GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — U.S. diplomats have requested 11 international locations if they might be prepared to absorb a former courier for Al Qaeda who was tortured by the C.I.A. and have become a authorities informant, Justice Division attorneys mentioned in a courtroom submitting on Tuesday.
The attorneys mentioned that discovering a nation to resettle the prisoner, Majid Khan, 42, together with his spouse and daughter was a precedence for the Biden administration at a time when prosecutors are discussing doable plea agreements with different prisoners at Guantánamo Bay.
Mr. Khan, a U.S.-educated Pakistani citizen, gained consideration final yr as the primary former prisoner of the C.I.A.’s black website jail community to publicly describe his torture, between 2003 and 2006, by U.S. brokers. A U.S. army jury condemned his therapy as “a stain on the ethical fiber of America.”
Justice Division attorneys described the Biden administration’s efforts to discover a place for him in a submitting that urged Decide Reggie B. Walton of the U.S. District Court docket in Washington to primarily take no motion for now on Mr. Khan’s petition of habeas corpus.
“The federal government is actively — and urgently — working to facilitate petitioner’s switch,” the attorneys wrote in a 37-page submitting that didn’t clarify how lots of the 11 international locations had been nonetheless contemplating the request.
Mr. Khan pleaded responsible to terrorism-related offenses in 2012. His attorneys have described him as remoted in the identical detention setting wherein he served his sentence, which ended on March 1.
In a submitting on July 25, they requested the choose to order his launch into the USA or on the U.S. Navy base past the jail zone, which features like a small American city of 6,000 residents.
Within the various, they mentioned, he needs to be transferred to the custody of the Division of Homeland Safety, which has a small facility on the bottom that homes Cubans and different Caribbean residents whose circumstances are being reviewed for doable third-country asylum.
Mr. Khan has members of the family in suburban Baltimore, the place he attended highschool within the Nineteen Nineties. However U.S. regulation forbids the discharge of Guantánamo detainees into the USA.
Justice Division attorneys additionally dismissed the suggestion of releasing him on the bottom.
However his attorneys say he can not return to Pakistan, the place his spouse and daughter dwell, as a result of he fears persecution there as a former Qaeda member who supplied testimony towards different Guantánamo prisoners.
Col. Matthew Jemmott of the Military, the warden of the Pentagon jail, disputed Mr. Khan’s description of his detention as primarily solitary confinement.
Mr. Khan socializes with F.B.I. brokers, jail guards, army attorneys and prime jail officers throughout “spiritual feasts, social conferences and conferences relating to detention-related points,” Colonel Jemmott mentioned in an affidavit.
He additionally mentioned that Mr. Khan was entitled to quarterly calls with household by means of a jail program referred to as the Detainee Interactive Name Expertise, however that he had declined his final two presents. DICE, because the colonel referred to as it, has been described in courtroom as stop-and-go, intelligence-monitored conversations. A safety officer listens to what the prisoner desires to say on the decision and decides on the spot whether or not to launch the audio to the member of the family. The relative’s response can be on a censored delay.
Justice Division attorneys mentioned of their submitting that discovering a nation to securely resettle Mr. Khan “is within the authorities’s nationwide safety pursuits to encourage cooperation by people accused of acts of terrorism or different offenses triable by army commissions.”
Of the 36 prisoners at Guantánamo, two — together with Mr. Khan — have been convicted and 10 others are in pretrial proceedings.
Prosecutors are in plea negotiations with the 5 males accused of plotting the Sept. 11 assaults. It isn’t identified if any of the defendants are searching for sentences that might result in resettlement in third international locations or imprisonment overseas.
However a disabled Iraqi prisoner just lately supplied a responsible plea in change for switch inside two years to a nation that may present him medical therapy.
Justice Division attorneys mentioned Mr. Khan’s detention was lawful as a result of “hostilities with Al Qaeda stay ongoing.” They cited the drone strike by the C.I.A. final month that killed the motion’s chief, Ayman al-Zawahri, in Kabul, Afghanistan, as proof that the warfare had not ended.
