829: Two Ledgers

Ira Glass

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. I want to play something for you today. And before I do, I want to get in front of something. The story is about Guantánamo. And I think lots of us hear "Guantánamo" at this point, and we think, ugh, it's heavy, and it's complicated. And is it really still going on? And don't I really know everything I already need to know about Guantánamo?

Maybe you've heard our co-workers Sarah Koenig and Dana Chivvis over at Serial. They've been rolling out season four of Serial, and it's all about Guantánamo. And the premise of the show is, enough time has passed that all these people who were there in its heyday can finally talk publicly about what really happened-- what it was like to work there, what it was like to be imprisoned there.

And you hear all these ordinary people who were thrown into this extraordinary situation where there were guards and interrogators and commanders and detainees and this invented offshore prison with its own weird, brand-new rules. And you finally get a very clear sense of what it was like in there.

But there are two episodes that they made that are about stuff that's just happened down there in the last couple of years, and about stuff that is going to happen, that's going to be in the news. And honestly, what I heard these two episodes, I thought-- I know this sounds kind of grand. I thought, really, every American should hear these. They're the kind of stories that, when you hear them, it totally changes how you understand the news after that. And they're also just amazing stories.

And so what we're going to do this week and next, we're going to do something we've never done. We're going to run these two episodes from Serial, two full episodes on our show. And so, right now, today, here is the first of those two episodes. Dana Chivvis, co-host this season of Serial, and she does this one.

Dana Chivvis

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 Day-si." 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.

Dana Chivvis

What he did-- instead of becoming a DJ, Majid 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 Guantánamo 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 poisoned 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 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 Guantánamo those ledgers are compared, and someone has to render a verdict.

Majid's story starts with his radicalization. Unlike so many former Guantánamo 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.

Dana Chivvis

It begins with Palestine.

Dana Chivvis

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 Majid last year in Belize, where he now lives with his wife and two kids in a bright-green cottage not far from the sea, it was November 2023, just weeks since the October 7 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.

Dana Chivvis

What led Majid to extremism was a confluence 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 a 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 from a group of proselytizers called the Tablighi Jamaat, 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.

Dana Chivvis

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 SEALs in the United States, he says. He didn't particularly care which jihadi group he joined. There were a bunch of them.

Dana Chivvis

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.

Dana Chivvis

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.

Dana Chivvis

Let me be clear. Majid says he has long since rejected extremism. He left al-Qaeda while he was still locked up at Guantánamo. 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.

Dana Chivvis

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

Dana Chivvis

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

Dana Chivvis

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. He 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.

Dana Chivvis

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 US government, was delivering the $50,000 to another terrorist group, which prosecutors say was used to fund the JW 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 Day-si?" 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.

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.

Dana Chivvis

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

Dana Chivvis

It's not that Majid was OK 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, in the dark, with music blasting. 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 Guantánamo 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 Guantánamo had no purpose.

Dana Chivvis

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.

Majid 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 that 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.

Dana Chivvis

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.

Dana Chivvis

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

Majid was at Guantánamo 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 Guantánamo, of captivity. He 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.

Dana Chivvis

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

Dana Chivvis

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.

Dana Chivvis

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

Dana Chivvis

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 in 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 Guantánamo. 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 Hambali, who was accused of orchestrating the 2003 Marriott bombing in Jakarta, the plot Majid delivered money for. And then there was Majid.

Dana Chivvis

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.

Dana Chivvis

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--

Dana Chivvis

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

Dana Chivvis

Not everyone wanted to talk about the torture. Some of the prisoners felt that it was better left between them and God.

Dana Chivvis

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. Majid would ask the other prisoners questions.

Dana Chivvis

He interviewed them outside during rec time.

Dana Chivvis

At first, he took a legal pad with him into the rec yard. But then, he says the guards caught on, said nobody could take legal pads into the rec yard anymore.

Dana Chivvis

He worked on it for months. Some of the stories he heard defied categorization.

Dana Chivvis

One of his interviews in particular stuck with him. Mustafa al Hawsawi, one of the 9/11 defendants accused of sending money to the 9/11 hijackers.

Dana Chivvis

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.

Dana Chivvis

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 would 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.

Dana Chivvis

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 in 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 Guantánamo.

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 thing 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 ding the prosecution for discovery violation. So that made nine years total.

Dana Chivvis

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

Dana Chivvis

So will they care?

