A US Senate survey on the use of torture by the CIA after the attacks of 11 September 2001 corroborates the testimony of Majid Khan.
Le Monde with AFP
Majid Khan is the first inmate of Guantanamo Military Prison to publicly tell the tortures in the hands of the CIA. This Pakistani of the Guantanamo Military Prison detailed the tortures that he suffered for three years in the hands of the American intelligence agency, during his trial before a military court which sentenced it, Friday, October 29, to 26 years of detention. But considering an agreement with the judge when he pleaded guilty, he could be released next year.
Former messenger of Al-Qaeda, Majid Khan, 41, has spared no details to the military judges when they told them on Thursday to have been beaten, sexually assaulted and subjected to drowning simulated after his capture in Pakistan In 2003.
In a letter of 39 pages read at the hearing, Majid Khan, who grew up in Pakistan before emigrating to the United States with his family, told having been suspended by chains for several days in a row, Nude and without eating, in non-secret prison window cells of the CIA in unidentified countries.
Bospel between 2003 and 2006 between several secret sites, he described brutal interrogations, plunged the coated face in iced water baths, the head held under the water until he speaks.
“They struck me until I begs them to stop. The worst thing was not to know when the blows were going to come, or where they would leave.”
His interrogators threatened to attack his family in the United States and to violate his sister. His glasses, without which he is almost blind, were broken. “I had to wait three years before receiving a new pair.”
Private sleep, Forced Lavements
Several nights of sleep deprivation have left it dazed. “I remember having hallucinations, see a giant cow and lizard. I had lost all contact with reality.”
He suffered forced washes between two interrogations and was fed from force by an anal probe when he was on strike of hunger, which left him permanent sequelae.
A watering pipe was introduced into the anus, to rehydrate it, they were told. “I was violated by CIA doctors. While I was tied up, they introduced tubes and objects into my anus.”
“Every time I was tortured, I told them what I thought they wanted to hear. I was lying so that the violence stops,” he said. But “the more I cooperated and I was talking, the more I was tortured.”
A US Senate survey on the use of torture by the CIA after the attacks of 11 September 2001 corroborates his testimony.
“The strong words of Majid (…) reveal the devastating atrocities committed by our own government on behalf of our national security,” said one of his lawyers, Katya Jestin. “The CIA program has been a failure, and it was contrary to our democratic principles and the rule of law.”
Expressed regrets
Majid Khan had arrived at the age of 16 in Baltimore, 50 km from Washington, where he learned English in his father’s gas station before continuing his schooling in a local college.
Majid Khan, who had been recruited by members of his family belonging to Al Qaeda during a visit to Pakistan, had gone to the confessions a few days after his capture on March 5, 2003 in Karachi.
He had recognized having participated in a murder attempt by President Pakistani and gave $ 50,000 to Al Qaeda members in Indonesia, an amount that had funded an attack against a hotel.
He got the right to publicly tell the treatments that he suffered when he pleaded guilty in 2012. He regretted his actions. “It’s been close to 20 years that I am detained and kept in isolation, I paid expensive,” he said. “I reject Al-Qaeda, I reject terrorism.”
But he assured the court that he did not want those who tortured him. “I will be in peace when I have forgiven and when I have forgiven the others the harm they made me, he assured. To those who tortured me: I forgive you. All.”
