Prisoner gives a Guantanamo court the first account of CIA abuse
A Guantanamo Bay prisoner who went through the brutal U.S. government interrogation program after the 9/11 attacks described it openly for the first time Thursday, saying he was left terrified and hallucinating from techniques that the CIA long sought to keep secret. Majid Khan, a former resident of the Baltimore suburbs who became an al-Qaida courier, told jurors considering his sentence for war crimes how he was subjected to days of painful abuse in the clandestine CIA facilities known as "black sites," as interrogators pressed him for information.
"I thought I was going to die," he said. Khan spoke of being
suspended naked from a ceiling beam for long periods, doused repeatedly with ice water to keep him awake for days. He described having his head held under water to the point of near drowning, only to have water poured into his nose and mouth when the interrogators let him up. He was beaten, given forced enemas, sexually assaulted and starved in overseas prisons whose locations were not disclosed.
"I would beg them to stop and swear to them that I didn't know anything," he said. "If I had intelligence to give I would have given it already but I didn't have anything to give."
Some of Khan's treatment is detailed in
a Senate Intelligence Committee report, released in 2014, that
accused the CIA of inflicting pain and suffering on al-Qaida prisoners far beyond its legal boundaries and deceiving the nation with narratives of useful interrogations unsubstantiated by its own records.
The U.S. holds still 39 men at the detention center on Naval Station Guantanamo Bay.
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/28/1050317339/guantanamo-sentencing-majid-khan
