Serial S04 - Ep. 8: Two Ledgers

KPMG makes the difference by creating value, like developing strategic insights that help drive MA success or embedding AI solutions into your business to sustain competitive advantage.

KPMG drives brighter insights, bolder solutions, better outcomes.

KPMG make the difference.

Previously, on serial.

What was the worst question a reporter could ask you?

Um, camp 7.

I've never had anything said to me about camp 7.

I know know nothing about it.

I mean, you hear rumors, but.

I mean, I believe he genuinely thought, like, this is it.

I'm dying tonight.

I'm going to die.

Whatever I learned from the detainees, I pass it all to the leadership.

Everything, every word, word by word.

It's a lawless place, and they can do whatever they want down there, and they did it.

From Serial Productions and the New York Times, this is season four of Serial, Guantanamo, One Prison Camp Told Week by Week.

I'm Dana Chivez.

Majid Khan was 16 when his family moved to Baltimore from Pakistan.

He went to Owings Mills High School, smoked weed, worked at his dad's gas station, and thought about becoming a DJ under the stage name Bob Dacey.

He listened to Eminem and watched Law and Order and paid attention in Ms.

Sanford's social studies class, where he learned about checks and balances and due process.

So when Majid Khan found himself locked away in a cold, dark cell at a black site in 2003, he told the CIA he wanted to see a lawyer.

CIA is just shocked.

It's like,

what are you thinking?

Who you are and where you are?

He's like, you're talking about rights?

The sun, the gloves came off a long time ago.

That's what they tell me.

I was like, no, no, I still believe in due process.

I still believe in due process, right or wrong, whatever I did, I believe in due process.

What he did, instead of becoming a DJ, Maja joined al-Qaeda, reported directly to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the admitted mastermind of 9-11.

Naturally, the CIA had questions for him.

But the way they asked those questions, they tortured him at black sites for years.

And when they were done, they sent him to Guantanamo in shackles and a diaper.

Majid did bad things.

He joined al-Qaeda, wore a suicide vest, tried to kill the Pakistani president.

He came up with plots targeting the American government to blow up gas stations and poison the water supply near military installations, to sell poison medication in the United States.

He delivered $50,000 to another terrorist, money the United States says was used to fund a suicide bombing that killed 11 people and injured at least 81 others.

And then we did bad things back to Majid.

We disappeared him for three years, locked him away for 20, tortured him.

This story is about two ledgers.

On one side, what Majid did to us.

On the other, what what we did to Majid.

How do you weigh those against each other?

In the historical accounting to come, which is worse?

Majid's case is the first time at Guantanamo those ledgers are compared and someone has to render a verdict.

Majid's story starts with his radicalization.

Unlike so many former Guantanamo Guantanamo detainees, there's clear public evidence that he was in Al-Qaeda.

He admits it.

So this is a rare chance to hear how someone made the leap from self-described normal American teenager to self-described terrorist.

It's actually quite simple to hear Majid tell it.

The reason I joined Al-Qaeda was a Palestine issue.

It begins with Palestine.

I had nothing against America.

I didn't have it then.

I don't have it now.

It's your fucking fucking stupid foreign policy that your leaders make, right, that I criticized.

Some people might remember President George Bush explaining September 11th, saying that al-Qaeda attacked us because they hate our freedoms, our liberty.

Actually, what al-Qaeda really hated was our support for Israel, that we had troops in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, that we had invaded Iraq the first time in 1991.

When I visited Mahjid last year in Belize, where he now lives with his wife wife and two kids in a bright green cottage not far from the sea, it was November 2023, just weeks since the October 7th terrorist attacks on Israel and the start of the relentless bombing of Gaza in return.

He had been watching a lot of cable news coverage of the war and TikTok videos.

Like so many people, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, he was fired up about the atrocities there.

The same kinds of atrocities that had spurred him to join al-Qaeda two decades ago.

What he was seeing was Americans making the same mistakes all over again, supporting Israel.

You guys are so powerful, so smart, and you guys so dumbass at the same time.

No offense.

I mean,

I'm not an American, okay?

You know,

by citizenship, but you guys amaze me every single time.

What's the dumbass part?

Not getting the basics.

And I'm thinking, there could be another Majid Khan somewhere right now.

No, imagine that.

Back then, I didn't even, we didn't have YouTube, we didn't have Instagram.

And I'm thinking,

what are they thinking?

These kids.

And they're so stupid kids.

So they could be easily misled.

And I'm thinking, how many Majid Khan out there right now?

They would become like me.

What led Majid to extremism was a confluence of of events.

Growing up, he wasn't very religious.

He and his parents, his seven siblings, they didn't pray regularly.

He says his mother was anti-religion.

When he grew beard, she made him shave it off.

But in his late teenage years, after his family moved to Baltimore, he struggled with his identity.

He wanted to fit into American high school life, to be cool, but he wasn't sure that being cool was very Majid.

He felt guilty that he didn't pray, that he was a bad Muslim.

He started learning more about Islam Islam from a group of proselytizers called the Tabligi Jama'at, who would visit him at work and at the mosque.

And then when he was 21, Majid's mother died, suddenly.

She was the most important person in his life, the center of their family.

He says he was devastated.

He started asking the big questions about life and death.

He felt like he had sinned up until that point, had wasted his life.

He decided to devote himself to Islam.

No more partying, no more smoking weed.

And it was at this point that he started getting more political.

At the mosque, they talked about Palestine.

The world seemed black and white to him.

At some point in my life, I had to choose paths.

Do you want to be siding with the oppressed or oppressor?

I chose to be siding with the oppressed.

Nine months after his mother's death, he went to Pakistan for a bunch of family weddings.

His family wanted to arrange a marriage for him, too.

And secretly, he also had a fantasy of joining the jihad, maybe training at the camps in Afghanistan.

