On the evening of the 15th day of Ramadan, in the suburbs of Belize City, Majid Khan and his family of four sat down to a traditional iftar meal to break the day’s fast. There was a leg of lamb that Majid, a former Guantanamo detainee, had slaughtered himself, a candy brought from Saudi Arabia by a sister in Maryland.
The atmosphere was a little noisy, but not enough to disturb the sleep of baby Hamza, who was born two weeks ago in a hospital in the Central American city. The conversation was brief, discussing whether biryani was too spicy and how to grill lamb to perfection.
These are mundane things, but become more meaningful now that former al-Qaeda courier Majid Khan is spending time with his wife Rabia and daughter Manaal in their first home Celebrating, Belize is their new adopted home.
For twenty years, this family meal had been impossible. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Mr. Khan joined Al Qaeda, agreed to become a suicide bomber, and handed over $50,000 to carry out deadly hotel bombings in Indonesia. For his crimes, he was imprisoned by the United States, tortured by the CIA, and then imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay. He pleaded guilty and became a government collaborator – and his wife has been waiting for him in Pakistan.
“I have been waiting for him for 20 years.” Rabia Khan said with a contented sigh. “Everyone said, ‘You’re brave. You’re strong.’ Now I say to Majid, ‘It all depends on you, not on me.’ ‘”
Big life questions await the family. Will Majid, 44, continue to grow his fledgling clay pot importing business? Does Rabia, 40, need to take baby Hamza to Mexico to see a kidney specialist? Where will 20-year-old Mannar go to college and become a dentist?
But other struggles are tougher, too.
Majid still needs to seek medical care for injuries he suffered while in secret CIA prisons overseas. He has yet to integrate into the country that has embraced his family. Because of his past, he has been unable to open a bank account.
“Life is a test,” he said, describing himself as a glass-half-full person. He sees the next chapter of his life as an opportunity to right his wrongs. He said he was hurt and had done things to hurt others. He punctuated his remarks with “May God forgive me.”
Even among the 750 men and boys at Guantánamo, Majid Khan has always stood out.
He is Pakistani and went to high school in suburban Baltimore, where he became radicalized after his mother died in 2001. Ya get married. He also joined al Qaeda members, including those accused of masterminding the September 11 attacks, and was recruited as a suicide bomber in a plot against Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf that never materialized. attack. He said his decision was reckless and wrong.
He is the first prisoner to be tortured and confess to war crimes while in CIA custody, where he was held as a “high-value detainee” for nearly a decade. He spent more time isolated from other detainees than any other prisoner, much of that time as a government collaborator.
Belize allowed him to resettle there as a humanitarian gesture 16 months after a U.S. military jury condemned his treatment and called it “a stain on the moral fiber of America.” At Belize’s insistence, the United States paid for his house, car and phone, and provided a stipend.
Rabia Khan, a single mother, spent those years with her parents and a roomful of siblings, nieces and nephews raising their child, Manaal, who was born after Majeed was arrested.
In Guantanamo, he prayed alone, slept alone, and ate alone all day long. “You get used to it,” he said. His Ramadan ration consists of three dates and sometimes a packet of honey.
They were reunited two months after his release. The first time he met his daughter was in a VIP lounge at the Belize airport. The couple, separated in their 20s and 30s, don’t feel like strangers.
“I don’t know why,” Rabia said. “Maybe it’s because of the letters?”
Manal admitted that it had been an exciting year, starting with the sudden news that her father, whom she had never met, was released from prison. Eight weeks later, she and her mother traveled 48 hours – Karachi, Doha, New York, Miami, Belize City – to join him.
Her father’s family had come to visit her in the United States, visited tourist attractions on Belize’s Caribbean coast, and now had a baby brother – all part of a most unusual gap year or two before she went off to college. .
She walks around her three-bedroom house with an air of relaxed ownership. She had her first bedroom, now decorated with strings of holiday lights. She designed Hamza’s birth announcement, which featured a picture of a heart-shaped balloon. Within minutes of his arrival, she sent it via cell phone from the hospital to family members in three time zones.
Outside, she and her mother wore robes, covered their hair with headscarves and wore COVID-19 masks on their faces, a modern version of the modest veil. He drives the family car, a used Chevrolet Equinox.
“I’m a Pakistani at heart, but also a little bit American,” he said. “So I’m a bit of a feminist. But I do believe strongly in Muslim modesty. And honor. I have to make sure my daughter remains modest before she gets married.
