A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeaped in today's episode of the show.
If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org.
From WB Easy Chicago, it's this American Life, I'm Eric Glass.
I want to play something for you today, and before I do, I want to get in front of something.
The story is about Guantanamo.
And I think lots of us here are Guantanamo at this point, and we think, it's heavy,
and it's complicated, and is it really still going on?
And don't I really know everything I already need to know about Guantanamo?
Maybe you've heard of Kerbocker's Sericanic and Dana Chivas over at Serial.
They've been wronged out season four of Serial, and so about Guantanamo.
And the premise of the show is, enough time has passed that all these people who were
there in its heyday could finally talk publicly about what really happened.
What it was like to work there, what it was like to be imprisoned there, and you hear
all these ordinary people who were thrown into this extraordinary situation where they
were guards and interrogators and commanders and detainees.
And this invented offshore prison with its own weird brand new rules.
And you finally get a very clear sense of what it was like in there.
But there are two episodes that they made that are about stuff that's just happened down
there in the last couple of years, and about stuff that is going to happen that's going
to be in the news.
And honestly, when I heard these two episodes, I thought, and I know this sounds kind of
grand, that really every American should hear these.
But the kind of stories that we hear them, it totally changes how you understand the
news after that.
And they're also just amazing stories.
And so what we're going to do this week and next, we're going to do something we've never
done, we're going to run these two episodes from Serial, two full episodes on our show.
Until right now, today, here is the first of those two episodes.
Dana Chivas calls this season of Serial.
And she does this one.
Majid 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 Desi.
He listened to Eminem and watch Lawn Order and paid attention and missed Sanford Social
Studies class, where he learned about checks and balances and due process.
So when Majid 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.
CIA is just shocked.
He's like, what are you thinking who you are and where you are?
He's like, you're talking about rights?
The sun, the gloves came off long time ago.
That's what they're telling me.
I was like, no, no, I still believe in due process.
I still believe in due process right or wrong, whatever I did.
I believe in due process.
What he did, instead of becoming a DJ, Majid 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 a diaper.
Majid did bad things.
He joined Al Qaeda or 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 near 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 Majid.
We disappeared him for three years, blocked him away for 20, tortured him.
This story is about two ledgers.
On one side, what Majid did to us, on the other, what we did to Majid.
How do you weigh those against each other?
In the historical counting to come, which is worse.
Majid's case is the first time a Guantanamo, those ledgers are compared and someone has
to render a verdict.
Majid'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 Majid 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 had invaded Iraq the first time in 1991.
When I visited Majid 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.
Last 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.
Two guys are so powerful, so smart, and you guys saw dumbasses at the same time.
No offense.
I mean, I'm not American, okay?
By citizenship, you guys amaze me every single time.
What's the dumbass part?
Not getting the basics.
And I'm thinking, there could be another Majid Khan somewhere right now.
No, imagine that.
Back then, we didn't have you two, 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 Majid Khan out there right now?
They would become like me.
What led Majid to extremism was a confluence of events.
Growing up, he wasn't very religious.
In 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 Majid.
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 Tablighi
Jamat, who would visit him at work and at the mosque.
And then when he was 21, Majid'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 had sinned up until that point, had 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.
Some point in my life I had to choose path.
Do you want to be siding with oppressed or oppressor?
I chose to be siding 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, Majid heard a lot about the Musya Hadeen, 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.
For a billion people, billions of Muslims, I happened to have cousin and uncle there,
there are guys 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.
Majid didn't believe it.
And then part of it is like, come on, Muslim could do it.
And I'm into conspiracy theories.
I was like, no way.
I told my uncle and my cousin that I knew the Jews were behind it.
I saw on the internet.
I saw C.I. you were behind it.
There were nothing 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, Majid joined them.
I was already pissed off about Palestine thing.
Somehow the word I understood that happened.
Now I got to be careful not to say it could be misconstrued almost in my mind.
And I wasn't alone.
