay him a visit, ask him some questions. But that's it.
So the cruelty at Guantanamo had no purpose. The CIA torture was like surgical. Okay, for a few hours, a few months, whatever they were trying to do. There's a reason behind it.
They're doing it. I get it. What are they doing it? There was no justification.
What they did in Camp 7. Zero. It's like just hanging a cat for ten days, just to forsake of it. It's just the nature, the sadistic nature that I could not understand in Camp 7.
I try not to think about it. Honestly, it was the lowest point in my life. Compared to the CIA, the guards in Camp 7 could be brutally childish. Majid says they put metal and stones into his food.
When he didn't return his train protest, they shaved his head as punishment, and then took his trail together, just scooped the food into his hands. When the International Committee of the Red Cross gave him a photo of his three-year-old daughter, the first time he learned he had a daughter, a guard took the photo away from him. He says he went crazy, kicked at the door, tried to break the security camera. And then there were the noises, constant noises, from the guards knocking on his cell at all hours of the day and night, opening and shutting the prison doors.
The building itself made noise. There were high-frequency winding sounds from the air conditioners and the security cameras. There were vibrations. Majid was in isolation.
No one to talk to, no distractions, no way to sleep. It all seemed intentional. When he talks about that time today, it still makes him upset, with the guards that get Mo drove him to the brink, to the point where he felt like he was losing his mind, just to mess with him. I remember pulling my beard, right?
Literally just pulling and banging my head against the wall. Literally? Literally? Literally.
And I will, to this, I'll show you. This is the archery. I chew. I chew that archery right here.
He was so distressed and so desperate for them to treat him better, that he chewed through the vein in the crook of his arm. It was the only way he could get them to pay attention to the pain he was in. They had to respond, because arm was gushing blood. Had to take him to the medical clinic, which meant they had to write reports, which the camp commanders would have to see.
You had to act like a maniac to prove to them there is a problem. Majid said other camp 7 prisoners did the same kind of thing. Majid was at Guantanamo for over a year before he met with his attorneys. He hadn't been charged with anything yet.
It was possible he'd be held indefinitely. Her charge was crimes that could carry a life sentence. He was barely keeping it together in camp 7. He wanted out of Guantanamo with captivity.
He wanted to be with his family. He told his attorneys he would take a plea deal, admit to his crimes, cooperate with the government. As long as he got the opportunity to speak, in public, about the torture. That's what I asked for it.
I asked anyone. That was my number one goal. Allow me to speak. Let me tell the world what they did to me.
He was pissed. Sure he understood why the CIA had tortured him. But he also knew it was against the rules. I was mad at that time.
I was really mad. I was like, you got to pay for this. I'm going to tell the whole world about it. So revenge.
But also, there was a practical reason he wanted to talk. He figured he could use it as leverage in his own legal case. It was a thought he'd had back in the black sites. Fun fact, the CIA told me, Maggie, we can't let you go.
I was like, why not? He said, look, we think if you let you go, we just went from English. And then you want to tell the world how American fucked me up. And you're going to end up in Oprah's show or something.
And that's the problem. It was really honest people. And then it comes to the fact that it didn't hide what the problem was. It's not what I did.
It's so much what they did to me. Not to guess that if a jury heard what the CIA had done to him, first-hand, they would give him a later sentence. They don't. I knew that this was the silver bullet for me.
What do you mean it was the silver bullet for you? I mean, it was a ticket out of a gelled card, basically. You can't put a person like 50 years in prison and plus torture. Right?
So it just, from my perspective, is that this was the only shot I have. He had lived in the United States long enough to absorb an American sense of justice. From watching Law and Order, from his high school teachers, he calls it a side effect of being American. He was making a bet that the American public, by way of an American jury, would have the same sense of American justice that he had.
The other prisoners in Camp 7 with him, Moditz says they did not understand this. It's remarkable to hear Moditz talk about these other prisoners, and Camp 7 itself. A place that was so secret the government didn't even acknowledge its existence until 2008. No reporter has ever been there.
