Majid Khan Guantanamo detainee was tortured but forgives

There are 39 detainees left at Guantanamo and one of them, Majid Khan, has done a deal with the FBI and has been talking to them for years about al-Qaeda. So when he is sentenced this week or some time soon for his terrorism offences for which he has pleaded guilty, he will probably serve only a few more months before being released to a new secret life. Yesterday at the Guantanamo detention camp courthouse which is surrounded by a high wire fence and floodlights and CCTV cameras, he gave details of how he was tortured by the CIA during his time in their care at their secret black prisons in Europe and elsewhere before being transferred to Guantanamo on Cuba. The details were gruesome and repugnant and they made me think not for the first time that the American intelligence agency, under orders from George W Bush, committed the gravest human rights violations ever in their history. Torture can never be justified under any circumstances even at that most extraordinary time post-9/11 when the US was so desperate to capture as many of the al-Qaeda terrorists as possible who were suspected of being responsible for the 2001 attacks and for other terrorist atrocities. Majid Khan who has now rejected what al-Qaeda stands for and has admitted his terrorist crimes surprisingly forgave his torturers. But it is the harsh interrogation techniques during those dark years after 9/11 which stand in the way of trials of the remaining Guantanamo detainees, and in particular the five accused of masterminding the attacks which killed nearly 3,000 people. Torture never pays. It might elicit some worthwhile intelligence material although that has to be in doubt and whatever the detainees said under torture can never be used in court as evidence. Thus trials are near-impossible to organise. That has been the case at the Guatanamo courtroom for about 18 years.