Growing up in Pakistan, Majid heard a lot about the Mujahideen, how honorable they were, how brave, like the Navy sails in the United States, he says.

He didn't particularly care which jihadi group he joined.

There were a bunch of them.

I'll be honest with you, I didn't go to Pakistan to join al-Qaeda.

They came to me.

Out of a billion people, billions of Muslims, I happen to have cousin and an uncle that al-Qaeda leaders.

It was January 2002, four months after 9-11.

Bin Laden had denied responsibility for the attacks, though the American government had quickly concluded al-Qaeda was behind them.

Majid didn't believe it.

And then part of it is like, come on, Muslim could do it?

And I'm into conspiracy theories.

I was like, no way.

I told my uncle and my cousin, like, do it.

I knew the Jews were behind it.

I saw on internet.

i saw ciu were behind it they were laughing at me

his uncle and cousin convinced him no it wasn't an inside job the jews didn't do it it was al-qaeda it was us

but instead of being horrified by this information majid joined them i was already pissed off about palestine thing somehow the word i understood that happened

um

now i gotta be careful what i'm about to say it could be misconstrued.

Almost in my mind, and I wasn't alone.

There were some Islamic community members that I was with.

They did not appreciate it, but almost had like they had it coming.

Like the United States had it coming?

The United States had it coming because what they were doing in Palestine and no Islamic countries.

And that's how you felt about it?

And that's how I felt about it at the time.

I didn't like it, but it just, I was so mad

what was happening in Palestine.

And it's just hard to explain that

I've never killed before, I've never seen suffering before, but somehow that what was happening in Palestine affected me so much that somehow I was okay to say, well, they had it coming.

Just like I was just watching Fox News yesterday.

And then and

everybody in Fox News, well, if the Palestinian didn't like it, well, they had it coming.

They're the one who selected Hammas to be operating in Gaza.

Same thing.

I was in that mindset.

I must tell you, I know I'm being honest with you, but I may come across callous.

But this is a brutal truth.

So please bear with me and try to understand.

I am not trying to offend you guys.

I know you guys, an American and patriotic American, I hope you are, and you should be.

And you should get a little irritated by these statements, and you should be.

But I am just telling you, I can't sugarcoat my statements so that I can please you.

Let me be clear.

Majid says he has long since rejected extremism.

He left Al-Qaeda while he was still locked up at Guantanamo.

He says he doesn't think 9-11 was righteous or good or justified.

But he does understand the twisted logic behind al-Qaeda's attacks, because at the age of 21, he believed in that logic himself.

He has a unique perspective of a person who has lived fully immersed in both the culture of the United States and the culture of al-Qaeda.

He can explain both worlds with fluency.

Once he was in Al-Qaeda, arguably the worst thing Majid did is what Majid did not do.

He did not assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in a suicide attack, but he tried to.

When he joined al-Qaeda, Majid volunteered to be a suicide bomber.

I had shown my willingness to my cousin and told my uncle that, hey, by the way, if there's an opportunity, let me know.

Did you say that

with any kind of thought, or did you just sort of like offer yourself up without really thinking it through?

No, I mean, I was sincere.

I truly believed

that

this is the way it will heaven.

Beyond, how sure are you as night right now?

It's very dark out, yeah.

Yeah, I was that sure.

That's the way to go.

And you wanted that why?

Who doesn't want to go to heaven?

I mean, you were 20, like, you had so much of your life ahead of you.

Yeah, the test is over.

See, this life is test.

The test is over.

Majid's family had arranged a marriage for him, to Rebia.

They're still married today.

He says, their wedding was the happiest day of his life.

But while they were on their honeymoon, KSM, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, called Majid's cousin.

He had a job for Majid to do, back in Karachi.

The job was a suicide mission.

Majid would wear an explosive vest to a mosque where the Pakistani president, Musharraf, was expected to attend Friday prayers.

At a safe house in Karachi, Majid tried on the vest.

KSM told me how to wear it and how to reach out to him, how close to get

to blow him up and basic training, like, you know, where to sit when he reaches,

try to get as close as possible.

The idea was, if you can just hug him, we'll be perfect.

And he told me, like, just remember that the idea was to do less damage to the people.

If you can get close and shake hand and just hug him and press the button, perfect.

He says, he did ask ASM, what about all the civilians who would be killed?

Yeah, I did ask him.

I did ask him,

what about the civilians?

He justified there was some hadith was done where the prophet was at war and

in night time there was

unintentionally some civilian were killed.

Basically, in American language, it was collateral damage.

We don't want to do it unless we have no option but somehow you win

when you are in this

cycle that I was in it's like being a tornado you know you're just you there's not much time you're not thinking you're not staying oh by the way let's just think about this right if I could go back and change it I would

I wish I had I could go back and sit telling myself calm down cowboy you know think what you're doing there's the consequences of your actions didn't think about my family and and none of that stuff.

On that Friday morning, KSM drove Majid to the mosque in a red Suzuki.

He sat through all of Friday prayers in the suicide vest.

He told me he was calm, even fell asleep at one point because he was a little bored.

He just wanted to get on with it.

But Musharraf never showed up.

After the failed suicide attack, Majid continued plotting with KSM to blow up gas stations, to import explosives into the United States.

They talked about Majid becoming a sleeper agent back home.

He returned to Baltimore for a few months, where he was supposed to recruit others to join al-Qaeda.

But once he was home, his new path and his new identity, jihadi Majid, were not so clear.

When I was in the States, it was fascinating.

And I was like, okay, you know, life is not that bad.

You know, it's like, I'm living an American life.

And then I talked to my cousin and uncle, and then they said, look,

your heart has been poisoned again with the, you know, the West and the love of West.

So come back to us.

We will purify your heart.

I just, identity crisis, I don't know whatever you want to call it.

I love living in America

in a sense that my family and friends were there.

That's great.

But part of me said, look, they're right too.

Like, I want to be part of Mujahideen as well.

