BALTIMORE, Sept 10: A Pakistani man who lived in the Baltimore area and graduated from a local high school in 1999 is among the 14 high-value terrorism suspects transferred from secret CIA prisons to the US base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to await trial, according to profiles of the suspects released by the federal government.
Majid Khan, 26, is a Pakistani national who moved to the Baltimore area with his family in 1996, according to the office of John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence. Khan was captured in 2003.
A profile of Khan was one of 14 released on Wednesday by Negroponte’s office.
Ahmed Khan, who identified himself as Khan’s brother said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press on Sunday from his family’s Windsor Mill home in Baltimore County, that a lawyer has advised them not to comment at this time.
Khan’s father, Khan Ali, told The Washington Post last week in a story published on Sunday, that he believed the charges are false.
“He’s a terrorist, my son? No!” Khan Ali said. “I don’t accept this.”
The father said the family has not known where Khan was since 2003.
After graduating from high school in 1999, Khan became involved in a local Islamic organization and returned to Pakistan in 2002, according to the profile released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
In Pakistan, Khan’s uncle and cousin introduced him to senior Al Qaeda operational planner and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the profile says. Mohammed then allegedly selected Khan as an operative for a possible attack in the United States, because of his excellent English and knowledge of the United States.
Khan had worked at his family’s gas station and was able to help Mohammed with research into a plan to blow up gas stations, the government said.
Mohammed also asked Khan to research how to poison US water reservoirs, according to the government profile.
The allegations stunned Janis Sanford, a former teacher of Khan’s at Owings Mills High School who told The Post that the young man she taught in her English-as-a-second-language class could not have plotted to blow up gas stations or poison drinking water in US reservoirs.
“It doesn’t make any sense to me,” Sanford told the newspaper. “I can’t imagine it.
“He wasn’t one of these kinds of fool-around kids. He just seemed serious. . . . He wasn’t a light-hearted jokester.”
The government also alleges that Khan tapped Uzair Paracha, a permanent resident alien in the United States he met in Pakistan, to impersonate him to make it look as though Khan never left the United States and to get immigration documents that would enable him to illegally get back into the country.
Paracha was sentenced in July to 30 years in prison for agreeing to help Khan sneak into the United States to commit terrorism.—AP