And then there's Moditz, the only Camp 7 prisoner to ever leave Guantanamo. So he's really the only person who can speak freely about what was happening inside those highly classified walls. The other prisoners with him were considered to be the actual worst of the worst. High-level terrorist leaders, plotters, and soldiers like KSM.
There was also Abu Zubaydah, who allegedly ran his own extremist network, associated with Al Qaeda, another guy called Humbali, who was accused of orchestrating the 2003 Marriott bombing in Jakarta. The plot modded delivered money for. And then there was Moditz. I was a Green Horn.
The other detainees were older than Moditz. He was only 23 when he was captured. Plus, he points out he hadn't done any hard-core G-howdy training at the camps in Afghanistan. He hadn't shot an AK-47, or lived in a cave, or sworn an oath to be modded.
I was like the kid in the block, right? Everybody was concerned about me. Because they understood that this kid, you know, has not been to Afghanistan. He doesn't know much about Islam.
He doesn't know what they were worried about me. It's like, you've got to take care of this kid, you know? And then they did. I mean, honestly, God, they did.
Otherwise, I don't think I would have made it. It was so terrible. I don't know what I'm okay. Mod did wanted to help them.
These men, he calls his prison brothers. And because he was a little bit American, he understood something they didn't. Just as Mod did believe torture could be legal currency in his own case, he figured it could be helpful in theirs, too. So...
I decided to make a torture sheet. He undertook a reporting project to document the extent of everyone's torture on a spreadsheet. He drew by hand. I wrote down all the methods that I knew were used after talking to other detainees, you know, like waterboarding, hanging, hunger, you know, met to sit, met to stand, just met the holism and left side.
And then I put all the detainees on the rest of the page. Not everyone wanted to talk about the torture. Some of the prisoners felt that it was better left between them and God. Honestly, I had to drag it out of them.
It was not that easy. You can convince some of the brothers to tell me about that. I said, look, I just want this project. Let me do it for me.
I said, okay, okay. I think they start telling me about that. I think the brother didn't understand, but most of them didn't live in the States. And they didn't understand how powerful the torture could be an asset in their legal case.
Right? And I said, look, you need to, you got to put it down. This could be a ticket out of here. And there was a lot of brother, pretty naive about this legal system.
Because they only experienced that had a legal system in Arab countries, which is dictatorship. So... So it doesn't matter. Every day we get tortured, in Egypt, Libya.
Yeah, what's the big deal? No, this is America. You actually do have rights here. Even though it doesn't seem like it right now, but there's a system out there.
Things have gotten a bit more relaxed in Camp 7 by then. The prisoners could talk to each other through the bean holes, the mail-like slots and their cell doors. Which the guards left open for them. Why did you ask the other prisoners questions?
I said, okay, how many times? Water burning. How many days? Okay, how many days?
I said, okay, how many days? I said, it's three months, okay. He interviewed them outside during rec time. But, you know, he's working out in elliptical, I'm working out in, I'm doing push-ups, whatever.
At first, first, he took a legal pad with him into the rec yard. But then, he says the guards caught on, said nobody could take legal pads into the rec yard anymore. I said, okay, no problem. I'm not going anywhere.
I'll get time with the brother. I'll interview him. So, I would sometime memorize it. And then I'll go back to my cell, I'll write it down.
So, it took a long time to complete that sheet. He worked on it for months. Some of the stories he heard defied categorization. So, then I had to categorize it in a way that it falls in that category.
Do you remember an example of that? Like, a machine had a unique experience. Like, he was hanged for maybe 18 hours or so. They called it two-point restrictions.
Like, your hands are tied up and your legs are tied up. Right? So, there's two points of restraint. And his experience was that restraint is one leg and two hands on top.
And then another leg to the wall. So, he's like, just like that. Kind of sizzered out of legs. Yeah.
So, he came over right left and I'm saying, so that was unique. I just remember it was unique. I didn't even put it in there. I was like, okay, I'll just, I'm gonna side note.
One of his interviews in particular stuck with him, Mustafa Al-Hassawi, one of the 911 defendants accused of sending money to the 911 hijackers. I asked him, what was the worst torture? And he said, before I answered that, he said, I'll tell you what was the best torture for me. And I said, what does that mean?
