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- [00:00]
Narrator
Prepare for the crime and investigation event of the new year with the premiere of two groundbreaking new series on ae. Each week hit the streets of the Big Easy with a dedicated team of detectives as they search for answers and justice in the gripping new series Homicide New Orleans. Then join an elite Mexican task force in their pursuit of American fugitives hiding south of the border in Fugitive Hunters Mexico. Homicide Squad New Orleans premieres tonight at 9, followed by fugitive hunters Mexico at 10, part of a crime and investigation event only on a and escape.
- [00:35]
Majid Khan
Previously on Serial.
- [00:38]
Dana Chivvis
What was the worst question a reporter could ask you?
- [00:41]
Majid Khan
Um, Camp seven.
- [00:43]
Dana Chivvis
I've never had anything said to me about Camp seven. I know nothing about it.
- [00:48]
Majid Khan
I mean, you hear rumors, but, I.
- [00:50]
Dana Chivvis
Mean, I. I believe he genuinely thought like, this is.
- [00:53]
Majid Khan
This is it.
- [00:54]
Dana Chivvis
I'm dying tonight.
- [00:55]
Majid Khan
Like this.
- [00:55]
Dana Chivvis
I'm going to die.
- [00:56]
Majid Khan
Whatever I learned from the detainees, I pass it all to the leadership. Everything, every word. Word by wor.
- [01:03]
Dana Chivvis
It's a lawless place and they can do whatever they want down there.
- [01:06]
Majid Khan
And they did it.
- [01:16]
Dana Chivvis
From Serial Productions and the New York Times, this is season four of Serial. Guantanamo One prison camp told week by week. I'm Dana Chivas. 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 Dacey, he listened to Eminem and watched Law and Order and paid attention in Ms. Sanford's 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.
- [02:14]
Majid Khan
CIA is just shocked. It's like, what? What are you thinking? Who you are and where you are. He's like, you. You're talking about rights, son. The gloves came off long time ago. That's what they tell me. I was like, no. Now, I still believe in due process. I still believe in due process. Right or wrong, whatever I did, I believe in due process.
- [02:38]
Dana Chivvis
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, wore 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 poisoned 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 Maajid. We disappeared him for three years, locked 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 Maajid. How do you weigh those against each other in the historical accounting to come? Which is worse? Majid's case is the first time at 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 Maajid tell it, the reason.
- [04:34]
Majid Khan
I joined Al Qaeda was a Palestine issue.
- [04:39]
Dana Chivvis
It begins with Palestine.
- [04:41]
Majid Khan
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.
- [04:53]
Dana Chivvis
Some people might remember President George Bush explaining September 11, 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 Madid 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, just weeks since the October 7 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.
- [05:51]
Majid Khan
You guys are so powerful, so smart, and you guys are so dumbass at the same time. No offense. I mean, I'm not an American, okay, you know, by. By citizenship. But you guys amaze me every single time.
- [06:09]
Dana Chivvis
What's the dumbass part?
- [06:12]
Majid Khan
Not getting the basics. And I'm thinking there could be another Magic Khan somewhere right now. No. Imagine that. Back then I didn't even we didn't have YouTube. 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 Maajid Khan out there right now that will become like me?
- [06:43]
Dana Chivvis
What led Maajid to extremism was a confluence of events. Growing up, he wasn't very religious. He and his parents, his seven siblings, they didn't pray regularly. He says his mother was anti religion. When he grew a 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 maajid. 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 Jama'at who would visit him at work and at the mosque. And then when he was 21, Maajid'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.
- [07:55]
Majid Khan
At some point in my life, I had to choose path. Do you want to be siding with the oppressed or oppressor? I chose to be siding with the oppressed.
- [08:09]
Dana Chivvis
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 mujahideen, how honorable they were, how brave, like the Navy SEALs in the United States. He says he didn't particularly care which jihadi group he joined. There were a bunch of them.
- [08:38]
Majid Khan
I'll be honest with you. I didn't go to Pakistan to join Al Qaeda. They came to me out of billion people, billions of Muslims, I happen to have cousin and uncle. There are Qaeda leaders.