According to the United States government and to Majid himself, he never directly, physically injured anyone.

The plots he and KSM dreamt up were abandoned.

He never wore a suicide vest again.

The most clear of his crimes, with the gravest consequences, according to the U.S.

government, was delivering the $50,000 to another terrorist group, which prosecutors say was used to fund the J.W.

Marriott Hotel bombing in Jakarta.

Majid says he didn't know about the bomb plot or what the money would be used for.

He was just told to deliver it.

But, of course, the person who asked him to deliver it was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of 9-11.

By the time the bombing happened, Majid was already in American custody.

Early one morning in March 2003, he'd been woken up by his brother.

He was staying at his apartment in Karachi.

They heard shouting and banging on the door.

It was Pakistani intelligence.

Are you Bob Dacey?

They shouted at him.

He'd used his DJ name on a Hotmail account.

They took him into custody, interrogated him, and beat him.

There were FBI agents and some other unidentified Americans there, too.

And then, after months of this, he was turned over to the CIA.

This is where the story of what Majid did ends, and the story of what we did to Majid begins.

That's after the break.

KPMG makes the difference by creating value, like developing strategic insights that help drive M ⁇ A success and embedding AI solutions into your business to sustain competitive advantage or deploying tech-enabled audits to deliver more accurate and transparent outcomes, brighter insights, bolder solutions, better outcomes.

It's how KPMG makes the difference every day.

KPMG, make the difference.

Hi, New York Times.

I would be very interested in having separate logins for a shared subscription.

I'm 35 years old.

I still share my parents' New York Times subscription.

I think if my teenagers were to have their own logins, we could share articles.

It doesn't let us play the same games as each other.

I play the Stoku.

I do the crossword.

I do the spelling bee.

I do the wordle.

Please help.

Having our own accounts would be amazing.

My mom could save her own recipes.

My friends could save their recipes.

I want to get the weekly newsletter, but they seem to always go to my husband and then he doesn't forward them to me.

We both love cooking.

I'm a 30-minute and under-dinner girly.

My boyfriend is very elaborate.

I think him having his own profile would be great.

We love the New York Times and we would love to love it individually.

Listeners, we heard you.

Introducing the New York Times family subscription.

One subscription, up to four separate logins for anyone in your life.

Find out more at nytimes.com slash family.

The details of Majid's time in the CIA black sites have been covered in the news and in the Senate's report on the CIA's rendition, detention, and interrogation program, the so-called torture report.

The torture he endured was intense and brutal.

Which is why I was surprised to learn that he came away from it all with a respect for the CIA, a kind of opponent's respect.

It was one of the first things he told me when I arrived in Belize.

We were sitting on a couch in his living room.

His daughter had just made us some tea.

Two fans were blowing the sticky Caribbean air around.

And he just launched into it, how he appreciated the candor of the CIA.

We had a very frank conversation.

I mean, and they won't be us with us.

I mean, they were so honest with us, like, dude, I'm going to torture you tomorrow.

They're going to torture me tomorrow.

And they weren't done torturing me tomorrow.

After one week, they're done.

Okay, we're not going to torture you anymore.

I I mean, they were very frank, very, you know, straightforward.

He said, all the prisoners with him in Camp 7, that's the secret prison at Guantanamo, where he was eventually held, along with KSM and other men who had been tortured by the CIA.

All the prisoners in Camp Seven felt that way.

I mean, I've talked to KSM, I've talked to all the brothers in Camp Seven.

We actually had a lot of respect for CIA.

We understood why they're torturing us.

We understood they want intelligence.

It's part of the business.

It comes with a job.

And our job is to hold intelligence as much as possible, as much as bearable.

And we had a mutual respect for that.

It's not that Majid was okay with being tortured, of course.

The CIA did horrifying things to him at the Black Sites.

He was held underwater, hanged.

force-fed, short-shackled.

He was left naked in the cold and the dark with music blasting.

He He didn't see the sun for two years, except in the brief moments when he was transported between buildings.

He had barely any human contact, just his guards, his interrogators, and his torturers.

One of the reasons why Majid wanted me to understand his respect for the CIA was so I would understand how he felt about his treatment at Guantanamo, to contrast it.

Because for Majid, his time in Camp 7 was worse.

He wasn't being interrogated anymore.

Sometimes the FBI would pay him a visit, ask him some questions, but that's it.

So the cruelty at Guantanamo had no purpose.

CIU torture were like, you know, surgical.

Okay, for a few hours, a few months, or whatever they're trying to do.

There's a reason behind it.

They're doing it.

I get it.

Where they're doing it.

There was no justification in what they did in Camp 7.

Zero.

You know, it's like just hanging a cat for 10 days just for sake of it.

You know, it's just the nature,

sadistic nature that I could not understand in Camp 7.

I try not to think about it, honestly.

It just, it was the lowest point in my life.

Compared to the CIA, the guards in Camp 7 could be brutally childish.

Majid says they put metal and stones into his food.

When he didn't return his tray in protest, they shaved his head as punishment and then took his tray altogether, just scooped the food into his hands.

When the International Committee of the Red Cross gave him a photo of his three-year-old daughter, the first time he learned he had a daughter, a guard took the photo away from him.

He says he went crazy, kicked at the door, tried to break the security camera.

And then there were the noises, constant noises, from the guards knocking on his cell at all hours of the day and night, opening and shutting the prison doors.

The building itself made noise.

There were high-frequency whining sounds from the air conditioners and the security cameras.

There were vibrations.

Majib was in isolation.

No one to talk to, no distractions, no way to sleep.

It all seemed intentional.

When he talks about that time today, it still makes him upset.

But the guards at Gitmo drove him to the brink, to the point where he felt like he was losing his mind, just to mess with him.

I remember pulling my beard, right?

Literally just pulling

and banging my head against the wall.

Literally?

Literally?

Literally.

