829: Two Ledgers

The story is about Guantanamo, and I think lots of us hear Guantanamo at this point and we think, it's heavy and it's complicated. and is it really still going on? and don't I really know everything I already need to know about Guantanamo? Maybe you've heard our co-workers Sarah Koenig and Dana Chivas over at Serial have been rolling out season four of Serial, and it's all about Guantanamo, and the premise of the show is enough time has passed that all these people who were there in its heyday can finally talk publicly about what really happened, what it was like to work there, what it was like to be imprisoned there, and you hear all these ordinary people who are thrown into this extraordinary situation where there were guards and interrogators, and commanders and detainees in this invented offshore prison with its own weird, brand new rules, and you finally get a very clear sense of what it was like in there, but there are two episodes that they made that are about stuff that's just happened down there in the last couple years and about stuff that is going to happen, that's going to be in the news, and, honestly, when I heard these two episodes, I thought, and I know this sounds kind of grand, I thought really every American should hear these, but the kind of stories that when you hear them, it totally changes how you understand the news after that, and they're also just amazing stories, and so what we're going to do this week and next, we're going to do something we've never done, we're going to run these two episodes from Serial, two full episodes on our show, and so right now, today, here is the first of those two episodes. Dana Chivas co-hosts this season of Serial, and she does this one.

I was like, no, no, I still believe in due process. I still believe in due process. Right or wrong, whatever I did, I believe in due process.

. Naturally, the CIA had questions for him. But the way they asked those questions? They tortured him at black sites for years. And when they were done, they sent him to Guantanamo in shackles and a diaper.

Majid did bad things. He joined Al-Qaeda, wore a suicide vest, tried to kill the Pakistani president. He came up with plots targeting the American government to blow up gas stations and poison the water supply near military installations, to sell poison medication in the United States. He delivered $50,000 to another terrorist, money the United States says was used to fund a suicide bombing that killed 11 people and injured at least 81 others. And then we did bad things.

back to Majid. We disappeared him for three years, locked him away for 20, tortured him.

This story is about two ledgers. On one side, what Majid did to us. On the other, what we did to Majid. How do you weigh those against each other? In the historical counting to come, which is worse?

Majid's case is the first time at Guantanamo. those ledgers are compared and someone has to render a verdict.

Majid's story starts with his radicalization. Unlike so many former Guantanamo detainees, there's clear public evidence that he was in Al-Qaeda. He admits it. So this is a rare chance to hear how someone made the leap from self-described normal American teenager to self-described terrorist. It's actually quite simple to hear Majid tell it.

Like so many people, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, he was fired up about the atrocities there, the same kinds of atrocities that had spurred him to join Al-Qaeda two decades ago. What he was seeing was Americans making the same mistakes all over again, supporting Israel.

By citizenship, but you guys amaze me every single time.

And I'm thinking, there could be another Majid Khan somewhere right now. No, imagine that. Back then, we didn't have YouTube, we didn't have Instagram. And I'm thinking, what are they thinking? These kids?

And they're so stupid kids. So they could be easily misled.

And I'm thinking, how many Majid Khan out there right now that will become like me?

But in his late teenage years, after his family moved to Baltimore, he struggled with his identity. He wanted to fit into American high school life, to be cool. But he wasn't sure that being cool was very Majid. He felt guilty that he didn't pray, that he was a bad Muslim. He started learning more about Islam from a group of proselytizers called the Tablighi Jamaat, who would visit him at work and at the mosque.

And then, when he was 21,, Majid's mother died suddenly. She was the most important person in his life, the center of their family. He says he was devastated. He started asking the big questions about life and death. He felt like he had sinned up until that point, had wasted his life.

He decided to devote himself to Islam. No more partying, no more smoking weed. And it was at this point that he started getting more political. At the mosque, they talked about Palestine. The world seemed black and white to him.

Do you want to be siding with the oppressed or oppressor? I chose to be siding with the oppressed.

There were a bunch of them.

. Bin Laden had denied responsibility for the attacks, though the American government had quickly concluded al-Qaeda was behind them. Majid didn't believe it.