He said, look, the best one when they put me in like a coffin and they filled it with water. Right? And you could just literally just, or they put me in a box with the bugs and everything. He said, I loved it.
I said, why? He said, that was the only time I felt that I was not naked. For him being a naked for no man or woman, that was the most torture. By the end of the project, Majid Velti had done something great.
He had a record of the torture that the United States government was so intent on keeping secret. I thought that this could be the breakthrough that we were looking for in our lives. That it could alleviate some of the pain. That the camp were doing to us.
He kept the spreadsheet in his cell, hoping to share it in court someday. Majid's attorney spent years working on a plea deal. Finally, in 2012, they reached an agreement. Majid would plead guilty to five charges, including murder, conspiracy, and spying.
And he would cooperate with the prosecution, help them in their cases against the other prisoners. In return, he would get a reduced sentence, a maximum of 19 years. And crucially for Majid, he would finally get to speak, to tell the story of his torture in court. Majid talked to the other camp's seven prisoners about the plea deal.
He told me some of them were against it. But KSM gave him his blessing. But he said, yeah, I'm happy for you. But he told me, look, I feel sorry for you.
I killed 3,000 people. Who the fuck are you? You know, nobody in the chain of command. I don't know how Majid cooperated.
What information he gave the American government to fulfill his end of the bargain. He told me it wasn't much. But a prosecutor in the case told me that he did confess the plots the United States government didn't even know about yet. After a decade of cooperation, it was time for Majid to be sentenced in front of a judge.
But before he did that, he and his defense team had one more card to play. I guess you could call it the torture card. They would turn the years of captivity and abuse in the black sites to Majid's advantage. According to the rules of the military commissions and to Majid's plea agreement, Majid could call witnesses to support his case that he should get leniency.
By then, many of the darkest details of the CIA's torture program had been revealed. Waterboarding, the destruction of videotapes of the torture, even the death of a prisoner at the salt pit, a black site where Majid was once held. But what were still a secret, are still a closely guarded secret to this day, are the identities of the torturers themselves. Majid lawyers knew that the CIA did not want those names revealed, ever.
So they made that part of their strategy. His attorneys submitted a list of 115 people they wanted to call for the stand. Some of the names were far-fetched. George Bush was on it along with Condoleeza Rice.
Some were lower level, like Camp 7 commanders and FBI agents who spent time with Majid at Guantanamo. But most importantly, the list included the people who were involved in the CIA's rendition, detention and interrogation program, the torture program, the people who conceived of it, who ran it, and the people who tortured Majid. Majid and his defense team wanted to put the entire government apparatus responsible for the torture program on the stand. Unsurprisingly, a legal battle ensued.
After years of motions and responses to motions and bickering and the intrusion of COVID, the judge finally ruled, said Majid could ask for time off his sentence because of the torture. And he could call some of the CIA witnesses. It was a major decision in Majid's favor. The government's hands were tied.
They were never going to be able to produce the CIA witnesses. The CIA would make sure of that. So instead, the two sides agreed. Majid would drop the whole witness testimony thing if the government would shave eight years off his sentence.
Eight years. It was a lot. Plus, the judge gave Majid another year off to dang the prosecution for discovery violation. So that made nine years total.
I'm shaving off nine years. You can imagine how desperate they were there, but they know they were fucked. What this meant, if all one according to plan, was that Majid would get out just four months after the sentencing hearing. And he would finally get to read a statement in court about what the American government had done to him, which he and his attorneys would write carefully to make sure the government couldn't classify it.
The one thing he wouldn't get, he wouldn't get to talk about the torture other prisoners had undergone at CIA black sites. Everything he'd recorded in that spreadsheet. Because that might give the government a reason to classify his statement. What Majid could do was tell his own experience as completely as possible.
That was the best way he could represent what they'd all gone through. In nearly two decades after Majid was captured at his brother's apartment in Karachi, his day in court was finally scheduled. According to the rules of the military commissions, a jury would be present for Majid's sentencing hearing. They would be told Majid had pled guilty.