And I would, to this, I'll show you.

This is the artery I chew.

I chew that artery right here.

He was so distressed and so desperate for them to treat him better that he chewed through the vein in the crook of his arm.

It was the only way he could get them to pay attention to the pain he was in.

They had to respond.

His arm was gushing blood.

Had to take him to the medical clinic, which meant they had to write reports, which the camp commanders would have to see.

You had to act like a maniac to prove to them there is a problem.

Majid said other Camp 7 prisoners did the same kind of thing.

Majid was at Guantanamo for over a year before he met with his attorneys.

He hadn't been charged with anything yet.

It was possible he'd be held indefinitely or charged with crimes that could carry a life sentence.

He was barely keeping it together in Camp 7.

He wanted out of Guantanamo, of captivity, wanted to be with his family.

He told his attorneys he would take a plea deal, admit to his crimes, cooperate with the government, as long as he got the opportunity to speak in public about the torture.

That's what I asked for.

I asked anyone, that was my number one goal.

Allow me to speak.

Let me tell the world what they did to me.

He was pissed.

Sure, he understood why the CIA had tortured him, but he also knew it was against the rules.

I was mad at that time.

I was really mad.

I was like,

you got to pay for this.

I'm going to tell the whole world about it.

So revenge, but also there was a practical reason he wanted to talk.

He figured he could use it as leverage in his own legal case.

It was a thought he'd had back in the Black Sites.

You know, it's a fun fact, the CIA told me, Madgio, we can't let you go.

I was like, why not?

He said, look,

we think if we let you go, you speak fluent English, and then you're going to tell the world that how American fucked me up, and

you're going to end up in an opera show or something.

And that's the problem.

It's very honest people.

They didn't hide it.

That was the problem.

I understood it was not what I did.

It's so much what they did to me.

Maja guessed that if a jury heard what the CIA had done to him firsthand, they would give him a later sentence.

Deep down, I knew that

this was the silver bullet for me.

What do you mean it was the silver bullet for you?

I mean it was a ticket out of a jail card, basically.

It's like you can't put a person

like 50 years in prison and plus torture,

right?

So it just, from my perspective, is that

this was the only shot I had.

He had lived in the United States long enough to absorb an American sense of justice.

From watching law and order, from his high school teachers, he calls it a side effect of being American.

He was making a bet that the American public, by way of an American jury, would have the same sense of American justice that he had.

The other prisoners in Camp 7 with him, Majid says they did not understand this.

It's remarkable to hear Majid talk about these other prisoners and Camp 7 itself, a place that was so secret the government didn't even acknowledge its existence until 2008.

No reporter has ever been there.

And then there's Majid, the only Camp 7 prisoner to ever leave Guantanamo.

So he's really the only person who can speak freely about what was happening inside those highly classified walls.

The other prisoners with him were considered to be the actual worst of the worst, high-level terrorist leaders, plotters, and soldiers, like KSM.

There was also Abu Zubaydah, who allegedly ran his own extremist network associated with al-Qaeda.

Another guy called Humbali, who was accused of orchestrating the 2003 Marriott bombing in Jakarta, the plot Majid delivered money for.

And then there was Majid.

I was a green horn.

The other detainees were older than Majid.

He was only 23 when he was captured.

Plus, he points out he hadn't done any hardcore jihadi training at the camps in Afghanistan.

He hadn't shot an AK-47 or lived in a cave or sworn an oath to bin Laden.

I was the kid in the block, right?

Everybody was concerned about me because they understood that this kid, you know, has not been to Afghanistan.

He doesn't know much about Islam.

He doesn't know, they were worried about me.

It's like, we got to take care of this kid, you know?

And then they did.

I mean, honest to God, they did.

Otherwise, I don't think I would have made it.

It was so terrible in Guantanamo Bay.

Majid wanted to help them, these men he calls his prison brothers.

And because he was a little bit American, he understood something they didn't.

Just as Majid believed torture could be legal currency in his own case, he figured it could be helpful in theirs too.

So.

I decided to make a torture sheet.

He undertook a reporting project to document the extent of everyone's torture on a spreadsheet he drew by hand.

And wrote down all the methods that I knew were used after talking to other detainees, you know, like waterboarding, hanging,

hunger,

you know, met to sit, met to stand.

Just made the whole list on the left side.

And then I put all the detainee names on the rest of the page.

Not everyone wanted to talk about the torture.

Some of the prisoners felt that it was better left between them and God.

Honestly, I had to drag it out of them.

It was not that easy to even convince some of the brothers to tell me about that.

I said, look, I'm just doing this project.

Let me do it for me.

I said, okay, okay.

And then they start telling me about that.

I think the brother didn't understand, most of them didn't live in the States.

And they didn't understand how powerful the torture could be an asset in their legal case.

Right?

And I said, look, this, you need to, you got to put it down.

This could be a ticket out of here.

And there were a lot of brothers were pretty naive about this legal system.

Because in their own experience, they had a legal system in Arab countries, which is dictatorship.

So, it doesn't matter.

Every day we get torture in Egypt, Libya.

Yeah, what's the big deal?

No,

this is America.

You actually do have rights here.

Even though it doesn't seem like right now, but there's a system out there.

Things had gotten a bit more relaxed in Camp 7 by then.

The prisoners could talk to each other through the bean holes, the mail-like slots in their cell doors, which the guards left open for them.

Majib would ask the other prisoners questions.

He said, I've got how many times water burning.

How many days?

Okay, I'll remember what you said.

Three months, okay.

He interviewed them outside during wreck time.

But you know, he's working out in leptical, I'm working out, I'm doing push-ups, whatever.

At first, he took a legal pad with him into the wreckyard.

But then, he says the guards caught on, said nobody could take legal pads into the wreckyard anymore.

I said, okay, no problem.

I'm not going anywhere.

I'll get time with the brother.

I'll interview him.

So I would sometime memorize it.