I saw the CIA were behind it. They were laughing at me.

But instead of being horrified by this information, Majid joined them.

you know, I got to be careful what I'm about to say. It could be misconstrued. Almost in my mind, and I wasn't alone. There were some Islamic community members that I was with that. they did not appreciate it, but almost had like they had it coming.

And it's just hard to explain that.

I've never killed before. I've never seen suffering before. But somehow, that what was happening in Palestine affected me so much that somehow I was okay to say, well, they had it coming. Just like, I was just watching Fox News yesterday. And then, and everybody in Fox News, well, if the Palestinians didn't like it, well, they had it coming.

They were the one who selected Hamas to be operated in Gaza. Same thing. I was in that mindset.

I must tell you, I know I'm being honest with you, but I may come across callous, but this is a brutal truth. So please bear with me and try to understand. I am not trying to offend you guys. I know you guys, an American and patriotic American, I hope you are, and you should be. And you should get a little irritated by these statements, and you should be.

But I am just telling you, I can't sugarcoat my statement.

Let me be clear. Majid says he has long since rejected extremism. He left Al Qaeda while he was still locked up at Guantanamo. He says he doesn't think 9-11 was righteous or good or justified. But he does understand the twisted logic behind Al Qaeda's attacks, because at the age of 21, he believed in that logic himself.

He has a unique perspective of a person who has lived fully immersed in both the culture of the United States and the culture of Al Qaeda. He can explain both worlds with fluency.

Once he was in Al Qaeda, arguably, the worst thing Majid did is what Majid did not do. He did not assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in a suicide attack. But he tried to. When he joined Al Qaeda, Majid volunteered to be a suicide bomber.

Yeah, I was that sure. That's the way to go. And you wanted that, why?

The job was a suicide mission. Majid would wear an explosive vest to a mosque where the Pakistani president, Musharraf, was expected to attend Friday prayers. At a safe house in Karachi, Majid tried on the vest.

He justified, there was some hadith was done where the prophet was at war, and in nighttime there was. unintentionally, some civilian were killed. Basically, in American language, it was collateral damage. We don't want to do it unless we have no option. But somehow, when you're in this cycle that I was in, it's like being a tornado, you know, you're just, there's not much time, you're not thinking, you're not saying, oh, by the way, let's just think about this.

Like, if I could go back and change it, I would. I wish I could go back and sit telling myself, calm down, cowboy, you know, think what you're doing. There's the consequences of your actions. Didn't think about my family and none of that.

On that Friday morning, KSM drove Majid to the mosque in a red Suzuki. He sat through all of Friday prayers in the suicide vest. He told me he was calm, even fell asleep at one point because he was a little bored. He just wanted to get on with it. But Musharraf never showed up.

After the failed suicide attack, Majid continued plotting with KSM to blow up gas stations, to import explosives into the United States. They talked about Majid becoming a sleeper agent back home. He returned to Baltimore for a few months, where he was supposed to recruit others to join Al-Qaeda. But once he was home, his new path and his new identity, Jihadi Majid,

I just, identity crisis, I don't know what, whatever you want to call it. I love living in America, in a sense that my family and friends were there. That's great. But part of me said, look, they're right too. Like, I want to be part of Mujahideen as well.

Majid says he didn't know about the bomb plot or what the money would be used for. He was just told to deliver it. But, of course, the person who asked him to deliver it was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of 9-11.. By the time the bombing happened, Majid was already in American custody.

Early one morning in March 2003,, he'd been woken up by his brother. He was staying at his apartment in Karachi. They heard shouting and banging on the door. It was Pakistani intelligence. Are you Bob Dacey?

They shouted at him. He'd used his DJ name on a Hotmail account. They took him into custody, interrogated him, and beat him. There were FBI agents and some other unidentified Americans there too. And then, after months of this, he was turned over to the CIA.

This is where the story of what Majid did ends, and the story of what we did to Majid begins.

