NEW YORK: Seven senior US military officers, who heard graphic descriptions last week of the brutal treatment of a Pakistan detainee at the Guantanamo Bay at the hands of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), recommended in a letter addressed to the officer who will review the case that he be granted clemency, New York Times reported.
The officers, all but one member of an eight-member military jury, condemned the American government’s conduct in the letter on behalf of Majid Khan, a suburban Baltimore high school graduate-turned-al-Qaeda courier.
“Mr Khan was subjected to physical and psychological abuse well-beyond approved enhanced interrogation techniques, instead of being closer to torture performed by the most abusive regimes in modern history,” the jury members wrote in a letter addressed to the Arkansas National Guard’s Colonel Jeffrey Wood, the convening authority of the military commission.
“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 fibre of America; the treatment of Mr. Khan in the hands of US personnel should be a source of shame for the US government,” they continued, according to The Times.
The harsh rebuke comes after the detainee testified last Thursday on the abuse he suffered while in the prison between 2003 and 2006.
He said he had been subjected to waterboarding, forced enemas and feedings, as well as other forms of sexual and physical abuse.
Khan said that even while he cooperated with officials, he continued to endure more abuse. “Instead, the more I cooperated, the more I was tortured,” he said.
The seven jury members wrote that Khan had been a “vulnerable target for extremist recruiting” because he had been reeling from the death of his mother at the time. They argued that he was no longer an extremism threat and was remorseful of his past actions.
The jury sentenced Khan to 26 years, the lowest allowed according to the court’s instructions.
Sentencing was delayed for nearly a decade after his guilty plea to give Khan time and opportunity to cooperate with federal and military prosecutors, so far behind the scenes, in federal and military terrorism cases.
In the intervening years, prosecutors and defense lawyers clashed in court filings over who would be called to testify about Khan’s abuse in C.I.A. custody, and how.
The panel was provided with nine letters of support for Khan from family members, including his father and several siblings — American citizens who live in the United States — as well as his wife, Rabia, and daughter, Manal, who was born in Pakistan and live there.