And then I'll go back to my cell.

I'd write it down.

So

it took a long time to complete that sheet.

He worked on it for months.

Some of the stories he heard defied categorization.

So then

I had to categorize in a way that it just

falls in that category.

Yeah.

Right?

Do you remember an example of that?

Like Nashiri had a unique experience, like that he was hanged

for maybe 18 hours or so.

They call it

like

two-point restrictions.

Like your hands are tied up and your legs are tied up, right?

So that's two-point

restraint.

And

his experience was that restraint is one leg and two hands on top and then another leg to the wall.

So he's like, just like kind of scissored out

his legs.

Yeah.

So he can't move right, left, and everything.

So that was unique.

I just remember it was unique.

I didn't even put it in there.

I was like, okay, I'll just, I made a side note.

One of his interviews in particular stuck with him.

Mustafa al-Hassawi, one of the 9-11 defendants, accused of sending money to the 9-11 hijackers.

I asked him

what was the worst torture.

And he said, before I answer that, he said, I'll tell you what was the best torture for me.

And I said, what does that mean?

He said, look, the best one when they put me in like a coffin and they filled it with water,

right?

And you can just literally just, or they put me in some box.

with the bugs and everything.

He said, I loved it.

I I said, why?

He said, that was the only time I felt that I was not naked.

For him, being a naked friend of man or woman, that was the most torture to him.

By the end of the project, Majid felt he had done something great.

He had a record of the torture the United States government was so intent on keeping secret.

I thought that

this could be the breakthrough that we were looking for in our lives that could alleviate some of the pain that the camp were doing to us.

He kept the spreadsheet in his cell, hoping to share it in court someday.

Majid's attorney spent years working on a plea deal.

Finally, in 2012, they reached an agreement.

Majid would plead guilty to five charges, including murder, conspiracy, and spying.

And he cooperate with the prosecution, help them in their cases against the other prisoners.

In return, he would get a reduced sentence, a maximum of 19 years.

And, crucially for Majid, he would finally get to speak, to tell the story of his torture in court.

Majid talked to the other Camp 7 prisoners about the plea deal.

He told me some of them were against it.

But KSM gave him his blessing.

But he said, yeah, I'm happy for you.

But he told me, look, I feel sorry for you.

I've killed 3,000 people.

Who the fuck are you?

You know, you're nobody in the chain of command.

I don't know how Majid cooperated, what information he gave the American government to fulfill his end of the bargain.

He told me it wasn't much.

But a prosecutor on the case told me that he did confess to plots the United States government didn't even know about yet.

After a decade of cooperation, it was time for Majid to be sentenced in front of a judge.

But before he did that, he and his defense team had one more card to play.

I guess you could call it the torture card.

They would turn the years of captivity and abuse in the black sites to Majid's advantage.

According to the rules of the military commissions and to Majid's plea agreement, Majid could call witnesses to support his case that he should get leniency.

By then, many of the darkest details of the CIA's torture program had been revealed.

waterboarding, the destruction of videotapes of the torture, even the death of a prisoner at the salt pit, a black site where Majid was once held.

But what were still a secret, are still a closely guarded secret to this day, are the identities of the torturers themselves.

Majid's lawyers knew that the CIA did not want those names revealed, ever.

So they made that part of their strategy.

His attorneys submitted a list of 115 people they wanted to call to the stand.

Some of the names were far-fetched.

George Bush was on it, along with Condoleezza Rice.

Some were lower level, like Camp 7 commanders and FBI agents who spent time with Majid at Guantanamo.

But most importantly, the list included the people who were involved in the CIA's rendition, detention, and interrogation program, the torture program.

The people who conceived of it, who ran it, and the people who tortured Majid.

Majid and his defense team wanted to put the entire government apparatus responsible for the torture program on the stand.

Unsurprisingly, a legal battle ensued.

After years of motions and responses to motions and bickering and the intrusion of COVID, the judge finally ruled, said Majid could ask for time off his sentence because of the torture, and he could call some of the CIA witnesses.

It was a major decision in Majid's favor.

The government's hands were tied.

They were never going to be able to produce the CIA witnesses.

The CIA would make sure of that.

So instead, the two sides agreed.

Majid would drop the whole witness testimony saying if the government would shave eight years off his sentence.

Eight years.

It was a lot.

Plus, the judge gave Majid another year off to dang the prosecution for a discovery violation.

So that made nine years total.

I'm shaving off nine years.

You can imagine how desperate they were they could they know they were fucked.

What this meant, if all went according to plan, was that Majid would get out just four months after the sentencing hearing.

And he would finally get to read a statement in court about what the American government had done to him, which he and his attorneys would write carefully to make sure the government couldn't classify it.

The one thing he wouldn't get, he wouldn't get to talk about the torture other prisoners had undergone at CIA Black sites, everything he'd recorded in that spreadsheet.

because that might give the government a reason to classify his statement.

What Majid could do was tell his own own experience as completely as possible.

That was the best way he could represent what they'd all gone through.

Nearly two decades after Majid was captured at his brother's apartment in Karachi, his day in court was finally scheduled.

According to the rules of the military commissions, a jury would be present for Majid's sentencing hearing.

They would be told Majid had pled guilty.

They would be told about his crimes, the money for the hotel bombing, the assassination attempt on Musharraf, his work for al-Qaeda.

But, and I know how strange this sounds, they would not be told that Majid and the government had already come to an agreement.

Instead, they'd be told to consider Majid's crimes alongside whatever Majid had to say for himself and come up with an appropriate sentence.

Whatever the jury came back with, whether it was a short sentence or long, it wouldn't have a material effect on Majid's case.

His sentence was set.

But their decision would have symbolic meaning.

This would be the first time a prisoner of the CIA's black sites would speak about his treatment in public.

There might never be another reckoning for the crimes of that era, not in a legal way, at least.