The details of Majid's time in the CIA black sites have been covered in the news and in the Senate's report on the CIA's rendition, detention, and interrogation program, the so-called torture report. The torture he endured was intense and brutal, which is why I was surprised to learn that he came away from it all with a respect for the CIA, a kind of opponent's respect. It was one of the first things he told me when I arrived in Belize. We were sitting on a couch in his living room. His daughter had just made us some tea.

Two fans were blowing the sticky Caribbean air around. And he just launched into it, how he appreciated the candor of the CIA.

After one week, they're done. OK, we're not going to torture you anymore. I mean, they were.

We understood why they're torturing us. We understood they want intelligence. It's part of the business. It comes with a job.

And our job is to hold intelligence as much as possible, as much as bearable. And we had a mutual respect for that.

He had barely any human contact, just his guards, his interrogators, and his torturers. One of the reasons why Majid wanted me to understand his respect for the CIA was so I would understand how he felt about his treatment at Guantanamo, to contrast it. Because for Majid, his time in Camp 7 was worse. He wasn't being interrogated anymore. Sometimes the FBI would pay him a visit, ask him some questions.

But that's it. So the cruelty at Guantanamo had no purpose.

But there was no justification for what they did in Camp 7. Zero.

You know, it's like just hanging a cat for 10 days just for sake of it. You know, it's just the nature, sadistic nature, that I could not understand in Camp 7.. I try not to think about it, honestly. It just, it was the lowest point in my life.

He says he went crazy, kicked at the door, tried to break the security camera.

And then there were the noises, constant noises, from the guards knocking on his cell at all hours of the day and night, opening and shutting the prison doors. The building itself made noise. There were high-frequency whining sounds from the air conditioners and the security cameras. There were vibrations.

Majid was in isolation, no one to talk to, no distractions, no way to sleep. It all seemed intentional. When he talks about that time today, it still makes him upset, that the guards at Gitmo drove him to the brink, to the point where he felt like he was losing his.

And I would, to this. I'll show you, this is the artery I chew. I chew that artery right here. He was so distressed and so desperate.

Majid was at Guantanamo for over a year before he met with his attorneys. He hadn't been charged with anything yet. It was possible he'd be held indefinitely, or charged with crimes that could carry a life sentence. He was barely keeping it together in Camp 7.. He wanted out of Guantanamo, of captivity.

He wanted to be with his family. He told his attorneys he would take a plea deal, admit to his crimes, cooperate with the government, as long as he got the opportunity to speak in public about the torture.

He was pissed. Sure, he understood why the CIA had tortured him. But he also knew it was against the rules. I was mad at that time. I was really mad.

I was like, you got to pay for this. I'm going to tell the whole world about it. So, revenge.

we think, if we let you go, you'll speak fluent English, and then you're going to tell the world that how American fucked me up, and you're going to end up in an opera show or something. And that's the problem. It's very honest, people. When it comes to the fact they didn't hire you, the problem was, it's not, I understood. it was not what I did, it's so much what they did to me.

The other prisoners in Camp 7 with him, Majid says they did not understand this. It's remarkable to hear Majid talk about these other prisoners in Camp 7 itself, a place that was so secret the government didn't even acknowledge its existence until 2008.. No reporter has ever been there. And then there's Majid, the only Camp 7 prisoner to ever leave Guantanamo. So he's really the only person who can speak freely about what was happening inside those highly classified walls.

The other prisoners with him were considered to be the actual worst of the worst, high-level terrorist leaders, plotters, and soldiers, like KSM. There was also Abu Zubaydah, who allegedly ran his own extremist network associated with al-Qaeda. Another guy called Hambali, who was accused of orchestrating the 2003 Marriott bombing in Jakarta, a plot Majid delivered money for. And then there was Majid. I was a greenhorn.

The other detainees were older than Majid. He was only 23 when he was captured. Plus, he points out he hadn't done any hardcore jihadi training at the camps in Afghanistan. He hadn't shot an AK-47 or lived in a cave or sworn an oath to bin Laden.

It's like, we've got to take care of this kid, you know? And then they did. I mean, honest to God, they did. Otherwise, I don't think I would have made it. It was so.