They would be told about his crimes, the money for the hotel bombing, the assassination attempt on Musharraf, his work for Al Qaeda. But, and I know how strange it sounds, they would not be told that Majid and the government had already come to an agreement. Instead, they'd be told to consider Majid's crimes alongside whatever Majid had to say for himself and come up with an appropriate sentence. Whatever the jury came back with, whether it was a short sentence or long, it wouldn't have a material effect on Majid's case.
The sentence was set, but their decision would have symbolic meaning. This would be the first time a prisoner of the CIA's black sites would speak about his treatment in public. There might never be another reckoning for the crimes of that era, not a legal way at least. The jury would weigh the two ledgers.
What Majid did, against what we did to Majid, and decide for Majid for the country, where justice lies. It's what Majid had been hoping for for so many years. But now that it was finally happening, he worried that he was too late. It was 2021.
The country had moved on. The existential battle of the day was with COVID, not Al Qaeda. Majid worried that the only reason the government was letting him talk was that nobody really cared anymore. I think at this stage, I think CIA and the Americans know that American laws interest.
Right, honestly, being really pragmatic about it, they're lost interest. They know what should happen. And it's almost like they created a tolerance for this. That is almost how he's desensitized to torture now.
And it's a fact. And I think that's what the CIA's like, fuck it. Let him speak. I don't think they care anymore.
Honestly, what's the big deal? Waterboarding? We already have to handle it. So will they care after the break?
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Hi, this is Ashley. I live in San Francisco with my boyfriend. We would love to officially share my new time subscription with separate logins. We both love cooking, loving in the kitchen, but I'm a 30 minute and under efficient dinner at Gurley.
I want a sheet pan mill. He is an elaborate. He wants to get into the storytelling. I want to be able to save my easy meals and check off the ones I've completed.
And I think him having his own profile would be great. Ashley, we heard you. It's why we created the New York Times family subscription. You get your own login and Mr.
elaborate, get his. Plus room for two others. Find out more at nytimes.com.com. The courtroom at 1 Ponomo is a long windowless rectangle with six rows of defense tables on the left, mirrored by four rows of prosecution tables on the right.
It looks like any other sterile courtroom, except in the back, there's a gallery separated by a thick wall of glass and a 40 second audio delay. That's where the press and the public sit. On this day, October 28th, 2021, that's where Magid's father and sister are seated. Magid had been allowed to see them earlier that morning, for the first time in 19 years.
Did anything surprise you? Not meeting about either one of them or how you felt or how they acted. They're short. Did I get tall or was it like shorter?
You know, just like that's like, that's all about my size. This hearing would be the first time they learned the details of Magid's imprisonment. There's no publicly available recording of this hearing, but I do have the transcripts, and I've spoken with several people who were there that day. Magid sits at the front of the courtroom at a defendant's table with four of his attorneys.
Court starts at 9.06 a.m. The lawyer spends most of the day selecting the jury, not a jury of Magid's peers, not even civilians. In this military court, the jury consists of eight senior officers from across the armed forces, which, if you're once an al-Qaeda, tough room. The sensing proceedings don't really get going until after five.
A prosecutor reads the stipulation of fact to the jury, a document that describes and cold legal ease all the crimes Magid has admitted to. It's dispassionate, but detailed, and it's damning. The story of a young man given asylum by the United States, who turns his back on the country and his family to join the terrorists who attacked us, with hopes of attacking us again. After the prosecutor finishes reading the stipulation of fact, they break for dinner.
And then, finally, at around 7.40 p.m., Magid, in a black suit and tie, his lawyer's bottom at the next, steps up to the podium, 39 page statement in hand, and faces the military jury in their dress uniforms. He's nervous. This is the moment he's been thinking about for 18 years, but it's late. He's tired.
His back is killing him. The judge says, Mr. Han, you may proceed. Magid proceeds.
I begin in name of God. My name is Magid Han. And for the last 15 years, I've been incarcerated at Neville's Station, Guantanamo Bay, or Gitmo. Magid read some of his statement for me.
