Majid Khan (detainee) - Letters From Guantanamo

Letters From Guantanamo

Khan is the first of the 14 high value detainees to have been able to get mail to his relatives. The The Washington Post reports that four letters from Khan have been received, three to his relatives in Maryland, and one to his wife. The letters were delivered to his family through the International Committee of the Red Cross, whose contact with detainees is contingent on the agency's promise not to publicly disclose any information received during the meetings. Khan's letter to his wife was written in Urdu, and was published on the BBC's Urdu web site. Khan's Maryland relatives have also decided to make the letters public to bring more attention to his case. These letters, written on December 17, 2007, and December 21, 2007, were made public on January 18, 2008. The letters were filed as part of a petition in the Washington DC Federal Court of Appeal. The petition asks the court "to rule that he was tortured in U.S. custody."

According to The Washington Post, Khan's letters were heavily redacted by military censors.

Khan wrote that he is in solitary confinement, but he can talk to nearby captives through the cell walls. Once a day he is permitted to leave his cell "to get sunburn" during an hour of solitary access in an exercise yard. His relatives say the letters show he has become much more religious.

According to The Baltimore Sun:

"In one five-page handwritten account from Khan to his lawyers, only a single sentence survives the censor's pen. It says, 'I was practically an American who lived a comfortable live under freedoms of America, who never lived in caves or Afghanistan.'"

Other quotes from Khan's letters include:

"Think of me as a human being ... not a terrorist." "I ask you to give me justice ... in the name of what U.S.A. once stood for and in the name of what Thomas Jefferson fought for ... allow me a chance to prove that I am innocent." "Why would I ever want to harm U.S.A., who has never done anything but good to me and my family?"

The Baltimore Sun reported that Khan said that when he lived in the United States, he paid $2,400 per month in U.S. taxes. It also reported that the only other captive he has had any contact with since he arrived in Guantanamo was Abu Zubaydah.