A Baltimore schoolboy-turned-terrorist was quietly freed from Guantanamo Bay on February 2 by Joe Biden and relocated to Belize at taxpayer expense. He is the first high-value detainee to be released from Guantanamo Bay and the first inmate resettled by the Biden administration.
Majid Khan was the only American resident locked up in Guantanamo Bay. He ran errands for the 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM). He also plotted to blow up Pakistan’s then-President Pervez Musharraf, a key U.S. ally in 2002. He wore a suicide vest packed with explosives and waited at a mosque for Musharraf to arrive. When he didn’t show up, KSM sent Khan back to the United States as a sleeper agent to attack gas stations and poison water supplies. He was captured by Pakistani security forces in March 2003. Before he was captured, Khan couriered al Qaeda cash to Indonesia that financed a 2003 hotel bombing, killing a dozen people.
Khan arrived in the US at 16, graduated from Owings Mills High School outside Baltimore in 1999, and went on to land an IT job in Washington, D.C.
According to US court filings, he was drawn to radical Islam after the death of his mother.
He decided to seek out al Qaeda after looking out from his office window on 9/11 and watching a plume of smoke rise from the Pentagon after it was struck by American Airlines flight 77.
The resettlement package is worth about $300,000. It includes health care expenses, housing, education, and money for him to start a new business in Belize. That amount of money is certainly generous but is minuscule compared to the $13M per year it costs to hold each detainee at Guantanamo Bay. He is now 42 years old. He is married and the father of a daughter. Belize borders Mexico and Khan is now just a day’s drive from the U.S.-Mexican border. Sleep well, America!
Khan is one of the few GTMO prisoners allowed to live in the Western hemisphere. This is because his relocation deal is confidential. It pays the Belize government to fund Khan’s first six months of freedom. He insists he is no longer a threat to the West. He said, ‘My motto is live and let live.’ I’m sure everything will be fine. It’s not like terrorists released from GTMO have returned to the battlefield, right? Oh, wait.
Belizean officials agreed to the resettlement package as a “humanitarian gesture” and are using some of the funds to buy him a three-bedroom home.
Kahn’s single-story property is basic by the standards of his upbringing in Catonsville, Maryland, where his family settled in 1996 and owned a gas station after leaving Pakistan as asylum seekers.
But it’s typical of an upper-middle-class Belizean home and cost the equivalent of $75,000 US, according to local sources who say the location has been kept secret from the public who are anxious about the arrival of a convicted terrorist.
The house is fitted with a battery of CCTV cameras monitored 24/7 by the country’s Special Branch security unit and Khan is ferried around by a police handler because he doesn’t have a Belize driving license.
Khan will have to pay for back surgery and medication for PTSD that was allegedly triggered by so-called enhanced interrogation techniques under the George W. Bush administration. He is known for his testimony about beatings, waterboarding, and forced feeding during CIA interrogations. Don’t worry, he doesn’t hold a grudge.
‘ Holding a grudge is like drinking poison and hoping it will kill your enemies,’ Khan declared, paraphrasing anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela.
‘I will pray for the people who have done me wrong. My motto is live and let live.’
I’m sure his word is good now. He’s like Nelson Mandela. Did Nelson Mandela plot to kill millions of Americans?
Khan is banned from leaving Belize. His American relatives have already made the trip to be reunited with him. He is working to relocate his wife and daughter to their new home.
I’m blessed to be here. I’m excited to see my family, my wife and kid, God willing. I’m really thankful to the people of Belize for embracing me with open arms,’ added Khan, a Sunni Muslim.
‘I’d love to be a citizen. I’d love to start a business, to create jobs, to give back to the community here.’
The State Department had to reach out to a dozen countries before one would do a deal to take Khan. Khan made a list of three European nations he wanted to go to and even named the United States as an alternative. That request was dismissed as it is illegal under federal law. He was afraid if he returned to Pakistan he would be killed. The Minister of Foreign Affairs from Belize went to Guantanamo Bay to interview Khan. He believes that he harbors no resentment toward the U.S. government and has no desire to be violent.
Remember when Barack Obama campaigned on closing Guantanamo Bay on his first day in the office? Good times, good times. Now Biden is releasing the worst of the worst.
We’ll see how this turns out.
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