01 Nov 2021; MEMO: A group of US military officers is urging that the Pakistani man sentenced to prison should now be freed after he detailed the torture he faced from the CIA.
Last week, Majid Khan became the first detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to publicly outline the kind of torture he received at one of the CIA's so-called "black sites", during the war on terror and the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
In a 39-page testimonial, Khan described being tortured, on and off, for three years, starting in 2003 in Karachi. He said the interrogation techniques used on him included waterboarding, being hung naked from the ceiling, and being physically and sexually assaulted.
Khan had been convicted of aiding Al-Qaeda after the US invasion of Afghanistan, following the 9-11 attacks in America. But in his testimonial, Khan said that the more he cooperated with investigators, the more he was tortured, which led him to lie about his knowledge of Al-Qaeda.
A letter from seven of the eight military officers who sentenced Khan to 26 years in prison, published in the New York Times on Sunday, condemned the CIA torture and stated that Khan's interrogations went well beyond enhanced interrogation techniques and bordered on torture, "performed by the most abusive regimes in modern history."
The officers added that the abuse was ineffective and called it "an affront to American values and concept of justice."
"This abuse was of no practical value in terms of intelligence, or any other tangible benefit to US interests," read the letter. "Instead, it is a stain on the moral fibre of America; the treatment of Khan at the hands of US personnel should be a source of shame for the US government."
