Prisoner gives Guantanamo court first account of CIA abuse: ‘I would beg them to stop’
- Former al-Qaeda courier spent about three years in CIA black sites
- He faces sentencing for war crimes at Guantanamo military tribunals
A Guantanamo Bay prisoner who went through the brutal US government interrogation programme after the 9/11 attacks described it openly for the first time Thursday, saying he was left terrified and hallucinating from techniques that the CIA long sought to keep secret.
Majid Khan, a former resident of the Baltimore suburbs who became an al-Qaeda courier, told jurors considering his sentence for war crimes how he was subjected to days of painful abuse in the clandestine CIA facilities known as “black sites”, as interrogators pressed him for information.
It was the first time any of the so-called high value detainees held at the US base in Cuba have been able to testify about what the US has euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation” but has been widely condemned as torture.
“I thought I was going to die,” he said.
Khan spoke of being suspended naked from a ceiling beam for long periods, doused repeatedly with iced water to keep him awake for days. He described having his head held under water to the point of near drowning, only to have water poured into his nose and mouth when the interrogators let him up. He was beaten, given forced enemas, sexually assaulted and starved in overseas prisons whose locations were not disclosed.
“I would beg them to stop and swear to them that I didn’t know anything,” he said. “If I had intelligence to give I would have given it already but I didn’t have anything to give.”