WASHINGTON — A detainee at Guantánamo Bay has agreed to a deal supposed to result in his launch within the subsequent few years in return for givin
WASHINGTON — A detainee at Guantánamo Bay has agreed to a deal supposed to result in his launch within the subsequent few years in return for giving up the proper to query the C.I.A. in court docket about its torture program, United States authorities officers mentioned.
The deal, negotiated by the Pentagon official who oversees the army commissions that function a court docket for some detainees, was reached in latest weeks, and comes as a lot of those that have been charged at Guantánamo are searching for to quote their abuse by the hands of the C.I.A. as a part of their protection.
Beneath the deal, the prisoner, Majid Khan, 41, who has pleaded responsible to serving as a courier for Al Qaeda, would full his jail sentence as early as subsequent 12 months and no later than 2025 after which might be launched to a different nation, assuming one will take him, in accordance with individuals who have seen the phrases or are accustomed to its particulars.
In alternate, Mr. Khan is not going to use his sentencing proceedings to invoke a landmark warfare court docket determination that allowed him to name witnesses from the C.I.A.’s secret jail community to testify about his torture.
The association implies that the C.I.A. for now will keep away from an additional accounting in court docket for its use of what it known as “enhanced interrogation methods” below the Bush administration after the assaults of Sept. 11, 2001.
Mr. Khan, a citizen of Pakistan who went to highschool in Maryland, was captured in Pakistan in 2003 and held incommunicado by the C.I.A. for 3 years. He was stored in darkness for years and in his second 12 months of detention, the company “infused” a purée of pasta, sauce, nuts, raisins and hummus into his rectum as a result of he went on a starvation strike, in accordance with a 2014 Senate investigation. He was additionally sleep disadvantaged, stored bare and hung by his wrists, and hooded, to the purpose of hallucinations.
Mr. Khan was transferred to Guantánamo Bay in 2006 and noticed a lawyer for the primary time in his fourth 12 months of detention. In 2012, he pleaded responsible to terrorism-related fees stemming from his work for Al Qaeda after the Sept. 11 assaults, and agreed to postpone sentencing whereas he cooperated with prosecutors.
On April 16, he and his legal professionals reached settlement with the overseer of army commissions for a sentence that will finish someday between early subsequent 12 months and March 1, 2025.
The settlement itself is below seal, a minimum of till a decide questions Mr. Khan on whether or not he voluntarily entered into it. However a number of individuals, talking on the situation of anonymity to explain particulars of the deal, mentioned that it has a sentencing vary of 11 to 14 years, utilized beginning along with his responsible plea in 2012.
The jury within the case will nonetheless be instructed to impose a sentence of 25 to 40 years. However below the deal, the decide will then scale back the sentence to the agreed 11 to 14 years, with the exact size based mostly on an evaluation of his cooperation with U.S. authorities.
Mr. Khan’s legal professionals declined to remark. A spokeswoman for the C.I.A. mentioned its “detention and interrogation program resulted in 2009.”
The deal averted a looming showdown between prosecutors and the decide in Mr. Khan’s case, Col. Douglas Okay. Watkins of the Military, over the decide’s order to take C.I.A. witnesses to Guantánamo Bay to testify about Mr. Khan’s torture throughout his 2003-6 detention within the abroad C.I.A. jail system, referred to as black websites.
Colonel Watkins dominated final 12 months {that a} army commissions decide had the facility to award Mr. Khan break day his sentence for “pretrial punishment.” He ordered a fact-finding listening to at Guantánamo on Mr. Khan’s claims and mentioned, if true, his descriptions of his therapy amounted to torture.
Beneath the settlement, Mr. Khan offers up the fact-finding listening to.
Individually, Colonel Watkins awarded him a 12 months off his eventual sentence as a result of prosecutors didn’t disclose sure proof. Colonel Watkins retires from the Military on Aug. 1 and was changed on the case Wednesday by an Air Pressure decide, Col. Mark W. Milam.
The settlement is the primary involving a Guantánamo detainee that the Biden administration has reached since taking workplace. It was made by Jeffrey D. Wooden, a Nationwide Guard colonel who was appointed by the Trump administration to the civilian function of convening authority for army commissions.