Ira Glass

Dana Chivvis. Coming up, Majid finally gets his day in court. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

Ira Glass

This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, "Two Ledgers." We're playing an episode from the new season of Serial, which is all about Guantánamo. Dana Chivvis picks up the story of Majid Khan where she left off, on the day of his sentencing hearing.

Dana Chivvis

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 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 28, 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.

Dana Chivvis

This hearing would be the first time they learned the details of Majid's imprisonment. There is 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 AM. 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 5:00. A prosecutor reads the stipulation of fact to the jury, the 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 PM, Majid, in a black suit and tie his lawyers bought him, 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, "And, Mr. Khan, you may proceed." Majid proceeds.

Dana Chivvis

Majid read some of his statement for me.

Dana Chivvis

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.

Dana Chivvis

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 lockup, interrogated him, how there were Americans there, too, how the Pakistanis beat him-- the first time he was ever beaten.

Dana Chivvis

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-taped 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.

Dana Chivvis

Majid 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.

Dana Chivvis

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 Lyness, it was the bugs.

Dana Chivvis

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

Dana Chivvis

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

Dana Chivvis

The CIA euphemistically called this "rectal rehydration." They didn't stop at water. Once, the torture doctor and the guards bound Majid with duct tape and shackles and put two bottles of Ensure into his rectum. And then, later that same day, they puréed 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 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 Guantánamo, 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 Guantánamo, 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, Manaal, whom he's never met. He apologizes to his father again, and to his siblings, apologizes for abandoning them after their mother died.

Dana Chivvis

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 of Majid Khan, rather than the crimes of the United States government. He talks about the victims of the Jakarta bombing, who've been off stage 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 JW 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 Lyness, 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 a sentence. Quote, "Majid Shoukhat 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 Lyness, who leaves it there on the desk, tantalizingly folded in half while the judge wraps up the session.

Dana Chivvis

The judge finally says, Mr. Khan, I wish you all the best in the future. This court is adjourned.

Dana Chivvis

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 Shoukhat 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 US 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 Majid 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 US to hold the line.

Dana Chivvis

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

Dana Chivvis

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 Lyness'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 Guantánamo 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.

His attorneys met him in Belize, helped him set up his new house. Two months later, Rabia and Manaal joined him. He helped Manaal 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, doesn't want to relive it. He couldn't sleep the week I was in Belize interviewing him. He just wants to move on.

Dana Chivvis

Majid told me the sentencing hearing, the 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 Majid got a more lenient sentence because he was tortured, could they? Next time.

Ira Glass

That'll be next time on Serial and on our show as well. We'll be running one more episode from the Guantánamo series next week.

[BECK, "MODERN GUILT"]

Ira Glass

Season 4 of Serial was edited by Julie Snyder, with additional editing from Jen Guerra and myself. It's produced by Serial and The New York Times.

You can hear the rest of the season-- and I recommend it-- all about Guantánamo wherever you get your podcasts. Other people who have put this season together include Rozina Ali, Cora Currier, Sofia Degli Alessandri, Emma Grillo, Mack Miller, Ben Phelan, Carol Rosenberg, Al-Amyn Sumar, Ndeye Thioubou, Phoebe Wang, Susan Wessling, and New York Times deputy managing editor Sam Dolnick.

Sean Cole, Mike Comite, Sarah Koenig, Safiyah Riddle, Matt Tierney, and Jessica Weisberg did the work to put this Serial episode onto our program. Special thanks today to Talia Baiocchi, Alison Beckman at the Center for the Victims of Torture, Nina Lassam, Alvin Melathe, and Tug Wilson.

Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where you can stream our archive of over 800 episodes for absolutely free. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange.

Thanks, as always, to our program's cofounder, Mr. Torey Malatia. He does not understand why people at the office did not get his Halloween costume last year. He's like, isn't it obvious? A rhinoceros on St. Patrick's Day.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.

[BECK, "MODERN GUILT"]

Next week on the podcast of This American Life. Most of the people imprisoned at Guantánamo were low-level fighters at best. More than 95% were never charged with a crime. But if there was any case at Guantánamo where you think justice would be done, it was the trial for the man accused of orchestrating 9/11.

So, more than two decades later, how's it going with that trial? Answer-- even that's messed up in some really shocking ways. Next week on the podcast on your local public radio station.