I was some Islamic community members that I was with.
That they did not appreciate it, but almost had like, they had it coming.
Like the United States had it coming?
So United had it coming because what they were doing Palestine and the 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 it just, I was so mad 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 that what was happening in Palestine affected me so much.
That somehow I was okay to say, well they had it coming.
Just like I was just watching Fox News yesterday.
And then everybody in Fox News, well, if the Palestinian didn't like it, well they had
it coming.
They're the one who selected Hammas to be opera in Gaza.
I was in that mindset.
I must tell you, I know I'm being honest with you, but I make a come across 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 a little irritated by these statements and you should be.
But I am just telling you, I can't sugarcourt my statements so I can please you.
Let me be clear, Majid 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 Majid did is what Majid did not do.
He did not assassinate Pakistani President Purvez Musharraf in a suicide attack.
But he tried to.
When he joined al-Qaeda, Majid volunteered to be a suicide bomber.
I had shown my willingness to my cousin and told my uncle that, hey, by the way, if there's
an opportunity, 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 since here.
I truly believed that this is the way to go to heaven.
Beyond how sure are you as night right now?
It's very dark out, 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.
Majid'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 were on their honeymoon, KSM, Gleed chick Mohammed, called Majid's cousin.
He had a job for Majid to do back in Krochi.
The job was a suicide mission.
Majid would wear an explosive vest to a mosque where the Pakistani president, Musharif,
was expected to attend Friday prayers.
At a safe house in Krochi, Majid 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, aware to say 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 the idea was to do less damage to the people.
If you can get close and shake hands and hug him in the President, perfect.
He says he did ask KSM, what about all the civilians who would be killed?
I did ask him.
I did ask him, is there what about the civilians?
He justified, there was some, Hadiz was done where the prophet was at war.
And in nighttime, there was unintentionally some civilian were killed.
It basically, in American language, it was collateral damage.
We don't want to do it unless we have no option.
But somehow you win, when you end this cycle that I was in, it's like being in turn and
you know, you're just, there's not much time, you're not thinking, you're not staying
out by the way, let's just think about this.
Right?
If I could go back and change it, I would.
I wish I could go back and tell myself, calm down, cowboy, you know, think what you're
doing.
There's a consequences of reactions.
I didn't think about my family and all that stuff.
On that Friday morning, KSM drove Majid to the mosque in a red Suzuki.
He sat through all of Friday prayers in the suicide vest.
He told me he was calm, 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, Majid continued plotting with KSM to blow up gas stations,
to import explosives into the United States.
They talked about Majid 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 Majid, were not so clear.
When I was in the States, I was like, okay, life is not that bad.
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 rest will come back to us.
We will purify your heart.
I just, I didn't do crisis, I don't know what, whatever you want to call it.
I, I, I love living in America, in a sense that my family and friends were there.
That's great.
But part of me said, look, they're right too.
Like, I want to be part of Majidin as well.
According to the United States government and to Majid himself, he never directly physically
injured anyone.
The plots he and KSM dreamt up were abandoned.
He never wore a suicide vest again.
The most clear of his crimes with the gravest 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.
Majid 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, Majid was already an American custody.
Early one morning in March 2003, he'd been moken 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 Desi?
They shouted at him.
He'd used his DJ name on a hotmail account.
They took him in the custody, interrogated 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 Majid did ends, and the story of what we did to Majid begins.
The details of Majid'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 a respect for the CIA, a kind of opponent's 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 way of frank conversation.
And there won't be us with us.
I mean, they were so honest with us that, dude, I'm going to torture you tomorrow.
They're going to torture me tomorrow.
And they were done torturing me tomorrow?
After one week, they're done.
Okay, we're not going to torture you anymore.
I mean, they were way frank, way straightforward.
He said all the prisoners with him in camp seven, but 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 seven felt that way.
I mean, I've talked to KSM.
I've talked to all the brothers in camp seven.
We actually had a lot of respect for CIA.
