Thread by @carolrosenberg

Good morning from Camp Justice at Guantanamo Bay. It is Day 2 of the sentencing hearing in the Majid Khan guilty plea case and we expect the eight-member panel of military officers (aka, The Jury) to deliberate today.
nytimes.com/2021/10/28/us/…

They can sentence Mr. Khan to anywhere from 25 to 40 years, don't know that it is a formality. The 41-year-old man who has spent nearly half his life as a war prisoner has a deal with senior Pentagon official that could end the sentence in 2022, could let him go from Guantanamo.

Yesterday was a marathon day. Hearings stretched from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. -- and there's a bunch more to go. Prosecutors get to rebut Mr. Khan's 2+ hour talk to the jury, which at times included him using his hands and legs to demonstrate stress and shackle positions. No chains.

Then there are closing arguments on both sides. There's a lot of faith around here that the whole thing will be wrapped up today, including jury deliberations. The hearing participants have a flight to the Washington, D.C., area tomorrow.

Good afternoon from Camp Justice. The jury of 8 U.S. military officers has begun deliberating the sentence of Majid Khan, a confessed Al Qaeda courier who pleaded guilty in 2012 and turned government informant, cooperator. Lunch was being delivered.

In closing, lead prosecutor Army Col. Walter Foster asked his fellow military officers to focus on the 11 dead and dozens of wounded in the August 2003 bombing of a Marriott in Jakarta, Indonesia. Mr. Khan delivered $50K that went to finance the attack, months after his capture.

The prosecutor said that Mr. Khan "went willingly to Jihad and Al Qaeda" and "only stopped when he was captured."
He conceded Mr. Khan got "extremely rough treatment" in CIA custody but "is still alive," calling his survival "a luxury" the Marriott victims do not have.

Mr. Khan's lawyer, Army Maj. Michael Lyness, emphasized the prisoner's declarations of contrition, his long-running cooperation with the government and desire to return to society as a peaceful father.
He was far more blunt about the prisoner's "rough treatment."

"Majid was raped at the hands of the U.S. government," the major told the panel of more senior officers. "He told them everything from the beginning."
He said his client endured "heinous and vile acts of torture" in CIA custody.

Sentencing deliberation got a late start, after 1 p.m. The morning was dedicated (out of earshot of the jury) to a prosecution effort to rebut Mr. Khan's presentation with an affidavit from an FBI agent who kept him company at Guantanamo from October 2016 to April 2019.

Mr. Khan cast that period as a sort of "solitary confinement" because, once he turned government informant, he was separated from the other prisoners. We never saw the the affidavit because the judge refused to admit it, in part as hearsay.

But, another prosecutor, Navy Lt. Thomas 0. Walker, said Mr. Khan got visits from a "handler who came by to offer him welfare"-- FBI agent David Cudmore. The lieutenant said the men watched sports, played basketball and the agent brought him merchandise from the commissary.

The affidavit was meant to rebut Mr. Khan's talk to the jury last night. But Lt. Walker said the agent did not watch or listen to it, just read a copy prepared before delivery. The lawyer then disclosed that the agent is now at Gitmo, not Kansas City, as the affidavit suggested.

The judge rejected its use, and ordered it sealed -- meaning we won't get to see the other kind of benefits the FBI and other government agencies provide a prosecution cooperator.