I have a story that I have waited almost two decades to tell, so I want to start by thanking you all for taking the time to listen to my statement. Today I stand before you, me, Ken Humboldt, Humboldt, and me, asking for you to listen to my story with a sensitive and compassionate ear. Magid takes responsibility for his crimes and apologizes to his family. He explains to the jury how he ended up in Al Qaeda, how after returning to Baltimore in 2002, his family tried to keep him from going back to Pakistan, because they were afraid of what he got involved in there.
How his father hid his travel documents, how he lied to his father to get them back. He's here in court today. I can see him. I want to tell him, Baba.
I'm sorry. I'm very sorry. And then, Magid recounts everything the CIA did to him, in detail, for two hours, hoping that by saying what happened to him personally, he can overcome the apathy to torture, the disgust for Al Qaeda. Because it's one thing to read about torture on the page, and another to be faced with a person who endured it 20 feet away, describing it to you.
He starts the day he was captured, picking up where the stipulation of fact drops off. He describes how the Pakistani authorities took him to a lockup and interrogated him, how there were Americans there, too, how the Pakistanis beat him, the first time he was ever beaten. I was frequently hooded and strapped into metal boots. Now, these metal boots were, I call them ski metal boots about this high.
They would make me stand on those metal boots, and they're punching me and beating me up. I remember fearing that if I had felt over-forward, there was no doubt my leg would snap. I was so afraid of what would happen next. I remember in order an American, a US interrogator who would tell me they were not buying my story.
Quote, you're peeing on my shoes and telling me it's raining and a quote. This man would frequently threaten me, saying like, son, we're going to take care of you. We are going to send you to a place that you cannot imagine. We'll take you somewhere and make you talk.
End of quote. He threatened my family. He threatened to rape my sister. Majid tells the jury about the day his Pakistani guard said he was going home, but instead he was taken to an airport and handed over to the CIA.
How the Americans cut his clothes off him, gave him an enema, put him in the diaper, and duct tape goggles in ear muffs to his head. And then they flew him to another country. He describes the black site he calls the American Torture Place. The windows of the American Torture Place were covered in cloth and there was techno music blasting.
An interrogator in a black mask asked him questions about al-Qaeda plots in the United States and at Heathrow Airport. And when he wasn't satisfied with Majid's answers, he counted down on his fingers from ten. At zero, a guard grabbed the chains around Majid's hands, threw them over a wooden beam in the ceiling, and hoisted Majid into the air. With sudden movement, the guards had hoisted the chain, attached to my hands, and pulled the chain tight.
After a few more pulls, I was hanging by my hands with my shackle feet, barely touching the ground. The interrogators left the room as I screamed in pain and tried to support my weight. After a while, the interrogators left him hanging like that for an hour or two, and then dragged him into a tiled bathroom to a bathtub filled with ice water. The US interrogator placed me feet first into the ice water and then pushed my body flat to the bottom of the tub.
I was still wearing a thin cloth hood. While some US interrogators held my body under the water, the lead interrogator pushed my head under the water and held me down as I struggled against drowning. As I guessed for air, the interrogator would demand answer to the questions. They repeatedly submerged me.
When I could get a ear, I would beg them to stop and swear to them that I did not know anything. The people I talked to who were in court that day said Majid was stoic as he read his statement. Sometimes he acted out the scene he was describing. Like when he talked about being hung from a beam, he put his arms up into the air.
He pointed out the scars on his ankles. When he told the jury how his feet swelled so much, the ankle cuffs cut into his skin. Different details from his statement lodged in different people's heads. For the prosecutor, Colonel Walt Foster, it was hearing how Majid was strong up by his arms.
For Majid's attorney, Major Michael Linus, it was the bugs. But I could feel tiny bugs smaller than mosquitoes biting me repeatedly until I bled. With my hands shackled, I couldn't swat the bugs or scratch the sores they left. There's one person from the black sites who Majid refers to specifically in his statement.
Gives him a nickname. A man he calls the torture doctor. In April 2004, Majid tells a jury, he was moved to a different black site, which he refers to as long term CIA prison. He realized nobody was coming to help him.