Majid wanted to help them, these men he calls his prison brothers. And because he was a little bit American, he understood something they didn't. Just as Majid believed torture could be legal currency in his own case, he figured it could be helpful in theirs, too. So...

you know, met to sit, met to stand. I just met the whole list on the left side. And then I put all the detainee names on the.

And then just start telling me all about that. I think the brother didn't understand, because most of them didn't live in the States. And they didn't understand how powerful the torture could be an asset in their legal case. Right. And I said, look, this you need to write.

You've got to put it down. This could be a ticket out of here. And there was a lot of brother were pretty naive about this legal system because their own experience, they had a legal system in Arab countries, which is dictatorship. So it doesn't matter. Every every day we get torture in Egypt, Libya.

Yeah. What's the big deal? No, this is, this is America. You actually do have rights here, even though it doesn't seem like right now. But there's a system out there.

But, you know, he's working out elliptical. I'm working out and I'm doing pushups,

Some of the stories he heard defied categorization. So then I had to make I had to categorize in a way that it falls in that category. Right. Do you remember an example of that? Like Nasheed, he had unique experience like that.

He was hanged for maybe 18 hours or so. And they call it like two point restrictions. Like your hands are tied up and legs are tied up. Right. So there's two points of restraint.

And his experience was that restraint is one leg and two hands on top and then another leg to the wall. So he's like, just like kind of scissored out his legs. Yeah. So he can't move right, left. And so that was unique.

I just remember it was unique. I didn't even put it in there. I said, OK, I'll, just I made a side note.

what was the worst torture?

And he said, before I answer that, he said, I'll tell you what was the best torture for me.

And I said, what does that mean? He said, look, the best one. when they put me in like a coffin and they filled it with water. Right. And you can just literally just.

or they put me in a box with the bugs and everything. He said, I loved it. I said, why? He said, that was the only time I felt that I was not naked.

For him, being naked in front of a man or woman, that was the most tortured time.

Majid's attorneys spent years working on a plea deal. Finally, in 2012,, they reached an agreement. Majid would plead guilty to five charges, including murder, conspiracy and spying. And he would cooperate with the prosecution, help them in their cases against the other prisoners. In return, he would get a reduced sentence, a maximum of 19 years.

And, crucially for Majid, he would finally get to speak, to tell the story of his torture in court.

Majid talked to the other Camp 7 prisoners about the plea deal. He told me some of them were against it. But KSM gave him his blessing. But he said, yeah, I'm happy for you. But he told.

I don't know how Majid cooperated, what information he gave the American government to fulfill his end of the bargain. He told me it wasn't much. But a prosecutor in the case told me that he did confess to plots the United States government didn't even know about. yet. After a decade of cooperation, it was time for Majid to be sentenced in front of a judge.

But before he did that, he and his defense team had one more card to play. I guess you could call it the torture card. They would turn the years of captivity and abuse in the black sites to Majid's advantage. According to the rules of the military commissions and to Majid's plea agreement, Majid could call witnesses to support his case that he should get leniency. By then, many of the darkest details of the CIA's torture program had been revealed.

Waterboarding, the destruction of videotapes of the torture, even the death of a prisoner at the Salt Pit, a black site where Majid was once held. But what were still a secret, are still a closely guarded secret to this day, are the identities of the torturers themselves.

Majid's lawyers knew that the CIA did not want those names revealed, ever. So they made that part of their strategy. His attorneys submitted a list of 115 people they wanted to call to the stand. Some of the names were far-fetched. George Bush was on it, along with Condoleezza Rice.

Some were lower level, like Camp 7 commanders and FBI agents who spent time with Majid at Guantanamo.

But, most importantly, the list included the people who were involved in the CIA's rendition, detention, and interrogation program, the torture program. The people who conceived of it, who ran it, and the people who tortured. Majid. Majid and his defense team wanted to put the entire government apparatus responsible for the torture program on the stand.

Unsurprisingly, a legal battle ensued. After years of motions and responses to motions and bickering and the intrusion of COVID, the judge finally ruled, said Majid could ask for time off his sentence because of the torture, and he could call some of the CIA witnesses. It was a major decision in Majid's favor. The government's hands were tied. They were never going to be able to produce the CIA witnesses.

