January 24, 2008

www.baltimoresun.com/news/world/bal-te.detainee22jan22,0,2665231.story

Ex-Md. resident writes from Guantanamo about CIA torture

Mcclatchy-tribune

January 22, 2008

MIAMI

In a handwritten plea, a suburban Baltimore high school graduate held at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has written a federal court about his alleged torture in CIA custody - details hidden from public view by censorship.

"Think of me as a human being ... not a terrorist," Majid Khan, 27, wrote last month in careful English penmanship between heavily censored portions of a federal court filing made public Friday.

Lawyers for Khan also argue in the filing that CIA Director Michael V. Hayden "was demonstrably incorrect" when he said in a statement issued last month that videotaping of interrogations stopped in 2002.

"The agency stands by that statement," George Little, a spokesman for the CIA, said yesterday.

"At a bare minimum, General Hayden is not fully informed about the CIA torture program," countered Wells Dixon, one of Khan's attorneys.

The documents are part of the latest legal salvo between the Bush administration and Khan's attorneys, who allege he was subjected to "a ruthless program of state-sponsored torture" during three years of secret CIA custody at a so-called "black site" overseas.

The CIA and the Bush administration contend that they do not engage in torture. There is no way to independently verify either Khan's claims or those of the government.

Now, the letters are part of an additional filing in the case, written by Khan last month at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba. All references to what he says happened to him are concealed by a censor's pen.

In one five-page handwritten account from Khan to his lawyers, only a single sentence survives the censor's pen. It says, "I was 'practically' an American who lived a comfortable live [sic] under freedoms of America, who never lived in caves or Afghanistan."

The U.S. government alleges that Khan was tasked by Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed to conduct research on poisoning reservoirs and blowing up gas stations in the United States.

Born in Pakistan, Khan moved with his family to the United States at age 15 and became a legal resident. In 2002, while he was visiting Pakistan, security forces captured him and handed him over to the CIA, which held him secretly until he was sent to Guantanamo in September 2006.

None has been charged with crimes. But Khan is the only one of the 15 to see an attorney so far, spending days describing his treatment to Gitanjali Gutierrez and Dixon of the New York Center for Constitutional Rights.

Based on those interviews, they have filed sworn statements, now sealed at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

His lawyers have filed a petition asking the court to rule that he was tortured in U.S. custody; it's the only court empowered by Congress to review the detention of Guantanamo captives, who today number about 275.

At Guantanamo, his lawyers say, Khan has only shared recreation time and the opportunity to speak with one other detainee, an alleged senior al-Qaida operative named Abu Zubaydah.

The CIA has said it created its "terrorist detention and interrogation program" after capturing Zubaydah in Pakistan and videotaping his interrogations in 2002. It said the videotapes were destroyed three years later to spare agents retribution by al-Qaida or its sympathizers.

A former CIA agent, John Kiriakou, who was involved in the program, has said in successive media interviews that the agency engaged in waterboarding, strategically, in the war on terrorism as part of special techniques made legal by President Bush. Waterboarding simulates drowning.

In his letters, Khan describes himself as a one-time U.S. resident who paid $2,400 a month in U.S. taxes, now caught in a "big mistake" by the CIA. "I ask you to give me justice ... in the name of what U.S.A. once stood for and in the name of what Thomas Jefferson fought for ... allow me a chance to prove that I am innocent."

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