We understood why they're torturing us.
We understood they want intelligence.
It's 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 in 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 his guards, his interrogators, and his torturers.
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 seven was worse.
He wasn't being interrogated anymore.
Sometimes FBI would pay him a visit, ask him some questions.
But that's it.
So the cruelty at Guantanamo had no purpose.
CIA torture was like surgical.
Okay, for a few hours, a few months or whatever they're 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 seven.
Zero.
You know, it's like just hanging a cat for ten days just to forsake of it.
Now it's just the nature, the sadistic nature that I could not understand in camp seven.
I try not to think about it.
Honestly, it was the lowest point in my life.
Compared to the CIA, the guards in camp seven could be brutally childish.
Majid says they put metal and stones into his food.
When he didn't return his tray and 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 the 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, but the guards at Gitmo
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, literally just pulling and banging my head against the wall.
Literally?
Literally.
Literally.
And 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, his 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 camps haven't prisoners did the same kind of thing.
Majid was a 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, or charged with crimes of cacaria life sentence.
He was barely keeping it together in camp seven.
He wanted out of Guantanamo of captivity, 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.
I asked him, that was my number one goal.
Allow me to speak.
Let me tell the word 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 as 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.
You know, it's a fun fact that the CIA told me, I'm not going to be can't let you go.
I was like, why not?
They said, look, if you let you go, you speak from English and then you're going to tell
the world that how American fucked me up and you're going to end up in Oprah Shore or something.
And that's the problem.
It was very honest people.
You know, when it comes to the, they didn't hide it.
It was the problem was it's not, I understood it was not what what I did is so much what they
did to me.
Madjogess that if a jury heard what the CIA had done to him, first hand, they would give
him a later sentence.
Deep down 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 jailed card basically.
It's like 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 seven with him, Majid says they did not understand this.
It's remarkable to hear Majid talk about these other prisoners and camp seven 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 Majid, the only camp seven 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 Zubayda 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 Majid delivered money for.
And then there was Majid.
I was a green horn.
The other detainees were older than Majid.
He was only 23 when he was captured.
Plus, he points out he hadn't done any hardcore jihaddy training at the camps in Afghanistan.
He hadn't shot an AK-47 or lived in a cave or sworn an oath to bin Laden.
I was the kid in the block, right?
He was concerned about me because they understood that this kid, you know, he's not been tough
to understand.
He doesn't know much about Islam.
He doesn't know.
They were worried about me.
It's like, we've got to take care of this kid, you know.
And then it did.
I mean, honest to God, they did.
Otherwise, I don't think I would have made it.
It was so terrible in Guantanamo Bay.
Majid 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 Majid believed 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 whole list on the left side.
And then I put all the detainee names 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.
Even convinced some of the brothers to tell me about that.
I said, look, I'm just doing this project.
Let me do it for me.
I said, OK, OK, and then they start telling me about that.
I think the brother didn't understand that most of them didn't live in states and 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 who were pretty naive about this legal system because on their
own experience, they had a legal system in Arab countries, which is dictatorship.
So it doesn't matter.
Every day we get tortured and 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 right now, but there's a system out there.
Things have gotten a bit more relaxed in camps, haven't by then.
The prisoners could talk to each other through the bean holes, the mail-like slots in their
cell doors, which the guards left open for them.
Majib would ask the other prisoners questions.
He said, OK, how many times waterboarding?
How many days?
OK, I remember two or three months.
He interviewed them outside during wreck time.
Well, you know, he's working out in the left, I go, I'm working out, I'm doing push-ups
whatever.
At first, he took a legal pad with him into the wreck yard.
But then he says the guards caught on, said nobody could take legal pads into the wreck yard
anymore.
I said, OK, no problem.
I'm not going anywhere.
I'll get time with the brother.
I'll interview him.
So I would sometimes memorize it.
And then I'll go back to my cell, I read 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 in a way that it just falls in that category, right?
Do you remember an example of that?