The timetable for Mr. Khan’s launch permits time to restart negotiations with different governments, suspended in the course of the Trump administration, to ship detainees not deemed a nationwide safety menace from Guantánamo Bay to international locations that decide to keep watch over them and, usually, prohibit their journey.
Prosecutors had repeatedly argued that the army decide had no energy to carry a listening to on a Guantánamo prisoner’s mistreatment after which scale back a sentence. They misplaced, although some authorities officers proceed to argue that the ruling might be reversed.
The prosecutors then resisted having witnesses testify at Guantánamo Bay, even anonymously, concerning the torture of Mr. Khan. A U.S. authorities official mentioned there have been questions on whether or not particular witnesses the decide had ordered to testify had really seen Mr. Khan in C.I.A. detention.
The problem had been simmering however had not come to a head as a result of journey restrictions in the course of the coronavirus pandemic introduced most army fee hearings to a standstill for the final 12 months.
The query of whether or not Mr. Khan might obtain a discount in his sentence due to his torture was additionally a possible mannequin for the protection within the capital conspiracy case towards Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and 4 different males accused of plotting the Sept. 11 assaults. Protection legal professionals for all 5 defendants say every was systematically tortured within the black websites, and so they need a decide or jury to listen to graphic particulars about it to avert a dying sentence when the long-delayed case finally proceeds.
Two contract psychologists who devised the C.I.A.’s interrogation program, James Mitchell and John Bruce Jessen, have been publicly recognized. However the identities of the individuals who interrogated Mr. Khan, and wherein international locations the place they did it, are nonetheless categorized on the court docket, whose guidelines are supposed to stability state secrets and techniques and truthful trial rights.
Prosecutors argued that nameless, in-person testimony about Mr. Khan’s therapy, whether or not in a categorized session or in public, risked exposing covert U.S. authorities staff, and mentioned they might not go to Guantánamo Bay. That left the potential for the decide ordering their appearances, prosecutors refusing to deliver them and as a treatment, the decide decreasing Mr. Khan’s sentence.
Authorities officers mentioned that the C.I.A. needed to keep away from having its officers uncovered, and didn’t need them to testify at Guantánamo, however that Mr. Wooden as convening authority selected his personal to defuse the dispute.
Descriptions of the settlement counsel there are victories for either side. When the court docket lastly assembles a sentencing jury at Guantánamo, Mr. Khan might be permitted to explain his torture for the panel of army officers that may sentence him — though maybe not in open court docket. He simply can’t name corroborating witnesses.
In alternate, in accordance with a submitting on April 22, Mr. Khan’s legal professionals may also ask the decide after sentencing to void the June 2020 ruling that discovered credit score for pretrial punishment is an obtainable treatment at a army fee — undercutting its potential use within the Sept. 11 case.
Mr. Khan has been stored other than the opposite former C.I.A. prisoners at Guantánamo since he pleaded responsible. At the moment, he grew to become a authorities informant, and has been debriefed on demand though prosecutors have but to carry a trial the place his testimony can be wanted.
In pleading responsible he admitted to delivering $50,000 from Mr. Mohammed to militants in Indonesia that was used to finance the bombing of a Marriott resort in Jakarta, Indonesia, in 2003, killing 11 individuals. Three males at Guantánamo have been charged in that plot, however have but to be arraigned.
Through the Trump administration, Mr. Khan was additionally listed as a authorities witness in a deliberate federal prosecution of one other Pakistani man, Uzair Paracha. Mr. Paracha was convicted in 2005 in New York of terrorism-related offenses, however the conviction was overturned. Relatively than retry him, federal prosecutors dropped the case in alternate for Mr. Paracha voluntarily giving up his U.S. residency and returning to Pakistan, after 17 years of incarceration.
For Mr. Khan, the trail out of Guantánamo could also be extra complicated. Successive U.S. administrations have argued {that a} convicted warfare felony who completes his sentence should still be held at Guantánamo, so long as the USA considers itself to be at warfare with Al Qaeda.
Additionally, it’s unclear the place Mr. Khan would go. He was born in Saudi Arabia, in accordance with his legal professionals, lived as a toddler in Pakistan, went to highschool in suburban Baltimore and had asylum in the USA earlier than he returned to Pakistan after the Sept. 11 assaults. By regulation, he can’t be despatched to the USA.