The jury would weigh the two ledgers.

What Majid did against what we did to Majid, and decide, for Majid, for the country, where justice lies.

It's what Majid had been hoping for for so many years.

But now that it was finally happening, he worried that he was too late.

It was 2021.

The country had moved on.

The existential battle of the day was with COVID, not al-Qaeda.

Maja worried that the only reason the government was letting him talk was that nobody really cared anymore.

I think at this stage, I think CIA and the Americans know that America lost interest.

Right?

Honestly, being really pragmatic about it, they lost interest.

They know it happens, bad shit happened.

And it was almost like they had created a tolerance for this.

That it's almost, how do you say, desensitized to torture now.

And it's a fact.

And I think that's what CIU is like, fuck it.

Let him speak.

I don't think they care anymore.

Honestly, what's the big deal?

Waterboarding?

We already heard it 100 times.

So, will they care after the break?

KPMG makes the difference by creating value, like developing strategic insights that help drive MA success or embedding AI solutions into your business to sustain competitive advantage.

KPMG drives brighter insights, bolder solutions, better outcomes.

KPMG makes the difference.

It's your headline to unpack.

It's your one story to follow week by week.

It's your whirdle to work through.

It's your team to track.

It's your 36 hours to explore.

It's your marinade to master.

It's your opinion to figure out.

It's your mattress to upgrade.

It's your day to know what else you need to know today.

The New York Times.

It's your world to understand.

Find out more at nytimes.com/slash your world.

The courtroom at Guantanamo is a long windowless rectangle with six rows of defense tables on the left, mirrored by four rows of prosecution tables on the right.

It looks like like any other sterile courtroom, except in the back, there's a gallery, separated by a thick wall of glass and a 40-second audio delay.

That's where the press and the public sit.

On this day, October 28th, 2021, that's where Majid's father and sister are seated.

Majid had been allowed to see them earlier that morning, for the first time in 19 years.

Did anything surprise you in that meeting about either one of them or about how you felt or how they acted?

I was like, they're short.

I was like,

did I get tall?

Or it's like, or they're shorter.

You know, just like this is like, because that's all, you know, they're about my size.

This hearing would be the first time they learned the details of Majid's imprisonment.

There's no publicly available recording of this hearing, but I do have the transcripts, and I've spoken with several people who were there that day.

Majid sits at the front of the courtroom at a defendant's table with four of his attorneys.

Court starts at 9:06 a.m.

The lawyers spend most of the day selecting the jury, not a jury of Majid's peers, not even civilians.

In this military court, the jury consists of eight senior officers from across the armed forces.

Which, if you were once in Al-Qaeda, tough room.

The sentencing proceedings don't really get going until after 5.

A prosecutor reads the stipulation of fact to the jury, a document that describes in cold legalese all the crimes Majid has admitted to.

It's dispassionate but detailed, and it's damning.

The story of a young man given asylum by the United States who turns his back on the country and his family to join the terrorists who attacked us with hopes of attacking us again.

After the prosecutor finishes reading the stipulation of fact, they break for dinner.

And then, finally, at around 7.40 p.m., Majid, in a black suit and tie, his lawyer's bought him at the necks, steps up to the podium.

39-page statement in hand, and faces the military jury in their dress uniforms.

He's nervous.

This is the moment he's been thinking about for 18 years.

But it's late.

He's tired.

His back is killing him.

The judge says, Mr.

Khan, you may proceed.

Majid proceeds.

I begin in the name of God.

My name is Majid Khan,

and for the last 15 years, I have been incarcerated at Neville Station Guantanamo Bay, or Gitmo.

Majid read some of his statement for me.

I have a story that I have waited almost two decades to tell, so I want to start by thanking y'all for taking the time to listen to my statement.

Today I stand before you, meek and humble, humble and meek,

asking for you to listen to my story with a sensitive and compassionate ear.

Majid takes responsibility for his crimes and apologizes to his family.

He explains to the jury how he ended up in al-Qaeda.

How, after returning to Baltimore in 2002, his family tried to keep him from going back to Pakistan because they were afraid of what he'd gotten involved in there.

How his father hid his travel documents, how he lied to his father to get them back.

He's here in court today.

I can see him.

I want to tell him, Baba, I'm sorry.

I'm very sorry.

And then, Majid recounts everything the CIA did to him in detail for two hours.

hoping that by saying what happened to him personally, he can overcome the apathy to torture, the disgust for al-Qaeda.

Because it's one thing to read about torture on a page, and another to be faced with the person who endured it, 20 feet away, describing it to you.

He starts the day he was captured, picking up where the stipulation of fact drops off.

He describes how the Pakistani authorities took him to a lock-up, interrogated him, how there were Americans there too.

how the Pakistanis beat him, the first time he was ever beaten.

I was frequently hooded and strapped into metal boots.

Now these metal boots were, I call them ski metal boots, about this high.

They would make me stand on those metal boots and they're punching me and beating me up.

I remember fearing that if I had fell over forward, there was no doubt my leg would snap.

I was so afraid of what would happen next.

I remember an older American, a USA interrogator, who would tell me they were not buying my story.

Quote, you're peeing on my shoes and telling me it's raining,

end of quote.

This man would frequently threaten me, saying like, son, we're going to take care of you.

We are going to send you to a place that you cannot imagine.

We'll take you somewhere and make you talk.

End of quote.

He threatened my family.

He threatened to rape my sister.

Majid tells the jury about the day his Pakistani guard said he was going home, but instead he was taken to an airport and handed over to the CIA.

How the Americans cut his clothes off him, gave him an enema, put him in a diaper, and duct tape goggles and earmuffs to his head.

And then they flew him to another country.

He describes the black site he calls the American Torture Place.

The windows of the American Torture Place were covered in cloth, and there was techno music blasting.

An interrogator in a black mask asked him questions about al-Qaeda plots in the United States and at Heathrow Airport.