Like a machini had unique experience, like that he was hanged for maybe 18 hours or so.
They call it two-point restrictions.
Like your hands are tied up and your legs are tied up, right?
So there's two points of this strength.
And his experience was that the strength is one leg and two hands on top.
And then another leg to the wall.
So he's like, just like that.
Kind of scissored out.
Sizzard.
He's like, yeah.
So he can't move right left.
So that was unique.
I just remember it was unique.
I didn't even put it in there.
I was like, OK, I'll just, I made a side note.
One of his interviews in particular stuck with him.
Mustafa Al-Hasawi, one of the 9-11 defendants accused of sending money to the 9-11 high
dockers.
What was the worst torture?
And he said, before I answer that, he said, I'll tell you the word 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 can just literally just, or they put me in a cell and 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 a man or woman, that was the most torture job.
By the end of the project, Majid felt he had done something great.
He had a record of the torture 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 some day.
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.
And to talk 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've killed 3,000 people.
Who the fuck are you?
You know, you're nobody in the channel 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 to 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?
Those lawyers knew that the CIA did not want those names revealed, ever.
So they made that part of their strategy.
His attorney submitted a list of 115 people they wanted to call to the stand.
Some of the names were far-fetched.
George Bush was on it, along with Condoleezza 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 ding the prosecution for discovery violation.
So that made nine years total.
I'm shaving off nine years.
You can imagine how desperate they were.
Could 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 sentence in 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.
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 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 an illegal 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.
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 Americas know that American loss interest.
Right?
Honestly, being really pragmatic about it, they lost interest.
They know what happens, where should happen.
And it's almost like they created tolerance for this, that it's almost, how do you say,
desensitize to torture now?
And it's a fact.
And I think that's what the CIA used that fuck it.
Let him speak.
I don't think they cared anymore.
Honestly.
What's the big deal?
Waterboarding?
We already have to turn down the times.
So will they care?
Dana Chivas.
Coming up, Majid finally gets his day in court.
That's in a minute.
From Chicago Public Radio, when a program continues.
This American life, my reglass, today's program, two ledgers.
We're playing an episode from the new season of cereal, which is all about Guantanamo.
Dana Chivas picks up the story of Majid Khan, where she left off, on the day of his sentence
in hearing.
The courtroom at Guantanamo 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 42nd audio delay.
That's where the press and the public sit.
On this day, October 28, 2021, that's where Majid's father and sister are seated.
Majid had been allowed to see them earlier that morning, for the first time in 19 years.
Did anything surprise you in that meeting about either one of them or how you felt or how
they acted?
They're short.
I was like, am I, did I get tall or is like, or they're shorter?
You know, just like, that's like, because I taught, you know, they were about my size.
This hearing would be the first time they learned the details of Majid'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.
Majid sits at the front of the courtroom at a defendants table with four of his attorneys.
Court starts at 9.06 a.m.
The lawyer spent most of the day selecting the jury, not a jury of Majid'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 in al-Qaeda, tougher him.
The sensing proceedings don't really get going until after five.
A prosecutor reads the stipulation of fact to the jury.
The document that describes in cold legalese all the crimes Majid 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., Majid, in a black suit and tie his lawyers bought him, 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. Khan, you may proceed.
Majid proceeds.
I begin in name of God.
My name is Majid Khan, and for the last 15 years, I have been incarcerated at Neville
Station Guantanamo Bay, or Gitmo.
Majid 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, meek and humble, humble and meek, asking for you to listen to
my story with the sensitive and compassionate ear.
Majid 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, Majid 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 a page, and another to be faced with
the person who endured it, twenty 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 lock-up, 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 fell over forward, there was no doubt my leg would snap.
I was so afraid of what would happen next.
I remember in Older 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 an end of quote.
This man would frequently threaten me, saying like, son, we're going to take care of you.
We're 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.
Hodged 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 anima, put him in a diaper, and duct-taped
goggles in the earmuffs 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 technomies
at 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 10.