- [08:51]
Dana Chivvis
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. Maajid didn't believe it.
- [09:04]
Majid Khan
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, like, dude, I knew the Jews were behind it. I saw on the Internet, I see how you were behind it. They were laughing at me.
- [09:20]
Dana Chivvis
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, Maajid joined them.
- [09:34]
Majid Khan
I was already pissed off about Palestine thing. Somehow the word I understood that happened. Now I gotta be careful what I'm about to say. It could be misconstrued almost in my mind. And I wasn't alone. There was some Islamic community members that I was with that they did not appreciate it, but almost had, like, they had it coming.
- [10:02]
Dana Chivvis
Like the United States had it coming.
- [10:03]
Majid Khan
The United States had it coming because what they were doing in Palestine and the Islamic countries.
- [10:09]
Dana Chivvis
And that's how you felt about it?
- [10:10]
Majid Khan
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. And 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 while they had it coming, they were the one who selected Hamas to be operated in Gaza. Same thing I was in that mindset. I must tell you, I know I'm being honest with you, but I may come across callous. 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 sugarcoat my statements so I can please you.
- [11:31]
Dana Chivvis
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 911 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 Maajid did is what Maajid did not do. He did not assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in a suicide attack, but he tried to. When he joined Al Qaeda, Majid volunteered to be a suicide bomber.
- [12:24]
Majid Khan
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.
- [12:30]
Dana Chivvis
Did you say that with any kind of thought, or did you just sort of, like, offer yourself up without really thinking it through?
- [12:39]
Majid Khan
No, I mean, I was sincere. I truly believed that. That this is the way to go to heaven. Beyond, beyond. How sure are you is night right now?
- [12:51]
Dana Chivvis
It's very dark out.
- [12:52]
Majid Khan
Yeah, Yeah, I was that sure. That's the way to go.
- [12:57]
Dana Chivvis
And you wanted that why?
- [13:00]
Majid Khan
Who doesn't want to go to heaven?
- [13:01]
Dana Chivvis
I mean, you were 20. Like, you had so much of your life ahead of you.
- [13:06]
Majid Khan
Yeah, the test is over. See, this life is test. The test is over.
- [13:15]
Dana Chivvis
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 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed called Majid's cousin. He had a job for Majid to do back in Karachi. The job was a suicide mission. Majid would wear an explosive vest to a mosque where the Pakistani President Musharraf was expected to attend Friday prayers at a safe house in Karachi. Majid tried on the vest.
- [13:47]
Majid Khan
Kasem taught me how to wear it and how to reach out to him, how close to get to blow him up. And basic training, like, you know where to sit when he reaches. Try to get as close as possible. The idea was, if you can just hug him, we'll be perfect. And he told me, like, just remember the idea was to do less damage to the people. If you can get close and shake hand and just hug him and press the button. Perfect.
- [14:18]
Dana Chivvis
He says he did ask KSM what about all the civilians who would be killed?
- [14:22]
Majid Khan
Yeah, I did ask him. I did ask him what about the civilians he justified. There was some. Hadith was done where the prophet was at war. And in nighttime there was unintentionally some civilian were killed. Basically, in American language, it was collateral damage. We don't want to do it unless we have no option. But somehow when you are in this cycle that I was in, it's like being a tornado. You know, you're Just you. There's not much time. You're not thinking, you're not saying, oh, by the way, let's just think about this, right? If I could go back and change it, I would. I wish I. I had. I could go back and sit telling myself, calm down, cowboy. You know, think what you're doing. There's the consequences of your actions. Didn't think about my family and none of that stuff.
- [15:19]
Dana Chivvis
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. After the failed suicide attack, Maajid 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 Maajid, were not so clear.
- [16:10]
Majid Khan
When I was in the States, it was fascinating, you know, I was like, okay, you know, it's not. Life is not that bad. You know, it's 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, you know, the west and the love of vest. So come back to us. We will purify your heart. I just. Identity crisis. I don't know, whatever you want to call it. I loved 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 Mujahideen as well.
