Majid Khan (detainee) - Early Life

Early Life

Khan's family settled in Baltimore, Maryland, where he attended Owings Mills High School. Like many American teens, Khan listened to hip-hop and played video games. He helped out his family by working the cash register at the family-owned business, his father's gas station. He was granted asylum in the U.S. in 1998, and graduated the following year. Khan was also an active member in the Muslim community, volunteering to teach computer classes for youth at the Islamic Society of Baltimore and attending Jumah services at his local mosque, a mile away from his family home.

In 2002, Khan returned to Pakistan, where he married his wife, Rabia, and subsequently returned to the United States for a short period to continue his work as a database administrator in a Maryland government office. He claims that he helped the FBI investigate and arrest an illegal immigrant from Pakistan during this time.

On December 25, 2002, Aafia Siddiqui made a trip to the U.S. where she had lived from Pakistan, saying that she was looking for a job. She left the U.S. on January 2, 2003. The FBI suspects that the real purpose of her trip was to open a P.O. box for Khan. Siddiqui listed Khan as a co-owner, and falsely identified him as her husband. The key of the P.O. box was later found in the possession of Uzair Paracha, who was convicted of providing material support to al-Qaeda, and sentenced to 30 years in federal prison in 2006. Siddiqui's ex-husband has also said he was suspicious of Siddiqui's intentions, as she made her trip at a time when U.S. universities are closed.

Read more about this topic:  Majid Khan (detainee)

Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:

    ... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.
    George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)

    I looked at my daughters, and my boyhood picture, and appreciated the gift of parenthood, at that moment, more than any other gift I have ever been given. For what person, except one’s own children, would want so deeply and sincerely to have shared your childhood? Who else would think your insignificant and petty life so precious in the living, so rich in its expressiveness, that it would be worth partaking of what you were, to understand what you are?
    —Gerald Early (20th century)

    He did not live, he observed life from a window, and too often was inclined to content himself with no more than what his friends told him they saw when they looked out of a window.... In the end the point of Henry James is neither his artistry nor his seriousness, but his personality, and this was curious and charming and a trifle absurd.
    W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)