What could be the possible mistakes? Well, a 2013 study found that 29% of released Gitmo prisoners returned to jihad. At least one of the Taliban leaders who triumphantly entered Kabul in August 2021 was a former Gitmo inmate. Will Majid Khan return to jihad? Why not? It is what he knows. Of course he could choose a different path, but Biden’s handlers are letting him off the hook with little concern for the safety or well-being of Americans.
“In rare move, US frees ‘high-value’ Guantanamo Bay detainee,” Missy Ryan, The Washington Post, February 2, 2023:
A former al-Qaeda courier who endured inhumane treatment at CIA black sites before spending more than 15 years at Guantanamo Bay was freed in Belize on Thursday, a milestone for President Biden in closing the high-profile prison but one that underscores its difficulties. It will face to do.
The rehabilitation of Majid Khan, who struck a plea deal with U.S. prosecutors in 2012, represented the first time that one of the “high-value” prisoners sent to a Cuban military facility in 2006 from a secret CIA facility had been freed, his attorneys said.
The nearly year-long delay in freeing Khan, whose 10-year sentence ended in March, is a testament to the legal and political challenges that Biden will have to navigate in an effort to finally close the facility, which now holds 34 inmates but remains a powerful symbol. American excesses in the wake of 9/11.
Freed after two decades, Khan apologized for his past. The former Baltimore-area resident pleaded guilty a decade ago to participating in an al-Qaida plot and later testified in other terrorism cases.
“I have been given a second chance at life and I want to make the most of it,” he said in a statement released by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and his attorneys at Jenner & Block.
The release traces a story that began in 2003 when Khan, who was born in Saudi Arabia but later moved to Maryland with his family, was captured in Pakistan. He then endured beatings, sleep deprivation and other forms of torture at the hands of CIA interrogators at a secret foreign prison before being sent to Guantanamo.
White House press secretary Karin Jean-Pierre said Khan had honored his promise of cooperation. “We are committed to a deliberate and thorough process, focused on responsibly reducing the detention population,” he told reporters Thursday.