- [16:46]
Dana Chivvis
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. Madid 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, Maajid was already in American custody. Early one morning in March 2003, he'd been woken 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 Dacey? They shouted at him. He'd used his DJ name on a Hotmail account. They took him into 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 Maajid begins. That's after the break.
- [18:24]
Narrator
Prepare for the crime and investigation event of the new year with the premiere of two groundbreaking new series on A and E. Each week hit the streets of the Big Easy with a dedicated team of detectives as they search for answers and justice in the gripping new series Homicide Squad New Orleans. Then join an elite Mexican task force in their pursuit of American fugitives hiding south of the border in Fugitive Hunters Mexico. Homicide Squad New Orleans premieres tonight at 9, followed by fugitive hunters Mexico at 10. Part of a crime and investigation event only on a D. This podcast is.
- [18:56]
Dana Chivvis
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- [20:34]
Majid Khan
We had a very frank conversation. I mean, and they wouldn't be us with us. I mean, they were so honest with us. Like, 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 very frank, very, you know, straightforward.
- [20:53]
Dana Chivvis
He said all the prisoners with him in Camp 7, that's 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 7 felt that way.
- [21:06]
Majid Khan
I mean, I've talked to KSM, I've talked to all the brothers in Camp 7. We actually had a lot of respect for CIEM. 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.
- [21:33]
Dana Chivvis
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 in the cold and the dark, with 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 7 was worse. He wasn't being interrogated anymore. Sometimes the FBI would pay him a visit, ask him some questions, but that's it. So the cruelty at Guantanamo had no purpose.
- [22:24]
Majid Khan
CIA torture was like, you know, surgical. Okay, for a few hours, a few months, or whatever. They're trying to. There's a reason behind it. Like they're doing it. I get it where they're doing it. There was no justification what they did in Camp 7 0. You know, it's like just hanging a cat for 10 days just for sake of it, you know, it's just the nature, sadistic nature that I could not understand in Camp Salmon. I try not to think about it, honestly. It just. It was the lowest point in my life.
- [23:02]
Dana Chivvis
Compared to the CIA, the guards in Camp 7 could be brutally childish. Maajid says they put metal and stones into his food when he didn't return his tray in protest. They shaved his head as punishment and then took his tray altogether. 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 his cell at all hours of the day and night, opening and shutting the prison doors. The building itself made noise. There were high frequency whining 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 that 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.
- [24:08]
Majid Khan
I remember pulling my beard, right? Literally, just pulling and banging my head against the wall.
- [24:16]
Dana Chivvis
Literally, literally, literally.
- [24:20]
Majid Khan
And I would to this I'll show you. This is the artery. I chew. I chew that artery right here.
- [24:27]
Dana Chivvis
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.
- [24:46]
Majid Khan
You had to act like a maniac to prove to them there is a problem.
- [24:53]
Dana Chivvis
Majid said other Camp seven prisoners did the same kind of thing. Majid was at 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 that could carry a life sentence. He was barely keeping it together in Camp 7. 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.
- [25:34]
Majid Khan
That's what I asked for. I asked anyone. That was my number one goal. Allow me to speak. Let me tell the world what they did to me.
- [25:44]
Dana Chivvis
He was pissed. Sure, he understood why the CIA had tortured him, but he Also knew it was against the rules.
- [25:50]
Majid Khan
I was mad at that time. I was really mad. I was like, you gotta pay for this. I'm gonna tell the whole world about it.
- [25:58]
Dana Chivvis
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.
- [26:09]
Majid Khan
You know, fun fact. The CIA told me, madhu, we can't let you go. I was like, why not? He said, look, we think if we let you go, you speak fluent English and then you're gonna tell the world that how American me up and you're gonna end up in Oprah show or something. And that's the problem. There's something, you know, it's very honest people, you know, when it comes to the. They didn't hide that. What the problem was, it's not. I understood it was not what I did is so much what they did to me.
- [26:47]
Dana Chivvis
Maja guessed that if a jury heard what the CIA had done to him firsthand, they would give him a lighter sentence.
