An Immigrant's Journey From Md. to Gitmo

An Immigrant's Journey From Md. to Gitmo

The Road From the Suburbs To Gitmo
A family disagrees with the U.S. view of the radicalization of Majid Khan.

The Associated Press


BALTIMORE - Majid Khan worked the cash register at his dad's gas stations, listened to rap music and went to public high school like many recent American immigrants. Yet, at a red brick mosque wedged between a busy highway and middle-class cul-de-sacs, the U.S. government says, he found his way to an extreme brand of Islam.

Two trips to Pakistan to marry and visit his new wife allegedly led him to a fellow English-speaker, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Together, the government says, they plotted to blow up American gas stations, poison U.S. reservoirs and kill the president of Pakistan.

The 26-year-old Khan is now jailed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the only U.S. resident among 14 detainees the government considers its most dangerous.

U.S. officials see his journey from suburbia to prison as a worrisome example of the radicalization of young Muslim men, but also as a victory in the nation's war on terror. His family sees it as a horrible mistake. To them, he remains a fun-loving son and sibling, gifted with computers and a one-time volunteer at the local mosque.

In September, President Bush confirmed that the CIA had been holding Khan at secret detention facilities as he was transferred to Guantanamo along with others to await prosecution under the new military tribunal system. According to a recently released transcript from a hearing at the prison, Khan's mentor, Mohammed, confessed to 31 plots, including at least one involving Khan.

Majid "is the most fun person that we had here," said Mahmood Khan, his brother, during an hourlong interview at the family's dining room table. "Allegations like that are the total opposite side of the Majid we know."

Many details of how Khan ended up on a list of elite terror suspects, including how the government says he found extremism in Baltimore, have not previously come to light.

A RADICAL PATH

Top national security officials say they're finding and charging more young men - from California to Ohio - with crimes such as providing aid to al-Qaida.

Philip Mudd, deputy chief of the FBI's National Security Branch, said the government has learned more about how radicalization works. A significant step occurs when a potential recruit who is talking about jihad takes even a small action, like training during a camping trip, he said.

"It is an action that cements you down a certain path," Mudd said.

The path for Majid Khan was described in government documents and by half a dozen U.S. federal officials. None would be quoted by name because Khan hasn't been formally charged.

They said that in 1996, Khan joined other members of his family who immigrated from Pakistan and settled in a modest 1970s Baltimore subdivision. Khan was granted asylum status, but never obtained citizenship.

For prayers, the local mosque was about a mile away. For school, Majid took a bus to attend Owings Mills High's program for non-English speakers, graduating in 1999.

By the government's account, along with exposure to American culture, Khan also found a radical version of Islam. A change came sometime before Sept. 11, 2001, when Khan was working as a database administrator.

He volunteered at the Islamic Society of Baltimore, teaching computer classes. Court papers filed by Khan's lawyers say the society - a pillar in Baltimore's Muslim community - is the only Islamic organization in which Khan participated in the United States.

Khan caught the attention of a radicalized fringe element that took advantage of the society as a forum to organize a small prayer group. One official stressed that radical presence in Baltimore's I-95 corridor was small. But it was enough to provide entree to al-Qaida.

Abid Husain, an Islamic society board member, recalls little of Khan. He remembers his face and the programming classes that he said Khan led for just a couple of months. "It never crossed our mind that he would end up like this," Husain said.

He also said he was unaware of any radical presence at the mosque. "Hopefully, they are not around here any more," he said.

By 2002, Khan and one of his older brothers went to Pakistan when Khan's family arranged for him to wed.

The trip also connected Khan to his cousin and uncle, who were both members of al-Qaida. They introduced Khan to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al-Qaida's most prolific plotter whom intelligence officials refer to as KSM.

Like Khan, KSM was a Pakistani and spoke English. He had attended school in the United States at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro.

In Pakistan, the government says, KSM asked Khan for help and Khan obliged. In the fall of 2002, KSM asked him to deliver $50,000 to an al-Qaida affiliate in Thailand. In a press conference last year, Bush said that Khan confirmed the details during interrogation and provided information that led to the 2003 capture of another operative, named Zubair.

Khan also is said to have helped pick possible operatives, including Iyman Faris, an Ohio truck driver who is now serving 20 years in prison for supporting terrorism. Faris was studying how to destroy New York City suspension bridges.

Khan had his own role in planning attacks, officials say. U.S. intelligence thinks he got training in timed detonators with a goal of blowing up gas stations. He researched how to poison water reservoirs. And KSM considered Khan for an operation to kill Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

ARREST AND DETENTION

In their most extensive comments to date, Khan's family and his lawyers at the Center for Constitutional Rights tell a much different story.

Mahmood Khan, his oldest brother, says Majid was like many high school kids: He got good grades. He wanted to be a rapper. And he used his cricket skills to excel at baseball.

After high school, Mahmood said his brother earned a database software certification that landed him the best job in the family, which paid $70,000 a year.

The steady 40-hour-a-week job meant that Majid could devote a couple of hours a day to the mosque. Mahmood recalls his brother's computer classes and how he would help direct traffic for Friday prayers.

Mahmood said several family members went to Pakistan for Majid's February 2002 wedding to Rabia Yaqoob. He said his brother returned to the United States shortly afterward to make money, but rejoined his wife later that year.

Within days of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's March 2003 capture, Pakistani security agents raided the flat where Majid was staying in Karachi. Majid, his brother Mohammed, his brother's wife and their infant daughter were taken into custody.

In recent telephone interviews from southern Pakistan, Rabia said she was at her parents' house that night, but she's been told of the midnight intrusion - the soldiers in uniform and other men in plain clothes. Everyone but her husband was released after about a month.

With the rest of the family, Rabia searched for information about her husband's whereabouts. She heard from Majid for the first time when the Red Cross delivered a series of letters, censored by the U.S. "We will meet in the heaven if we could not meet in this world," he wrote in one received in early January.

Rabia said her husband is innocent and she knows nothing about any links with al-Qaida. Their 3-year-old daughter has never met her father. "My family hates Americans - mainly because of Majid Khan's arrest," she said.

Mahmood disavows that sentiment, but voices another painful regret - the Islamic society's decision to distance itself from his brother. "When Majid needed their help, no one came forward," he said.

It's still not clear where Khan was held for three years. Wherever he was, Mahmood and Majid's alawyers say he was subjected to torture and coerced into making false statements. The CIA denies it uses torture.

UNCERTAIN STATUS

What's ahead for Khan is unclear.

Pakistan has never publicly acknowledged a role in his detention. But two Pakistani intelligence officials said Khan was caught by the Pakistani spy agency after it received a tip from its U.S. counterparts that Khan was linked to KSM.

This month, the U.S. military has been reviewing the status of KSM, Khan and 12 other high-value detainees held at Guantanamo. Prosecutors hope to begin trials under Congress' newly approved military tribunal system as soon as this summer.

Khan's lawyers have petitioned - unsuccessfully so far - to have his case tried in civilian court in the United States. A federal appeals court ruled last month that Guantanamo Bay detainees cannot use the U.S. court system to challenge their indefinite imprisonment. That question is likely to end up before the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, the Khans are trying to maintain a normal American existence. Last year, Majid's dad, Ali Shoukat Khan, retired and for a time turned his gas station over to Mahmood.

Mahmood renamed it "All American Motors."

Associated Press Writers Munir Ahmad in Islamabad and Zarar Khan in Karachi, and news researcher Judy Ausuebel in New York contributed to this report.