Guantánamo Prisoner Freed and Resettled After 2 Decades of Detention & Torture
The US military facility known as GITMO is located on occupied Cuban territory.
HAVANA TIMES – The Biden administration has released Guantánamo Bay detainee Majid Khan after nearly 20 years in custody. In 2021, Khan became the first Guantánamo prisoner to testify in an open court about torture methods used by the CIA at its network of secret “black sites,” where Khan was detained in 2003 to 2006. This is Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, speaking to Democracy Now! in 2021.
Baher Azmy: “Majid Khan, to his credit, detailed the systematic, brutal, sadistic torture of U.S. government officials — namely, the CIA — which for nearly 20 years the U.S. government has tried to keep secret.”
Khan’s lawyer said in a statement, “Guantánamo is a national shame, and we hope that today is another step forward towards its ultimate closure. The men languishing in Guantánamo who have been cleared for release must be transferred; indefinite detention is anathema to a just society.”
On Thursday, Majid Khan arrived in Belize, which has agreed to permanently resettle him. His release came as the United Nations announced it’s sending a human rights official to the Guantánamo military prison for the first time ever. The U.S. continues to hold 34 prisoners at Guantánamo. Only 11 of them have been charged in military tribunals.
Dennis, any lease signed at virtual gunpoint has little validity. Cuba has been telling the US to take its base away from the occupied territory for 60+ years. When the US put its offshore prison for hapless prisoners without any rights on the base in 2002 and implemented torture techniques to extract information that didn’t lead to even charging them, let alone convicting them, Cuba also protested both the prison, the base and the flagrant human rights violations. I say this as being someone highly critical of the Cuban government’s own human rights abuses against its people.
OK Havana Times, you are again allowing a political organization to write your front page.
As a long time reader, I have seen several so called news stories written by Democracy Now.
Hint; they are not a journalistic or news organization. They are in fact an agenda driven activist organization more socialist than the politicians running the Cuban government.
Guantánamo Naval Base in not on occupied land as implied by the article on the release of a detainee. The US has leased the land from Cuba since 1903. The lease has no end date and cannot be disolved without the agreement of both parties to the lease. Considering the tensions between the US, Russia and China over the expansion of communist influence in Central and South America, I doubt the US will be leaving Guantánamo anytime soon.
I don’t know about the current situation there, but when I was in the Navy, many locals derived a decent living as contractors and suppliers for base operations. Any logical individual could easily understand that Cuba has far more serious issues than a US base on the southeastern tip to the island. In fact it could well be found that the US military presents there may have blunted efforts by Russia and China to expand their influence in South Atlantic and Caribbean as they are now doing in Veneszula and Nicaragua.
Persevere my island friends and I still believe that someday you will be free.
Dennis
Terry Doger, I’d like to see you locked up for 20 years without charges at an offshore prison. Something tells me you might not see the justice in it.
Ahhh yes–his attorney says he was tortured–he said he was tortured–his mom says he was tortured–all very credible–and only one of them was actually there–poor boy–Allah kept him safe–and the center for constitutional rights–such a credible organization–chuck full of marxists who would never tell a lie–20 years–i guess the right amount of time for a terrorist to serve–