- [26:53]
Majid Khan
Deep down I knew that this was the silver bullet for me.
- [27:00]
Dana Chivvis
What do you mean it was the silver bullet for you?
- [27:02]
Majid Khan
I mean it was a ticket out of jail car 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 said this was, this was the only shot I have.
- [27:25]
Dana Chivvis
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 7 with him. Majid says they did not understand this. It's remarkable to hear Maajid talk about these other prisoners and Camp 7 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 Maajid, the only Camp 7 prisoner to ever leave Guantanamo. So he's really the only person who can speak for 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 Zubaydah who allegedly ran his own extremist network associated with Al Qaeda. Another guy called Hambali, who was accused of orchestrating the 2003 Marriott bombing. In Jakarta, the plot Majid delivered money for. And then there was Maajid.
- [28:44]
Majid Khan
I was a green horn.
- [28:46]
Dana Chivvis
The other detainees were older than Maajid. He was only 23 when he was captured. Plus, he points out, he hadn't done any hardcore jihadi training at the camps in Afghanistan. He hadn't shot an AK47 or lived in a cave or sworn an oath to bin Laden.
- [29:01]
Majid Khan
I was the kid on the block, right? Everybody was concerned about me because they understood that this kid, you know, has not been to Afghanistan. He doesn't know much about Islam. He doesn't know. They were worried about me. It's like, we got to take care of this kid, you know? And then they 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.
- [29:26]
Dana Chivvis
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.
- [29:42]
Majid Khan
So I decided to make a torture sheet.
- [29:45]
Dana Chivvis
He undertook a reporting project to document the extent of everyone's torture on a spreadsheet. He drew by hand and wrote down.
- [29:53]
Majid Khan
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 made the whole list on the left side. And then I put all the detainee names on the rest of the page.
- [30:13]
Dana Chivvis
Not everyone wanted to talk about the torture. Some of the prisoners felt that it was better left between them and God.
- [30:19]
Majid Khan
Honestly, I had to drag it out of them. It was not that easy to even convince 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, okay, okay. And then they start telling me about that. I think the brother didn't understand because most of them didn't live in the States, and they didn't understand how powerful la torture could be an asset in their legal case, right? And I said, look, this. You need to. You got to put it down. This could be a ticket out of here. And there were a lot of brothers were pretty naive about this legal system because their own experience. They had a legal system in Arab countries, which is dictatorship.
- [31:00]
Dana Chivvis
So it doesn't matter.
- [31:02]
Majid Khan
Every day we get tortured in 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.
- [31:19]
Dana Chivvis
Things had gotten a bit more relaxed in Camp 7 by then. The prisoners could talk to each other through the bean holes. The male like slots in their cell doors which the guards left open for them. Majid would ask the other prisoners questions.
- [31:32]
Majid Khan
He said, okay, how many times? Water burning. How many days? Okay. I don't remember. Three months. Okay.
- [31:37]
Dana Chivvis
He interviewed them outside during rec time.
- [31:39]
Majid Khan
But, you know, he's working out in elliptical. I'm working out, doing push ups, whatever.
- [31:44]
Dana Chivvis
At first he took a legal pad with him into the rec yard. But then he says the guards caught on, said nobody could take legal pads into the rec yard anymore.
- [31:53]
Majid Khan
I said, okay, 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 write it down. So it took a long time to complete that sheet.
- [32:06]
Dana Chivvis
He worked on it for months. Some of the stories he heard defied categorization.
- [32:11]
Majid Khan
So then I had to make. I had to categorize in a way that it just. That it falls in that category. Yeah, right.
- [32:20]
Dana Chivvis
Do you remember an example of that?
- [32:22]
Majid Khan
Like, Nashiri had unique experience like that he was hanged for maybe 18 hours or so. They call it like two point restrictions. Like your hands are tied up, your legs are tied up. Right. So there's two points restraint. And his experience was that the strand is one leg and two hands on top and then another leg to the wall. So he's like, just like kind of.
