Hello readers! In this post I am going to talk about a piece of news that Iconsider relevant and I want to share with my classmates and readers of these blog.
Majid Khan: the harsh testimony of a Guantánamo prisoner for whom a military jury asked for clemency in the US
Do you know what Guantánamo is?
The Guantánamo prison is a maximum security prison
located in the United States naval base in Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba. It was one
of the many prisons that were created in the fight against terrorism in the
United States since 9/11 where they recruited the most dangerous men in the
world.
It was created in 2001 in a "war against
terror". Approximately 780 prisoners have passed through it and today
there are 40 yet. All of them are related to terrorism. They have a high cost
to keep the prisoners there. In addition, the prisoners are considered illegal
enemy combatants, that is, they can be held without a judge and without legal
representation.
In 2014, it was revealed that the Guantanamo prison
was part of an "indefinite secret detention program", using violent
torture methods. Obama tried to close this jail but justice and politics did
not allow it. Instead, during Trump's goberm, an agreement was signed to keep
the jail open indefinitely.
The headline we have just read is given by a 39-page
short story of Majid Khan, an al Qaeda member detained for almost two decades in
Guantanamo. This Saudi Arabian-born man admitted to working as an al Qaeda
courier and has been in custody since he was captured in Pakistan in 2003. He
was sentenced on Friday to 26 years in prison from 2012 after pleading guilty
to aiding the Islamic fundamentalist group. Although Khan and his Lawyers
reached a secret agreement with a senior Pentagon official whereby the man can
be released as early as February 2022 and no later than February 2025, given
his collaboration with the US government.
After having pleaded guilty and having collaborated
with the justice system, she was allowed to read his experiences. In it he
recounted his testimony, the first public, of abuses committed against a detainee
after the attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York and the Pentagon. In it he
tells of various tortures such as:
•
Take
nude photos of him.
•
Various
abuse and torture
•
chained
and hanging days
•
without
food or clothing,
•
dark
cells,
•
loud
music,
•
No
access to a bathroom or electricity.
•
put
in a tub of ice water
•
threats
against his family
•
sleep
deprived
According to his account, the violence against him was
so great that he began to tell the interrogators what they wanted to hear
"so that the abuses would stop."
But "the more I cooperated and told them, the
more they tortured me," he said. In addition, he sometimes
suffered from hallucinations.
Today in di and after his testimony, these tortures
have left traces on him and not only physical, but psychological. He further
claims that he rejects both al Qaeda and terrorism. Who recruited him to the
organization when he was over 16 years old.
Now I am going to ask you some questions to debate or reflect about this headline and the effect that has generated in your minds.
Questions:
Do you think it is fair that he is not judged after
having collaborated with a terrorist attack such as 9/11?
Is his release and the right to a reading of the
torture fair for having pleaded guilty?