The CIA would make sure of that. So instead, the two sides agreed. Majid would drop the whole witness testimony thing if the government would shave eight years off his sentence. Eight years. It was a lot.

Plus, the judge gave Majid another year off to ding the prosecution for a discovery violation. So that made nine years total. I mean, shaving off.

Nearly two decades after Majid was captured at his brother's apartment in Karachi, his day in court was finally scheduled. According to the rules of the military commissions, a jury would be present for Majid's sentencing hearing. They would be told Majid had pled guilty. They would be told about his crimes, the money for the hotel bombing, the assassination attempt on Musharraf, his work for al-Qaeda. But, and I know how strange this sounds, they would not be told that Majid and the government had already come to an agreement.

Instead, they'd be told to consider Majid's crimes alongside whatever Majid had to say for himself, and come up with an appropriate sentence. Whatever the jury came back with, whether it was a short sentence or long, it wouldn't have a material effect on Majid's case. The sentence was set. But their decision would have symbolic meaning. This would be the first time a prisoner of the CIA's black sites would speak about his treatment in public.

There might never be another reckoning for the crimes of that era, not in a legal way. at least. The jury would weigh the two ledgers, what Majid did against what we did to Majid, and decide, for Majid, for the country, where justice lies. It's what Majid had been hoping for for so many years. But now that it was finally happening, he worried that he was too late.

It was 2021.

. The country had moved on. The existential battle of the day was with COVID, not al-Qaeda. Majid worried that the only reason the government was letting him talk was that nobody really cared anymore. I think at this.

It's almost, how do you say, desensitized to torture. now. It's a fact. I think that's what the CIA is like, fuck it. Let him speak.

I don't think they care anymore. Honestly. What's the big deal? Waterboarding? We already heard it a hundred times.

This is American Life from Ira Glass. Today's program, Two Ledgers. We're playing an episode from the new season of Serial, which is all about Guantanamo. Dana Chivas picks up the story of Majid Khan, where she left off on the day of his sentencing hearing. The courtroom at Guantanamo.

Did anything surprise you in that meeting about either one of them or about how you felt?

The lawyers spend most of the day selecting the jury, not a jury of Majid's peers, not even civilians. In this military court, the jury consists of eight senior officers from across the armed forces, which, if you were once in al-Qaeda, tough room. The sentencing proceedings don't really get going until after 5.. A prosecutor reads the stipulation of fact to the jury. The document that describes, in cold legalese, all the crimes Majid has admitted to.

It's dispassionate, but detailed, and it's damning. The story of a young man given asylum by the United States, who turns his back on the country and his family to join the terrorists who attacked us, with hopes of attacking us again.

After the prosecutor finishes reading the stipulation of dinner, and then, finally, at around 7.

40 p.

m.

, Majid, in a black suit and tie his lawyers bought him, steps up to the podium, 39-page statement in hand, and faces the military jury in their dress uniforms. He's nervous. This is the moment he's been thinking about for 18 years. But it's late. He's tired.

His back is killing him. The judge says, Mr. Khan, you may proceed.

Today, I stand before you, meek and humble, humble and meek, asking for you to listen to my.

I was so afraid of what would happen next. I remember an older American, a USA interrogator, who would tell me they were not buying my story. Quote, you're peeing on my shoes and telling me it's raining, end of quote. This man would frequently threaten me, saying like, son, we're going to take care of you. We are going to send you to a place that you cannot imagine.

We'll take you somewhere and make you talk. End of quote. He threatened my family. He threatened to rape my sister.

An interrogator in a black mask asked him questions about Al-Qaeda plots in the United States and at Heathrow airport. And when he wasn't satisfied with Majid's answers, he counted down on his fingers from 10.. At zero, a guard grabbed the chains around Majid's hands, threw them over a wooden beam in the ceiling, and hoisted Majid into the.

S. interrogator placed me feet first into the ice water and then pushed my body flat to the bottom of the tub. I was still wearing a thin cloth hood. While some U.S. interrogators held my body under the water, the lead interrogator pushed my head under the water and held me down as I struggled against drowning.