And when he wasn't satisfied with Majid's answers, he counted down on his fingers from 10.

At zero, a guard grabbed the chains around Majid's hands, threw them over a wooden beam in the ceiling, and hoisted Majid into the air.

With sudden movement, the guards had hoisted the chain attached to my hands and pulled the chain tight.

After a few more pulls, I was hanging by my hands with my shackle feet barely touching the ground.

The interrogators left the room as I screamed in pain and tried to support my weight.

After a while, the interrogator.

Raja tells the jury they left him hanging like that for an hour or two and then dragged him into a tiled bathroom to a bathtub filled with ice water.

The US interrogator placed me feet first into the ice water and then pushed my body flat to the bottom of the tub.

I was still wearing a thin cloth hood.

While some USA interrogators held my body under the water, the lead interrogator pushed my head under the water and held me down as I struggled against drowning.

As I gasped for air, the interrogator would demand answers to the questions.

They repeatedly submerged me.

When I could get air, I would beg them to stop and swear to them that I did not know anything.

The people I talked to who were in court that day said Majid was stoic as he read his statement.

Sometimes he acted out the scene he was describing.

Like when he talked about being hung from a beam, he put his arms up into the air.

He pointed out the scars on his ankles.

When he told the jury how his feet swelled so much, the ankle cuffs cut into his skin.

Different details from his statement lodged in different people's heads.

For the prosecutor, Colonel Walt Foster, it was hearing how Majid was strung up by his arms.

For Majid's attorney, Major Michael Linus, it was the bugs.

But I could feel tiny bugs, smaller than mosquitoes, biting me repeatedly until I bled.

With my hands shackled, I couldn't swat the bugs or scratch the sores they left.

There's one person from the Black Sites who Majid refers to specifically in his statement, gives him a nickname,

a man he calls the torture doctor.

In April 2004, Majid tells the jury, he was moved to a different black site, which he refers to as long-term CIA prison.

He realized nobody was coming to help him.

He was on his own.

He started a hunger strike to protest.

So the tortured doctor and the guards force-fed him, sometimes with an IV, sometimes with a tube up the nose and down the throat.

I remember the torture doctor right in front of me.

He would take the tube and he would sharpen the tube and put a hot sauce and then he would nose feed me.

And then when that didn't break his will, when he continued to hunger strike.

After the force feeding failed to get me to cooperate, they returned to torture me.

This part is extremely painful to talk about as a Muslim and in front of my parents and my sister.

In the month of September 2004, still at long-term CIA prison, I was raped by CIA torture doctor while being restrained.

They did it in my cell.

I was restrained very tightly and secured by at least two guards.

The CIA torture doctor was there to administer the insertion.

But it was not a medical procedure

I remember one time in my cell I asked this torture doctor why he was doing this and he whispered with viciousness and he said quote you're fucking terrorist end of quote I swear to God I remember exact words he grabbed me like this and he says you're fucking terrorist

This is the hardest part.

They used green garden hoses, regular size hoses, connected to one side to my rectum, another one to the faucet, and they would turn on the water, and I could feel the gush of water going into my rectum.

I remember feeling immense pressure in my bowels, a pain I had never felt.

The CIA euphemistically called this rectal rehydration.

They didn't stop at water.

Once, the tortured doctor and the guards bound Majid with duct tape and shackles and put two bottles bottles of insure into his rectum.

And then, later that same day, they pureed Majid's entire lunch tray, hummus, pasta, sauce, nuts, and raisins, and inserted all of that into his rectum too.

This was known as rectal feeding.

The body cannot absorb nutrients this way, so a more accurate word for it is rape.

At least five other CIA prisoners were raped this way, too, according to the Senate report.

On page 30 of his 39-page statement, Majid stops reading and takes a sip of water.

He tells the jury apologetically that he's nearly done, asks them to bear with him.

The judge says, Would you like to take a break, Mr.

Khan?

And Majid says, Judge, I would like to get it over with.

Thanks him for his concern.

He picks back up in May of 2006, when things had started to change in CIA custody, ease up a little.

He went on a hunger strike again, but this time, the Americans didn't punish him, didn't rape rape him.

He told them he was depressed, and they offered him Prozac.

Majid tells the jury how in September of 2006, he was transferred to Guantanamo.

How on the plane ride there, he felt for the first time like he might actually survive.

But then he was put in Camp 7.

He describes his treatment there, the noises, the cruelty of the guards.

Here he goes off script, tells the jury that this is just a quote, summary of the summary of the summary of the summary, that he has 600 pages of notes about his treatment at Guantanamo but he doesn't want to bore them

and then he wraps it up thanks his attorneys takes responsibility for his actions and his crimes and apologizes to everyone he's hurt including his wife Rabia and his daughter Manal whom he's never met

he apologizes to his father again and to his siblings apologizes for abandoning them after their mother died i have want i have wanted to tell my story for a very long time i am so very appreciative for your attention.

Thank you for letting me share it with you today.

At this point, Majid's been reading for two hours, non-stop.

He says, God bless, and walks back to his seat.

By all accounts of the people I've talked to, the jury listened to Majid's statement like statues.

Unmoving.

The next day, Colonel Foster, the prosecutor, gives a closing statement for the government.

He tries to refocus the trial around the crimes crimes of Majid Khan rather than the crimes of the United States government.

He talks about the victims of the Jakarta bombing, who've been offstage for most of the hearing, and reads their names out loud.

Colonel Foster plays down the torture, saying, quote, I would concur that Mr.

Khan received extremely rough treatment by the individuals that detained him, and it is right for you to consider that conduct.

However, despite what Mr.

Khan experienced, he is still alive and with us here today, a luxury that the dead and the 11 victims of the J.W.

Marriott Hotel bombing do not have.

The jury can choose a sentence anywhere from 25 to 40 years.

Colonel Foster asked them to sentence him in the upper range of the spectrum.

