CCR Attorneys Release Revelations of Torture of Former Ghost Detainee Majid Khan

Motion Filed to Preserve Evidence of Majid's Torture While at CIA Black Site

Last week, a motion that Center for Constitutional Rights attorneys filed in the case of former ghost detainee Majid Khan was made public. The heavily redacted motion, which was filed in order to preserve evidence of Majid's torture, contains new revelations of his treatment while interrogated at a CIA black site. The motion was filed before it was revealed that the CIA had destroyed interrogation tapes.

A small portion of the notes that CCR attorneys Gitanjali Gutierrez and Wells Dixon compiled based on their conversations with Majid in November were also declassified. Below is some of the information contained in the notes:

• Majid chewed through the artery in his left arm until it bled last January and still has a scar.
• Majid has been on hunger strikes to protest for his rights to see his lawyers and to protest his conditions and being kept in isolation. Hunger strikes were the only way he knew how to assert his rights. One of his teachers at Owings Mills High School in Baltimore taught him about checks and balances, and he learned that if you do not assert and protect your rights, you do not deserve to be in the United States.
• Majid also went on hunger strike to get The Washington Post.
• The attorneys were initially angry because they thought perhaps the guards had brought the wrong detainee in to meet with them, which has happened in the past—Majid has lost so much weight that they did not recognize him from the photos and video they had seen; he was painfully thin and pale. He immediately looked at them and said, “Dixon? Gita? I’ve been waiting a long time to meet you. It’s good to see you.”
• He is suffering from symptoms of PTSD – concentration, memory loss, frantic expression, etc.
• He requested books and a subscription to The Washington Post.
• He wishes he had gone to college.

Both the motion and the declassified notes are attached below.

The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.