As I gasped for air, the interrogator would demand answer to the questions. They repeatedly submerged me. When I could get air, I would beg them to stop and swear.

Different details from his statement, lodged in different people's heads. For the prosecutor, Colonel Walt Foster, it was hearing how Majid was strung up by his arms. For Majid's attorney, Major Michael Linus, it was the bugs. But I could feel.

So the torture doctor and the guards force fed him, sometimes with an IV, sometimes with a tube.

They did it in my cell. I was restrained very tightly and secured by at least two guards. The CIA torture doctor was there to administer the insertion, but it was not a medical procedure. I remember one time in my cell, I asked this torture doctor why he was doing this and he whispered with viciousness and he said, quote, you're fucking terrorist, end of quote. I swear to God, I remember exact words.

He grabbed me like this and he says, you're fucking terrorist.

This is the hardest part. They used green garden hoses, regular size hoses, connected to one side to my rectum, another one to the faucet, and they would turn on the water and I could feel the gush of water going into my rectum. I remember feeling immense pressure.

This was known as rectal feeding. The body cannot absorb nutrients this way. So a more accurate word for it is rape. At least five other CIA prisoners were raped this way too, according to the Senate report. On page 30 of his 39-page statement, Majid stops reading and takes a sip of water.

He tells the jury apologetically that he's nearly done, asks them to bear with him. The judge says, would you like to take a break, Mr. Khan? And Majid says, Judge, I would like to get it over with. Thanks him for his concern.

He picks back up. in May of 2006,, when things had started to change in CIA custody. Ease up a little. He went on a hunger strike again, but this time, the Americans didn't punish him, didn't rape him. He told them he was depressed and they offered him Prozac.

Majid tells the jury how, in September of 2006,, he was transferred to Guantanamo, how, on the plane ride there, he felt, for the first time, like he might actually survive. But then, he was put in Camp 7.. He describes his treatment there, the noises, the cruelty of the guards. Here, he goes off script, tells the jury that this is just a quote, summary of the summary of the summary of the summary. But he has 600 pages of notes about his treatment at Guantanamo.

But he doesn't want to bore them.

And then he wraps it up. Thanks his attorneys, takes responsibility for his actions and his crimes, and apologizes to everyone he's hurt, including his wife, Rabia, and his daughter, Manal, whom he's never met. He apologizes to his father again, and to his siblings, apologizes for abandoning them after their mother died.

The next day, Colonel Foster, the prosecutor, gives a closing statement for the government. He tries to refocus the trial around the crimes of Majid Khan, rather than the crimes of the United States government. He talks about the victims of the Jakarta bombing, who've been offstage for most of the hearing, and reads their names out loud. Colonel Foster plays down the torture, saying, quote, I would concur that Mr. Khan received extremely rough treatment by the individuals that detained him, and it is right for you to consider that conduct.

However, despite what Mr. Khan experienced, he is still alive and with us here today, a luxury that the dead and 11 victims of the JW Marriott hotel bombing do not have. The jury can choose a sentence anywhere from 25 to 40 years. Colonel Foster asks them to sentence him in the upper range of the spectrum. Major Michael Linus, one of Majid's defense attorneys, gives a rebuttal.

He asks the jury to give Majid 25 years. And then, the judge sends them off to deliberate. They're gone for three hours. When they come back, the judge asks Majid to stand, and the foreman reads the sentence. Quote, Majid Shulqat Khan, this military commission sentences you to be confined for 26 years, zero months, zero days.

Again, Majid doesn't have to serve all this time. His sentence is already set. But 26 years, it's only one year more than the minimum. It's proof that Majid was right to bet that a jury of Americans would give him a lighter sentence once they heard about the torture.