With approximately 415,000 residents, Belize is an area the size of New Jersey and accounts for approximately 5% of the country’s population. It helps that the official language is English. But for a man in a hurry like Majeed Khan, blending in was a challenge.
“He is not yet in sync with Belize’s laissez-faire approach,” said his mosque leader Kaleem El-Amin, known as Brother Kaleem. “I think he needs more time.”
Majeed has yet to set up a storefront for his business selling painted pots from Pakistan, nor has he found a big commercial buyer.
Part of the problem is that no bank was willing to open an international account for the man who delivered $50,000 to an al-Qaeda affiliate, for a purpose he said he didn’t know about. He was already in U.S. custody when the money was used to bomb a Marriott hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia, on August 5, 2003.
Belize blames post-September 11 regulation of global finance. “Building a sustainable business.
The family’s utility bills were charged to his father’s credit card, and he often visited. Any business he does requires cash and sometimes a Belizean partner.
If his wife needs to take their children abroad for medical treatment, he cannot accompany her. He has residency in Belize and a path to citizenship, but at the request of the U.S. government, he does not have travel documents.
He also needed treatment for colorectal disease and back pain, which he blamed on his years at CIA black sites, where he was brutally interrogated, placed in solitary confinement and became so desperate that he refused to eat. The American kidnappers broke his hunger strike by injecting a “pure” of hummus, spaghetti sauce, nuts and raisins into his rectum, according to a declassified document.
He said his wife told him he sometimes stirred in his sleep, but he didn’t remember having nightmares. He saw a psychiatrist twice for free but chose not to continue treatment, which cost $100 per visit. He said the doctor had no expertise in torture trauma and “had no idea what prison life was like.”
“I need to patch it up,” he said. “Mentally, physically.”
Every Friday, he drives 30 minutes to the mosque to pray in the Muslim community, but he was denied permission to do so while in U.S. custody. Some are Belizeans who converted to Islam or their descendants. Others are immigrants, many from Sri Lanka.
Brother Imam Kalim said the community welcomed him from day one without any questions asked. That’s the Belizean way – quiet, tolerant.
“If he stayed here long enough, maybe his children would understand this place,” he said.
Rabia Khan says her husband is a “gentle” version of the man she married. In her words, he was half American, half Pakistani, and half Arab—an apt description.
He prefers California dates to the Saudi Arabian variety to break his fast. When my nephew visited from America, he had a basketball hoop. He calls his American visitors, including one old enough to be his mother, “dude.”
To celebrate the festival, he found a Belizean man with livestock, brought a ceremonial knife, and slaughtered a sheep. The couple then hid the portions in their new deep freezer. Slaughter is daunting. Back home, a halal butcher did it.
One night, before dinner at a Lebanese restaurant, he called the owner and asked if he could bring his own lamb. Majid explained that this was a religious act and called it “kosher.” The restaurant owner agreed.
When Majeed talks about his life, his philosophy is no different than what he told a military jury in 2021. May God forgive him. He described the torture to the panel. It was the first time he had spoken publicly about his ordeal and he said he had forgiven his captors.
“The reason I forgive is because I did a lot of bad things,” he said, sitting on the couch with the baby sleeping in his arms. “The point is, I don’t hold a grudge. A car accident could have left me paralyzed for 20 years. God decided, ‘I’m going to put this test on you.’
His time in detention was a time of struggle, but a time of growth. He learned that he could be mean and rude and write poetry. He was also separated from other detainees for several years, sometimes passing the time with poker games and cigars in the company of guards and federal agents.
Sitting along the riverbank in Old Belize one evening, Rabia told a story:
Majid has been missing for many years. His family did not know whether he was alive or dead until the White House announced in September 2006 that he was one of the CIA prisoners transferred to Guantánamo.
From then on, in a moment of extreme despair, he wrote her a letter: I give you permission to start over and find a new husband.
She said she cried at first. She kept news of her family. Then she sent him an angry reply.
“She told me that if I did this, I would never see Mannar,” he recalled shakily. “no way.”
Manar was born in the seventh month of his detention. He has no hope of release, has not yet taken responsibility for his crimes, has not yet cooperated with the U.S. government and pleaded guilty.
That was later, in 2012, more than a decade before he was released in Belize.
