Act Daily News
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The US has transferred a Guantanamo Bay detainee who was convicted of terrorism offenses in 2012 to Belize, the Pentagon introduced on Thursday.
Majid Khan, a Pakistani citizen and US resident, who went to highschool in Baltimore, was captured in 2003 and was held for greater than three years at secret CIA prisons often called “black sites.” He was transferred to the US army jail in Cuba in 2006.
“Majid Khan pled guilty before a Military Commission in February 2012. Pursuant to the terms of the plea agreement, Khan pledged to cooperate with the U.S. Government and honored his cooperation commitment,” the Pentagon mentioned in a press release. “He was sentenced in 2021 to a term of confinement for over 10 years with credit for the years he spent cooperating with U.S. personnel. He has subsequently completed his sentence.”
The Biden administration has promised to shut the jail which at present holds 34 detainees, 20 of whom are eligible for switch, in response to the Pentagon’s Thursday assertion.
Khan lived within the US from 1996 to early 2002 and was suspected of helping al Qaeda in planning assaults on the US and elsewhere. Authorities believed he joined al Qaeda after the assaults on September 11, 2001.
He was accused of working for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has been known as the mastermind behind 9/11, and conspiring with him to explode underground storage tanks at fuel stations within the US; touring to Pakistan from Baltimore with fraudulently obtained journey paperwork; touring to Thailand to offer $50,000 of al Qaeda funds to an affiliate group, which was later used to fund a 2003 bombing of the J.W. Marriot Hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia; and recording a martyr video and getting ready to bomb a mosque the place Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was anticipated to be. The plan in the end failed.
In 2012, Khan was discovered responsible of conspiracy, spying, homicide in violation of the legislation of battle, tried homicide in violation of the legislation of battle, and offering materials for terrorism.
In 2021 a US army panel requested for clemency in his case, saying in a letter obtained by Act Daily News that the remedy Khan has skilled whereas in US custody over the previous virtually twenty years was “an affront to American values and concept of justice.”
“Although designated an ‘alien unprivileged enemy belligerent,’ not technically afforded the rights of US citizens, the complete disregard for the foundational concepts upon which the Constitution was founded is an affront to American values and concepts of justice,” the letter mentioned.
According to the Defense Department launch, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin notified Congress of his intent to switch Khan to Belize on December 22.
Source: www.cnn.com