The judge thanks, the jury, reminds them not to talk about their deliberations. And then, just as he's about to excuse them, the foreman indicates he has something else to say. He has a letter for the defense team. He hands the letter to the bailiff, who walks over and gives it to Majid's attorney, Major Linus, who leaves it there on the desk, tantalizingly folded in half,

This court is adjourned. And then, once the judge left the building, like a pack of dogs, attacked that letter. He's like, let me read it. It's my letter. He's like,

It's a military justice thing. I'm not going to explain. It's a letter asking the convening authority to go easy on Majid. It says Majid should get leniency because he was denied due process, because he was a young man when he committed his crimes and is no longer a threat for future extremism, and because he was so badly abused by the United States. Quote, this abuse was of no practical value in terms of intelligence or any other tangible benefit to U.S.

interests. Instead, it is a stain on the moral fiber of America.

It's signed by seven of the eight jury members, all officers of the United States military, all serving during the global war on terrorism, and who, having compared the two ledgers, rendered their verdict on this era of American history. What Majid did was bad, but what we did to him was punishment enough.

I think, for lots of people in the military, this conclusion will not come as a surprise. This idea of torturing prisoners isn't some abstract moral debate for them. It's personal, practical. If they get captured by the enemy, they don't want to be tortured. They don't want other Americans to be tortured.

They want that kind of thing to be out of bounds. They need the.

S. to hold the line. The clemency letter is framed on my wall in my office. It's a letter.

It's the kind of historical document that.

The CIA has committed and remains committed to never again operating such a program of enhanced interrogation techniques, end quote. So many of the players in this story, in all these Guantanamo stories, just want to put that place behind them. The American government certainly wants us to forget about Gitmo, the black sites, the torture. And Majid, too. He finally got out of prison in February 2023, 11 months after his sentence officially ended.

His attorneys met him in Belize, helped him set up his new house. Two months later, Rabia and Manal joined him. He helped Manal hang rainbow-colored lights around her room. He spotted her as she put a ladder on a chair on her bed to reach the ceiling. In some photos he and Rabia took shortly after they were reunited, they're both beaming, like newlyweds.

Majid spent the first 20 years of adult life in prison. Now, suddenly, at the age of 44,, he's a husband and a father. He has a 20-year-old daughter and a new baby. He's got to learn to raise a kid, find a job, convince the banks to give him a bank account. He doesn't want to be talking about any of this stuff, doesn't want to relive it.

He couldn't sleep the week I was in Belize interviewing him. He just wants to move on.

nobody knows where I am. When I die, I just want to make sure only two people come. My two loved ones. That's it. My daughter and my wife.

I'm happy. You know, that's what I prefer.

Majid told me, sentencing hearing,

The accused masterminds of 9-11.

. Or their lawyers, anyway. If Majid got a more lenient sentence because he was tortured, could they?

Next time.

Modern guilt among the lock and key.

Misapprehension and an interconvention.

Don't know what I've done, but I feel ashamed.

Season 4 of Serial was produced by Jessica Weisberg, with Sarah Koenig and Dana Chivas. It was edited by Julie Snyder. It's produced by Serial and the New York Times. You can hear the rest of the season and I heartily recommend it. All about Guantanamo, wherever you get your podcasts.

Additional reporting on this story by Cora Currier. Fact checking by Ben Phelan. Music supervision, sound design and mixing by Phoebe Wang. Original score by Sophia Daly Alessandri. Editing help from Carol Rosenberg and Rosina Ali, Janguera, and myself.

Other people who helped put together this season of Serial include Emma Grillo, Susan Westling, Alamin Sumar, Maya Gandhi, and Dai Chubu, Mac Miller, and New York Times Deputy Managing Editor, Sam Dolnik. Sean Cole, Mike Comette, Safiya Riddle, and Matt Tierney worked together to put this episode of Serial on our program. Special thanks today to Talia Biokey, Alison Beckman at the Center for the Victims of Torture, Nina Lassam, Alvin Melleth, and Tug Wilson. Our website, thisamericanlife.org. You can stream our archive of over 800 episodes for absolutely free.

This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torrey Malatia. He does not understand why people at the office did not get his Halloween costume last year. He's like, isn't it obvious?

A rhinoceros on St. Patrick's Day. I was a green horn. I'm, Eric Glass. Back next week with more stories of this American life.