Guantanamo inmate free after 16 years

WASHINGTON — U.S. military officials said Thursday that they have freed and sent to Central America a onetime al-Qaida money courier who had completed his sentence, ending an imprisonment that included torture at clandestine CIA sites and 16 years at the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

Majid Khan, a Pakistani citizen who grew up outside Baltimore, arrived Thursday in Belize under a Biden administration agreement with that government.

This was the first time since the Obama administration that U.S. officials have been able to reach agreement with a stable third-party country willing to take Guantanamo prisoners whom the U.S. no longer considers a threat. Khan’s lawyers said he should have been freed last February under a pretrial agreement.

Khan, who is in his early 40s, said in a statement through his legal team that he regrets working with al-Qaida in his early 20s. That included ferrying $50,000 from Pakistan to fund a deadly 2003 hotel bombing in Indonesia and taking part in plotting several attacks that were never carried out.

“I promise all of you, especially the people of Belize, that I will be a productive, law-abiding member of society,” the statement said.

Khan pleaded guilty before a U.S. military commission in 2012. He was sentenced in 2021 to 26 years, though a pretrial agreement required a Pentagon legal official to cut that term to no more than 11 years because of his cooperation with U.S. authorities.

Thirty-four detainees remain at Guantanamo Bay, including 20 eligible for transfer if stable third-party countries can be found to take them, the Pentagon said.