- [32:55]
Dana Chivvis
Scissored out with his legs.
- [32:57]
Majid Khan
Yeah. So he can't move. Right, Left. And so that was unique. I just remember it was unique. I didn't even put it in there. I was like, okay, I'll just. I made a side note.
- [33:09]
Dana Chivvis
One of his interviews in particular stuck with him. Mustafa Alhasawi, one of the 911 defendants accused of sending money to the 911 hijackers.
- [33:18]
Majid Khan
I asked him 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 could just literally just. Or they put me in some 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 naked from a man or woman, that was the most torture to him.
- [34:04]
Dana Chivvis
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.
- [34:13]
Majid Khan
I thought that this could be the breakthrough that we were looking for in our lives that could alleviate some of the pain that the camp were doing to us.
- [34:27]
Dana Chivvis
He kept the spreadsheet in his cell, hoping to share it in quite court someday. Majid's attorney spent years working on a plea deal. Finally, in 2012, they reached an agreement. Maajid 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. Majid talked to the other camp seven prisoners about the plea deal. He told me some of them were against it, but KSM gave him his blessing.
- [35:15]
Majid Khan
But he said, yeah, I'm happy for you because he told me, look I, I feel sorry for you. I've killed 3,000 people. Who the fuck are you? You know, you're nobody in chain of command.
- [35:28]
Dana Chivvis
I don't know how Maajid 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 on 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 Maajid's advantage. According to the rules of the military commissions and to Maajid's plea agreement, Maajid 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. Majid's lawyers knew that the CIA did not want those names revealed ever. So they made that part of their strategy. His attorneys 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. 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 Maajid another year off to ding the prosecution for a discovery violation. So that made nine years total.
- [38:08]
Majid Khan
I mean, shaving off nine years. You can imagine how desperate were they? Could they know they were fucked?
- [38:17]
Dana Chivvis
What this meant, if all went according to plan, was that Majid would get out just four months after the sentencing 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 magic 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's 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 of Musharraf, his work for Al Qaeda. But, and I know how strange this 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 Maajid's case. His 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 in a legal way, at least. The jury would weigh the two ledgers, what Majid did against what we did to Maajid, and decide for Maajid, 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. The country had moved on. The existential battle of the day was with COVID not Al Qaeda. Maajid worried that the only reason the government was letting him talk was that nobody really cared anymore.
- [40:31]
Majid Khan
I think at this stage, I think CIA and the Americans know that Americans lost interest, right? Honestly, being really pragmatic about it, they lost interest. They don't. They know it happens. Bad shit happened. And it was almost like they had created a tolerance for this that is almost, how do you say, desensitized to torture now. And it's a fact. And I think that's what the CIU is like. Fuck it, let him speak. I don't think they care anymore. Honestly, what's the big deal? Waterboarding? We already heard it turned 100 times.
- [41:08]
Dana Chivvis
So will they care? After the break.
- [41:21]
Narrator
Prepare for the crime and investigation event of the new year with the premiere of two groundbreaking new series on A and E. Each week hit the streets of the Big Easy with a dedicated team of detectives as they search for answers and justice in the gripping new series Homicide Squad New Orleans. Then join an elite Mexican task force in their pursuit of American fugitives hiding south of the border in Fugitive Hunters Mexico. Homicide Squad New Orleans premieres tonight at 9, followed by fugitive hunters Mexico at 10. Part of a crime and investigation event only on A and E. What I.
- [41:54]
Majid Khan
Like about the New York Times app is how much variety it gives me.
- [41:58]
Dana Chivvis
I start my day with a cup of coffee and wordle and connections, which is all in the New York Times app. It's well organized, it's multimedia. I can also save my articles easily in this area.
- [42:09]
Majid Khan
I can add politics or Paul Krugman or Jamelle Bouie.
- [42:12]
Dana Chivvis
I like him. I like that the cooking tab on top is really easily accessible. So if I'm on my way home and I'm just thinking, oh, what am I going to make for dinner? I'll just quickly go on to cooking.