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 subtle 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 shekelfeet barely touching
the ground.
The interrogators left the room as I screamed in pain and tried to support my weight.
After a while, the interrogator...
Majid tells the jury they 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
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.
After the prosecutor, Colonel Walt Foster, it was hearing how Majid was strung 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 swad 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 the 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
nosefeed me.
And then when that didn't break his will, when he continued to hunger strike.
After the force-reading felt to get me to cooperate, they returned to torture me.
This party is extremely painful to talk about as 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 secured 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 this 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 immense 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 in the guards bound modded with duct tape and shackles and put two
bottles of insure 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 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 him for his concern.
He picks back up in May of 2006, one thing 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 them he was depressed and they offered him pro-zac.
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.
Then he was put in camp seven.
He describes his treatment there, the noises, the cruelty of the 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.
It used 600 pages of notes about his treatment at Guantanamo, but he doesn't want to bore
them.
And then he wraps it up.
Thanks his attorneys takes responsibility for his actions and his crimes and apologizes
to everyone he's hurt.
He's been a living his wife, Rabia, 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 appreciative for your attention.
Thank you for letting me share it with you today.
At this point, Modded has been reading for two hours, non-stop.
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 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 Majid Khan rather than the crimes of the
United States government.
He talks about the victims of the Jakarta bombing, who've been offstage for most of the hearing
and reads their names out loud.
Colonel Foster plays down the torture, saying, quote, I would conclude 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 the 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 Majid's defense attorneys, gives a rebuttal.
He asks the jury to give Majid 25 years.
And then the judge sends him off to deliberate.
They're gone for three hours.
When they come back, the judge asks Majid to stand and the form and reads the sentence.
Majid Shokat Khan, this military commission sentences you to be confined for 26 years,
zero months, zero days.
Again, Majid doesn't have to serve all this time.
This sentence is already set.
But 26 years, it's only one year more than the minimum.
It's proof that Majid was right to bet that a jury of Americans would give him a lighter
sentence once they heard about the torture.
The judge thanks the jury, reminds them not to talk about their deliberations.
And then, just as he's about to excuse them, the form and indicates he has something
else to say.
He has a letter for the defense team.
He hands the letter to the bailiff, who walks over and gives it to Majid's attorney, Major
Linus, who leaves it there on the desk, tantalizingly folded in half.
While the judge wraps up the session.
We wanted to open right away.
And everybody's acting like it's not a big deal.
No, it's not long.
The judge finally says, Mr. Khan, I wish you all the best in the future.
This court is adjourned.
And then, this was the judge left the building, like a pack of dogs.
Attack that letter.
He's like, let me read it.
Let's smile at it.
Let me hold it.
The letter is written in tidy handwriting, online paper.
It reads, quote, the panel members listed below recommend clemency in the case of Majid
Chokhat Khan.
It's a letter to the so-called convening authority.
That's the person who's the final arbiter of Majid's case.
It's a military justice thing, I'm not going to explain.
It's a letter asking the convening authority to go easy on Majid.
It says Majid should get leniency because he was denied due process, because he was a young
man when he committed his crimes and is no longer a threat for future extremism.
And because he was so badly abused by the United States, quote, this abuse was of no
practical value in terms of intelligence or any other tangible benefit to US interests.
Instead, it is a stain on the moral fiber of America.
It's signed by seven of the eight jury members, all officers of the United States military,
all serving during the global war on terrorism, and who, having compared the two ledgers, rendered
their verdict on this era of American history.
What Majid did was bad, but what we did to him was punishment enough.
I think for lots of people in the military, this conclusion will not come as a surprise.
This idea of torturing prisoners isn't some abstract moral debate for them.
It's personal, practical.
If they get captured by the enemy, they don't want to be tortured.
They don't want other Americans to be tortured.
They want that kind of thing to be out of bounds.
They need the US to hold the line.
The clemency letter is framed on my wall in my office.
That's major line is one of Majid's defense attorneys.
