BELIZE CITY — On his first day of freedom, the previous Guantánamo Bay prisoner Majid Khan prayed with out anybody watching him for the primary time in twenty years.
He ate a lunch of recent fish from the Caribbean along with his new hosts, fumbled along with his first smartphone, sipped a nonalcoholic piña colada along with his attorneys and held a real-time video name with household in Pakistan and america from his adopted homeland, Belize.
Mr. Khan, 42, is the primary prisoner to be free of Guantánamo Bay who had been held there as a “high-value detainee,” the intelligence group’s phrase for a former prisoner of the Bush administration’s secret torture program of “enhanced interrogation.”
When he emerged final week from twenty years of social isolation that started in years of solitary confinement, plans and ambitions and observations spilled from his mouth, at occasions in random bits of rapid-fire dialog.
“I wish to return to work. Don’t inform me to sit back out, man,” Mr. Khan mentioned, excitedly.
He thought he may wish to run a restaurant. He undoubtedly needs to run for public workplace.
“Inform the prime minister,” he quoted himself as telling Eamon Courtenay, the international minister, moments after he and his tabby cat, Cheetah, landed in Belize on a flight from the U.S. army base in Cuba.
By the way in which, Mr. Khan added, he already had the numbers of two Belizean imams on pace dial, however he had but to go to their mosques on this nation of 400,000 folks, about 600 of them Muslims.
Later, he recited a fraction of a freestyle poem he mentioned he left on his cell door at Guantánamo Bay. “On today, Feb. 2, 2023 … God set me free … My actions harm others, just like the sting of a bee. Could they forgive me. I can say this or that, A to Z. To show my skeptics flawed, I hope to be.”
He mentioned he signed it with what he referred to as a mic drop: “Majid Khan has left the constructing.”
Hours later, Belize’s international minister summoned his nation’s main information organizations and introduced that, as “a humanitarian act,” Mr. Khan, his spouse and their teenage daughter can be becoming a member of Belizean society.
Mr. Courtenay then instructed Mr. Khan’s life story, which he later mentioned his nation deserved to know.
Mr. Khan was uncovered to radical Islam in Maryland, the place he had attended highschool within the Nineties. He left for Pakistan after the Sept. 11 assaults and have become a courier for Al Qaeda. From 2003 to 2006, he was held incognito by the C.I.A., which subjected him to “probably the most horrific torture.”
At Guantánamo, he pleaded responsible to terrorism fees and started cooperating with the U.S. authorities. “I’ve full confidence that he shall be a great Belizean within the years to return,” Mr. Courtenay mentioned. “He by no means injured or killed anybody, nor was he ever concerned in fight.”
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To offer the Khan household a stable basis for a recent begin, he mentioned, Belize had required that america present funds to purchase him a house, a cellphone, a laptop computer and a automobile.
One among Mr. Khan’s first calls on that new cellphone was to the 2 New York Metropolis attorneys who had represented him longest and helped him navigate his path to freedom — J. Wells Dixon of the Heart for Constitutional Rights, from 2006, and Katya Jestin of Jenner & Block, from 2009.
They and three different members of his authorized crew had rushed to Belize from the Jap Seaboard a day earlier than his launch and anxiously waited close to their lodge’s swimming pool within the sultry warmth for affirmation that he had been freed.
After dusk, Mr. Khan strolled into the pool space in shorts and a button-down shirt within the firm of three Belizeans who have been serving as his guides — a authorities employee, a safety officer and a social employee. There have been hugs, handshakes and giddy dialog.
Anyone on the crew ordered the coconut-flavored mocktail for Mr. Khan, who observes the strictures of Islam. One other handed him a field of Cohiba cigars, produced within the Cuban-controlled portion of the island. He requested for just a few recommendations on his new iPhone 13, which he polished with a serviette like each first-time person. It was a substantial improve from the old-school analog cellphone with a pull-up antenna he had in Pakistan earlier than his seize.
Then his brother referred to as. Mr. Khan settled right into a poolside lounge chair and one after the opposite, his father, different siblings, nieces and nephews popped up in several home windows for a raucous, chatty video household reunion. A lawyer introduced him shrimp tacos and soda for his dinner.
The decision was not possible a day earlier at Guantánamo, even for somebody equivalent to himself who cooperated with the federal government. The intelligence businesses monitored all his calls with household from the jail, with every caller pausing after a sentence or so — time sufficient for censors to listen to and bleep out something that implicated nationwide safety.
The international minister referred to as Mr. Khan “clever, intellectually curious and a very good prepare dinner” who’s “outgoing and can simply make buddies in Belize.” From Day 1, he was “free to journey all through the nation, research, work, begin a enterprise and profit from his life after virtually 20 years in detention.”
So on Day 2, Mr. Khan and his attorneys had an outing. They ate lunch at a seafront restaurant, took crew photographs on a pier after which went procuring, an expedition that had the texture of a household taking a son to varsity.
The group wound its means by way of a Belizean equal of Walmart, typically stopping to elucidate one thing unfamiliar, like a bathe caddy, or ready for Mr. Khan to choose up an merchandise he discovered significantly beautiful, like a vase he stuffed with plastic flowers to greet his household. They loaded up a procuring cart with a teakettle and Tupperware, a swimsuit and shirts, storage bins, mirrors and a toilet scale.
Mr. Khan had introduced just a few keepsakes from his time at Guantánamo — 46 pages of poetry, a well-worn Quran and Cheetah, the year-old tabby cat who had appeared in his razor-wire-topped jail compound as a kitten. A U.S. Military veterinarian neutered and vaccinated the cat, who then traveled to Belize in a cage.
Additionally aboard the U.S. Navy twin turboprop airplane was the jail’s senior medical officer, at hand Belizean authorities Mr. Khan’s well being data and a six-month provide of statins to manage his ldl cholesterol and different prison-prescribed remedy.
The subsequent cease after the procuring journey was his new house. In an hour, the authorized crew helped him unpack and straighten out the place.
“Do you assume it is best to preserve your drugs on this shelf?” mentioned Ms. Jestin, who confirmed him the place a bathe caddy goes. She additionally confirmed him find out how to make his mattress with a fitted sheet.
Col. Wayne Aaron of the Military, his final army lawyer, hung curtains. Tech. Sgt. Shafiyquca Gause, a paralegal with the Air Power, arrange the kitchen. Matthew Hellman, the Washington, D.C., lawyer who dealt with his habeas corpus petition, assembled a fan contained in the three-bedroom home.
Somebody realized that they forgot to purchase a cutlery set for Mr. Khan, who for years was issued a plastic spork at mealtime.
The home was largely empty, for now a bachelor pad with the mattress, a bureau and pizzas within the freezer. But to be bought was furnishings, maybe a settee and a eating desk, earlier than his spouse and the daughter he had but to satisfy in particular person arrived from Pakistan.
In a second of reflection, Mr. Khan declared Belize “the right place, trustworthy to God,” for a person like him searching for to change into “a productive member of society.”
Then he described what occurred when he realized it was time for prayer after his first meal within the nation.
He was in a rooftop restaurant along with his Belizean hosts and slipped away to make use of the lavatory and wash up. He noticed a waitress and defined he was Muslim and wanted a spot to wish. She led him to a laundry room beneath the eating room and handed him a clear crimson tablecloth.
Mr. Khan, whose each motion had been watched and managed by others for twenty years, instructed her that he would depart the door open. No, she mentioned, lock it behind you, so no person interrupts.
“That’s what I did,” he mentioned, astonished. “I closed and locked the door. I prayed for 10 minutes and I left.”