- [42:22]
Majid Khan
And say, oh, I've got this in my pantry.
- [42:24]
Dana Chivvis
The photos are just phenomenal. I have my saved articles, my entire history, which is actually very interesting. I'm just scrolling through the home tab. There's already so much stuff. I'm like, oh, interesting. I spent a lot of time on Wirecutter. I like that. It's just right there. I loved how much content it exposed me to things that I never would have thought to turn to a news app for the New York Times app. All the times all in one place. Download it now at nytimes.com app 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 40 second 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 about how you felt or how they acted?
- [43:31]
Majid Khan
I was like, they're short. I was like, am I? Did I get tall? Or is like or they're shorter, you know, just like this is like, because I thought, you know, they were about my size.
- [43:42]
Dana Chivvis
This hearing would be the first time they learned the details of Maajid'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 defendant's table with four of his attorneys. Court starts at 9:06am the lawyers spend most of the day selecting the jury. Not a jury of Maajid's peers, not even civilians in this military court. The jury consists of eight senior officers from across the armed forces, which if you were once in Al Qaeda tough room. The sentencing 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 Maajid 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, attacking us again. After the prosecutor finishes reading the Stipulation of Fact, they break for dinner. And then finally, at around 7:40pm Maajid, in a black suit and tie, his lawyer's bottom at the necks, 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, and Mr. Khan, you may proceed. Maajid proceeds.
- [45:17]
Majid Khan
I begin in name of God. My name is Majid Khan and For the last 15 years I have been incarcerated at Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay or Gitmo.
- [45:28]
Dana Chivvis
Majid read some of his statement for me.
- [45:30]
Majid Khan
I have a story that I have waited almost two decades to tell. So I want to start by thanking y'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 a sensitive and compassionate ear, Maajid.
- [45:51]
Dana Chivvis
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'd gotten involved in there. How his father hid his travel documents, how he lied to his father to get them back.
- [46:13]
Majid Khan
He's here in court today. I can see him. I want to tell him, baba, I'm sorry. I'm very sorry.
- [46:24]
Dana Chivvis
And then Maajid 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 20ft 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 lockup, interrogated him, how there were Americans there too, how the Pakistanis beat him. The first time he was ever beaten.
- [47:01]
Majid Khan
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 are 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 an older American, a USA interrogator, who would tell me they were not buying my story. You're peeing on my shoes and telling me it's raining, 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.
- [47:57]
Dana Chivvis
Majid 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 enema, put him in a diaper and duct tape, goggles and 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 techno music 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 sudden movement.
- [48:47]
Majid Khan
The guards had hoisted the chain attached to my hands and pulled the chin tight. After a few more pulls, I was hanging by my hands with my shackle, feet 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.
- [49:07]
Dana Chivvis
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.
- [49:15]
Majid Khan
The US interrogator placed me feet first into the ice water and then push my body flat to the bottom of the tub. I was still wearing a thin cloth hood. While some USA 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 gasped for air, the interrogator would demand answers 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.
- [49:52]
Dana Chivvis
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. For the prosecutor, Colonel Walt Foster, it was hearing how Majid was strung up by his arms. For Maajid's attorney, Major Michael Lynas, it was the bugs.
- [50:26]
Majid Khan
But I could feel tiny bugs, smaller than mosquitoes, biting me repeatedly until I bled with my hand shackled. I couldn't swat the bugs or scratch the sores they left.
- [50:39]
Dana Chivvis
There's one person from the black sites who Maajid 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 and the guards force fed him. Sometimes with an iv, sometimes with the tube up the nose and down the throat.
- [51:11]
Majid Khan
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 nose feed me.
- [51:24]
Dana Chivvis
And then when that didn't break his will, when he continued to hunger strike.
- [51:28]
Majid Khan
After the force feeding failed to get me to cooperate, they returned to torture me. This part is extremely painful to talk about as a Muslim 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, you're fucking terrorist, end of quote. I swear to God, I remember exact words. He grabbed me like this and he says, you are 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.