Major Michael Linus, one of Majid's defense attorneys, gives a rebuttal.

He asks the jury to give Majid 25 years.

And then, The judge sends him off to deliberate.

They're gone for three hours.

When they come back, the judge asks Majid to stand and the foreman reads the sentence.

Quote, Majid Shokat Khan, this military commission sentences you to be confined for 26 years, zero months, zero days.

Again, Majid doesn't have to serve all this time.

His sentence is already set.

But 26 years, it's only one year more than the minimum.

It's proof that Majid was right to bet that a jury of Americans would give him a lighter sentence once they heard about the torture.

The judge thanks the jury, reminds them not to talk about their deliberations, and then, just as he's about to excuse them, the foreman indicates he has something else to say.

He has a letter for the defense team.

He hands the letter to the bailiff, who walks over and gives it to Majid's attorney, Major Linus, who leaves it there on the desk, tantalizingly folded in half, while the judge wraps up the session.

We wanted it open right away, right?

And everybody's acting like it's not a big deal, nonchalant.

The judge finally says, Mr.

Han, I wish you all the best in the future.

This court is adjourned.

And then, once the

this was the judge left the building, like a pack of dogs attacked that letter.

It's like,

let me read it.

That's my letter.

It's like, let me, let me hold it.

The letter is written in tidy handwriting on lined paper it reads quote the panel members listed below recommend clemency in the case of majid shokat khan

it's a letter to the so-called convening authority that's the person who's the final arbiter of majid's case it's a military justice thing i'm not going to explain it's a letter asking the convening authority to go easy on majid

It says, Majid should get leniency because he was denied due process, because he was a young man when he committed his crimes and is no longer a threat for future extremism.

And because he was so badly abused by the United States.

Quote, this abuse was of no practical value in terms of intelligence or any other tangible benefit to U.S.

interests.

Instead, it is a stain on the moral fiber of America.

It's signed by seven of the eight jury members, all officers of the United States military, all serving during the Global War on Terrorism, and who, having compared the two ledgers, rendered their verdict on this era of American history.

What Maja did was bad, but what we did to him was punishment enough.

I think for lots of people in the military, this conclusion will not come as a surprise.

This idea of torturing prisoners isn't some abstract moral debate for them.

It's personal, practical.

If they get captured by the enemy, they don't want to be tortured.

They don't want other Americans to be tortured.

They want that kind of thing to be out of bounds.

They need the U.S.

to hold the line.

The clemency letter is framed on my wall in my office.

That's Major Linus, one of Majid's defense attorneys.

And the original documents

is in my closet, and I still don't know what to do with it.

I don't know who,

you know, doesn't the National Archives

want this original document?

Because it's currently just in my closet.

Why didn't you frame the original on your office wall?

Why is that the one in the closet?

Because it's not mine.

it's to me it's the public's.

It's it's a public document.

It should be put somewhere where everybody can see it.

It's the kind of historical document that could, should, end up in a textbook, but it probably won't.

It will probably stay in Major Linus's closet.

I reached out to the CIA for comment on this story, for comment on Majid's treatment.

In response, a CIA spokesperson sent me a statement, quote, the CIA's detention and interrogation program ended in 2009.

The CIA has committed and remains committed to never again operating such a program of enhanced interrogation techniques, end quote.

So many of the players in this story, in all these Guantanamo stories, just want to put that place behind them.

The American government certainly wants us to forget about Gitmo, the black sites, the torture.

And Majid too.

He finally got out of prison in February 2023, 11 months after his sentence officially ended.

ended.

His attorneys met him in Belize, helped him set up his new house.

Two months later, Rubia and Manal joined him.

He helped Manal hang rainbow-colored lights around her room.

He spotted her as she put a ladder on a chair on her bed to reach the ceiling.

In some photos he and Rabia took shortly after they were reunited, they're both beaming, like newlyweds.

Majid spent the first 20 years of adult life in prison.

Now suddenly, at the age of 44, he's a husband and a father.

He has a 20-year-old daughter and a new baby.

He's got to learn to raise a kid, find a job, convince the banks to give him a bank account.

He doesn't want to be talking about any of this stuff.

He doesn't want to relive it.

He couldn't sleep the week I was in Belize interviewing him.

He just wants to move on.

I don't give a fuck about history.

Like, I don't want it to be part of history.

You know, with all due respect.

I just want to be forgotten.

You know, who cares who's Marjat Fan?

If I die and bury someplace, I will make sure nobody knows where I am.

When I die, I just want to make sure only two people come.

My two loved ones.

That's it.

My daughter and my wife.

I'm happy.

You know, that's what I prefer.

Majid told me the sensing hearing clemency letter, they were validating in the moment.

But writ large, the American public, he doesn't think anyone noticed.

And he's probably right.

But you know who did notice?

The accused masterminds of 9-11.

Or their lawyers anyway.

If Maja got a more lenient sentence because he was tortured, could they?

Next time.

Serial is produced by Jessica Weisberg, Sarah Koenig, and me.

Our editor is Julie Snyder.

Additional reporting by Cora Courier.

Fact-checking by Ben Phelan.

Music supervision, sound design, and mixing by Phoebe Wang.

Original score by Sophia Daly-Alesandri.

Editing help from Ira Glass and Jen Guerra.

Our contributing editors are Carol Rosenberg and Rosina Ali.

Additional production from Emma Grillo and Mike Cometay.

Our standards editor is Susan Westlang.

Legal review from Alameen Sumar and Maya Gandhi.

The art for our show comes from Pablo Del Can and Max Guter.

Supervising producer for serial productions is Nde Chubu.

Our executive assistant is Mac Miller.

Sam Dolnick is deputy managing editor of the New York Times.

Special thanks to Talia Bioki, Allison Beckman at the Center for Victims of Torture, Alvin Melleth, Tug Wilson, and Stephen Zenakis.