The original document is in my closet, and I still don't know what to do with it.
I don't know who, you know, does it have national archives?
Want this original document because it's currently just in my closet.
Why didn't you frame the original on your office wall?
Why is that the one in the closet?
It's not mine.
It's, to me, it's the public.
It's a public document.
It should be put somewhere where everybody can see it.
It's the kind of historical document that could, should, end up in a textbook.
But it probably won't.
It will probably stay in major linuses closet.
I reached out to the CIA for comment on this story, for comment on Majid's treatment.
In response, a CIA spokesperson sent me a statement, quote, the CIA's detention and
interrogation program ended in 2009.
The CIA has committed and remains committed to never again operating such a program of enhanced
interrogation techniques.
End quote.
So many of the players in this story, in all these Guantanamo stories, just want to put that
place behind them.
The American government certainly wants us to forget about Gitmo, the black sites, the
torture.
And Majid too, he finally got out of prison in February 2023, 11 months after his sentence
officially ended.
His attorneys' methaman Belize helped him set up his new house.
Two months later, Rabia and Minal joined him.
He helped Minal hang rainbow colored lights around her room.
He spotted her as she put a ladder on a chair on her bed to reach the ceiling.
In some photos he and Rabia took, shortly after they were reunited, they're both beaming,
like newlyweds.
Majid spent the first 20 years of adult life in prison.
Now, suddenly, at the age of 44, he's a husband and a father.
He has a 20-year-old daughter and a new baby.
He's got to learn to raise a kid, find a job, convince the banks to give him a bank account.
He doesn't want to be talking about any of this stuff.
He doesn't want to relive it.
He couldn't sleep the week I was in Belize interviewing him.
He just wants to move on.
I don't give a fuck about history.
Like, I don't want it to be in part of history, with all due respect.
I just want to be forgotten.
Who cares?
Who's Majid's son?
If I buried Dianne and buried some of it with some place, I will make sure nobody knows
where I am.
When I die, I just want to make sure only two people come.
My two loved ones.
That's it.
My daughter and my wife.
I'm happy.
That's what I prefer.
Majid told me, sensing hearing, clemency letter, they were validating in the moment.
But writ large, the American public, he doesn't think anyone noticed.
And he's probably right.
But you know who did notice?
He accused masterminds of 9-11, or their lawyers anyway.
If Majid got a more lenient sentence because he was tortured, could they?
Next time.
That'll be next time on serial and on our show as well.
We'll be running one more episode from the Guantanamo series next week.
This is in 4 of serial was produced by Jessica Weisberg with Sarah Caini, Gdana Chivas,
edited by Julie Snyder.
It's produced by serial in the New York Times.
You can hear the rest of the season and I hardly recommend it.
All about Guantanamo, wherever you get your podcasts.
Additional reporting on this story by Korra Currier, fact checking by Ben Faelan, music supervision,
sound design and mixing by Phoebe Wang, original score by Sophia Dele Alessandri, editing
help from Carol Rosenberg and Rosina Ali, Jang Guerra and myself.
Other people who helped put together this season of serial include Emma Grillo, Susan
Westling, Alameen Sumar, Maya Gandhi, and Bay Chubu, Mac Miller and New York Times,
deputy managing editor Sam Donek.
Sean Coleman, commentate, Safiya Riddle and Matt Tierney, work together to put this episode
of serial on our program.
Special thanks to the Natalia Biokey, Alessand Beckman at the Center for the Victims of
Torture, Nina Lassam, Alvin Melath and Tug Wilson, our website, thisamericanlife.org.
You can stream our archive from over 800 episodes for absolutely free.
This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange.
Thanks as always to our program co-founder, Mr. Tori Malatia, he does not understand.
My people at the office did not get his Halloween costume last year.
He's like, isn't it obvious?
A rhinoceros on St. Patrick's Day.
I was a green horn.
I'm Eric Glass, back next week with more stories of this American Life.