- [52:53]
Dana Chivvis
The CIA euphemistically called this rectal rehydration. They didn't Stop at water. Once, the torture doctor and the guards bound Majid with duct tape and shackles and put two bottles of Ensure into his rectum. And then later that same day, they pureed Majid'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 a 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, Maajid 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 Majid says, judge, I would like to get it over with. Thanks him for his concern. He picks back up in May of 2006, when things had started to change in CIA custody. Ease 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 Prozac. Majid 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. But then he was put in Camp 7. 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. But he is 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, including 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.
- [55:00]
Majid Khan
I have one. 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.
- [55:12]
Dana Chivvis
At this point, Majid's been reading for two hours, nonstop. He says, God bless and walks back to his seat. By all accounts of the people I've talked to, the jury listened to Majid's 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 concur 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 a 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 Maajid's defense attorneys, gives a rebuttal. He asks the jury to give Maajid 25 years. And then the judge sends him off to deliberate. They're gone for three hours. When they come back, the judge asks Maajid to stand and the foreman reads the sentence. Majid Sho Kat Khan, this military commission sentences you to be confined for 26 years, zero months, zero days. Again, Maajid doesn't have to serve all this time. His 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 foreman 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 Maajid's attorney, Major Lynas, who leaves it there on the desk, tantalizingly folded in half while the judge wraps up the session.
- [57:34]
Majid Khan
We wanted to open right away, right? And everybody's acting like it's not a big deal. Nonchalant.
- [57:42]
Dana Chivvis
The Judge finally says, Mr. Hahn, I wish you all the best in the future. This court is adjourned.
- [57:49]
Majid Khan
And then once the this was. The judge left the building like a pack of dogs attacked that letter. He's like, let me read it. It's my letter. It's like, let me hold it.
- [58:02]
Dana Chivvis
The letter is written in tidy handwriting on lined paper. It reads, 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 Maajid'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 Linus, one of Maajid's defense attorneys. And the original document is in my closet.
- [59:51]
Narrator
And I still don't know what to do with it.
- [59:52]
Dana Chivvis
I don't know who you know. Does the 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?
- [60:03]
Majid Khan
Because it's not mine to me.
- [60:06]
Dana Chivvis
It's the public's.
- [60:07]
Majid Khan
It's a public document.
- [60:09]
Dana Chivvis
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 Linus closet. I reached out to the CIA for comment on this story, for comment on Maajid's treatment. In response, a CIA spokesperson sent me a statement. 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 met him in Belize, helped him set up his new house. Two months later, Rabia and Manal joined him. He helped Manal 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, doesn't want to relive it. He couldn't sleep the week I was in Belize interviewing him. He just wants to move on.
- [61:54]
Majid Khan
I don't give a fuck about history. Like, I don't want it to be part of history, you know, with all due respect, I just want to be forgotten, you know, who cares? Who's Marjat? If I die and bury someone with someplace, I will make sure nobody, 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, you know, that's what I prefer.
- [62:20]
Dana Chivvis
Maajid told me sentencing 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? The accused masterminds of 9 11. Or they're lawyers Anyway. If Majid got a more lenient sentence because he was tortured, could they next time? Serial is produced by Jessica Weisberg, Sarah Koenig and me. Our editor is Julie Snyder. Additional reporting by Cora Currier. Fact checking by Ben Phelan. Music supervision. Sound design and mixing by Phoebe Wang. Original score by Sofia Daly Alessandri. Editing help from Ira Glass and Jen Guerra. Our contributing editors are Carol Rosenberg and Rosina Ali. Additional production from Emma Grillo and Mike Comite. Our standards editor is Susan Wessling. Legal review from Alameen Sumar and Maya Gandhi. The art for our show comes from Pablo Del Kahn and Max Gutter. Supervising producer for Serial Productions is Ende Chubu. Our executive assistant is Mac Miller. Sam Dolnick is deputy managing editor of the New York Times. Special thanks to Talia Baioki, Alison Beckman at the center for Victims of Torture, Alvin Melith, Tug Wilson and Stephen Xenakis.
- [63:53]
Majid Khan
It.