He was on his own. He started a hunger strike to protest. So the torture doctor in the guards forced fed him. Sometimes with an IV, sometimes with a tube up the nose and down the throat.
I remember the torture doctor right in front of me. He would take the tube and he would sharpen the tube and put a hot sauce and then he would nose feed me. And then when that didn't break his will, when he continued to hunger strike. After the force feeding fell to get me to cooperate, they returned to torture me.
This part is extremely painful to talk about, at the most of them, and in front of my parents and my sister. In the month of September 2004, still at long term CIA prison, I was raped by CIA torture doctor while being restrained. They did it in my cell. I was restrained very tightly and secure by at least two guards.
The CIA torture doctor was there to administer the insertion. But it was not a medical procedure. I remember one time in my cell. I asked the torture doctor why he was doing this and he whispered with viciousness.
And he said, quote, you're fucking terrorist. End of quote. I swear to God, I remember exact words. He grabbed me like this.
And he says, you're fucking terrorist. This is the hardest part. They used green garden hoses, regular sized hoses, connected to one side to my rectum. Another one to the faucet.
And they would turn on the water. And I could feel the gush of water going into my rectum. I remember feeling a mass pressure in my bowels. A pain I had never felt.
The CIA euphemistically called this rectal rehydration. They didn't stop at water. Once the torture doctor and the guards bound Modded with duct tape and shackles and put two bottles of insurance into his rectum. And then later that same day, they period Modded's entire lunch tray.
Hummus, pasta, sauce, nuts, and raisins, and inserted all of that into his rectum too. This was known as rectal feeding. The body cannot absorb nutrients this way. So a more accurate word for it is rape.
At least five other CIA prisoners were raped this way too, according to the Senate report. On page 30 of his 39 page statement, Modded stops reading and takes a sip of water. He tells the jury apologetically that he's nearly done, asks them to bear with him. The judge says, would you like to take a break, Mr.
Khan? And Modded says, judge, I would like to get it over with. Thanks and for his concern. He picks back up in May of 2006, one things that started to change in CIA custody.
He's up a little. He went on a hunger strike again, but this time the Americans didn't punish him, didn't rape him. He told him he was depressed, and they offered him prozac. Modded tells the jury how in September of 2006 he was transferred to Guantanamo.
How on the plane ride there he felt for the first time, like he might actually survive. But then he was put in camp 7. He describes his treatment there, the noises, cruelty of guards. Here he goes off script, tells the jury that this is just a quote, summary of the summary of the summary of the summary.
But he has 600 pages of notes about his treatment at Guantanamo, but he doesn't want to bore them. And then he wraps it up. Thanks to his attorneys, take responsibility for his actions and his crimes, and apologizes to everyone he's hurt, including his wife, Rabea, and his daughter, Manal, whom he's never met. He apologizes to his father again, and to his siblings.
Apologizes for abandoning them after their mother died. I have wanted to tell my story for a very long time. I am so very appreciated for your attention. Thank you for letting me share it with you today.
At this point, Modded's been reading for two hours nonstop. He says God bless and walks back to his seat. By all accounts of the people I've talked to, the jury listened to Modded's statement like statues, unmoving. The next day, Colonel Foster, the prosecutor, gives a closing statement for the government.
He tries to refocus the trial around the crimes of Majed Khan, rather than the crimes of the United States government. He talks about the victims of the Jakarta bombing, who have been off stage for most of the hearing, and reads their names out loud. Colonel Foster plays down the torture, saying quote, I would concur that Mr. Khan received extremely rough treatment by the individuals that detained him, and it is right for you to consider that conduct.
However, despite what Mr. Khan experienced, he is still alive and with us here today, a luxury that the dead and the 11 victims of the JW Marriott Hotel bombing do not have. The jury can choose a sentence anywhere from 25 to 40 years. Colonel Foster asks them to sentence him in the upper range of the spectrum.
Major Michael Linus, one of Majed's defense attorneys, gives a rebuttal. He asks the jury to give Majed 25 years. And then the judge sends him off to deliberate. They're gone for three hours.