THE PARACHAS’ CASE

I met Uzair Paracha for the first time in Karachi, in June 2024, four years after his release from American prisons. I was there in part to see his father, who had been released from Guantanamo a year-and-a-half earlier. It had been my good fortune to meet with Saifullah Paracha several times in Guantanamo, where I worked as a defence lawyer in the military commissions, and visited a number of detainees.

Although I had not met Uzair, I was familiar with his case, as were all the lawyers and legal team members of the relatively small defender bar that pushed back against the cruel excesses of the US response to 9/11.

The outline of Uzair’s story was stark: arrested in March 2003 when he was in his early 20s, convicted of terrorism-related offences and sentenced to 30 years. After many years in some of America’s worst prisons, a federal judge reversed his conviction as a “manifest injustice” and eventually Uzair was repatriated to Pakistan. His case remains the only one where evidence from Guantanamo helped free a wrongfully convicted US prisoner.

His father was the oldest prisoner in Guantanamo and a remarkable man. He was beloved by the other prisoners for his kind nature and his fatherly care for them. He patiently gave English lessons to the other detainees and counselled them to rely on Allah when the frustrations of endless detention grew too hard to bear. Like so many of the 780 men and boys held over the years in Guantanamo, he was never charged, never tried, and finally released without an apology or compensation.

In 2003, 23-year-old Uzair S. Paracha, a Pakistani and an IBA graduate living in New York, was arrested by the US government and was accused of providing “material support” to Al-Qaeda. What followed were years spent in solitary confinement and, after being convicted for 30 years, imprisonments at some of America’s most notorious maximum security prisons. He never accepted he had done anything he was accused of or any of the various plea bargains put before him. He eventually won his freedom in 2020, after spending 17 years behind bars. Eos presents, with permission, excerpts from the book The Man Who Refused to Plead Guilty: How a Muslim Convicted of Terrorism Won His Freedom by Uzair S. Paracha and published by Pluto Press…

Uzair was raised in New York and Pakistan and, at the age of 23, was a recent graduate of Pakistan’s most prestigious business school. He hoped to continue to assist his father in the family’s successful international [export] business, and had every reason to be confident that his permanent residence status in the US would allow him frequent trips to New York, like the one in March 2003.

Instead, based on lies extracted under torture in Guantanamo and other Black Sites, Uzair, and then his father, were charged with helping Al-Qaeda. There never was any real evidence, and the false statements of the tortured informants themselves, as well as their subsequent vehement retractions, were hidden or ignored.

Even the publication of the [US] Senate Torture Report in late 2012, clearly finding that any number of statements obtained under torture were provably false, did not result in an immediate review of either Paracha’s case, or other prisoners in similar situations. Uzair’s triumph in federal court came more than nine years after its publication.

Uzair never came to Guantanamo, although he was persistently threatened with being sent there when he was seized. That, in fact, was and remains part of the power of the illegitimate forever prison of Guantanamo: the power of a fear that you can be sent someplace where even US law can’t help you. Uzair acknowledges that he met with the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] in part because they told him if he did not cooperate, they would send him to a legal black hole — Guantanamo.

That name, and the lawless cruelty it stands for, is still being used to intimidate today, as uncharged migrants are sent there. Further, the idea of Guantanamo persists in the erection of other detention facilities, like “Alligator Alcatraz”, repeating the Guantanamo formula: remote location, indifference to the law, and confinement based on the flimsiest of accusations, without proof or due process.

Instead of Guantanamo, Uzair did time in some of the worst prisons in the United States, starting with the notoriously grim Special Housing Unit (“SHU”) at the MCC [Metropolitan Correctional Centre] in New York. Civil rights organisations sued the prison and high-ranking government officials for the deliberate abuse of Muslim prisoners during the time Uzair was there, held in solitary confinement for three years.

I was trying to follow the path of least resistance in order not to end up in the legal black hole they kept threatening me with. When I asked about a lawyer, they explained that I did have that right but that, in this post-9/11 world and the nature of their interest in me, they needed to speak to me without any restrictions. If a lawyer became involved and used legal ways to stop them, then they would probably need to put me in a different system, where such restrictions didn’t exist.

After his shocking conviction and sentence of 30 years, Uzair was sent to the infamous H unit in ADX [United States Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility]: the worst placement in arguably the worst prison. He spent a total of six years under SAMs, the diabolical “Special” measures designed to completely isolate prisoners and destroy their dignity and any hope of rehabilitation. Many more years at ADX followed, then a transfer to Terre Haute, and finally back to MCC, before Uzair won his freedom in 2020.

— Excerpted from the Foreword
by Denise LeBoeuf```

WHEN THE FBI CAME KNOCKING

It was getting late in the evening, and I was supposed to leave for the gym, when I noticed that Charles [my father Saifullah Paracha’s business partner] came into the office late Friday evening when he was supposed to be home for the Sabbath.

I also noticed he had some other people with him while I was trying to wind things up. They kept walking in and out of his room for a few minutes until two people came over to my cubicle and flashed their badges. I noticed their guns under their jackets.

They introduced themselves as an NYPD [New York Police Department] detective and a special agent for the FBI. They said they wanted to ask me a couple of questions and, when we sat down in the conference room, the man asked me to turn my phone off.

Was this about the songs I had downloaded from Napster a few days ago? I kept wondering what this could possibly be about. We sat in the conference room and they started asking me some mundane questions about the purpose of my visit, details about the business I was running, where I was staying and basic stuff about my family.

Then they asked me if I knew someone named Majid Khan. I could feel myself turning red right away, but I denied it. You tell yourself that it is a little immigration matter for a deserving person, what’s the worst that can happen? But when you are sitting in a room halfway around the world from the system you’ve grown up in, even an unreturned library book feels like a capital offence in front of people with badges and guns.

I‘m sure they saw it on my face because, after a few more mundane questions, the detective asked me if we could continue with some questions in their offices. I asked what would happen if I said no or if I needed a lawyer; he said that I could refuse, but they would wonder why and they would find other ways to make sure that I did cooperate with them.

I remembered about my father’s belief in his partner and felt that I should seek his advice as to whether I should go or not or if I should get a lawyer. I walked over to Charles’ office and asked, “Can I speak to you for a minute?” With a disturbed look on his face, he said, “Don’t talk to me right now.” I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t know if I had any choice, except to go the easy way or the hard way.

I grabbed my coat and tried to say goodnight to the woman who used to work in the cubicle next to mine, but she didn’t even turn around. She once wanted to set me up with her daughter until I politely told her I wasn’t available. At that time, she was disappointed and wanted to know how serious it was. She was probably having second thoughts that evening though.

When we went down the elevator and out into the street, it was already dark outside, and I noticed that there were multiple cars and more people than I realised. We drove to the FBI building in downtown Manhattan and they put me in a small room with three chairs and a small table bolted to the wall and floor.

I was seated in the chair behind the table away from the door with a large window behind me. The door was open, but it wouldn’t have made a difference, since there were people with guns everywhere and, even if I decided to run to the elevator, how would I pass through security in the lobby? And even if I did leave the building, where would I go? These guys didn’t bring all these cars to get me just so I could leave whenever I wanted.

Speaking of the many cars, why did they have so many cars? I never bothered to know the difference between the FBI and the NYPD, but didn’t they have something better to do than investigate some guy’s immigration issue? After being seated, the interrogators left me with someone who stood at the door while they had to go make some calls for 20 to 30 minutes.

Their designated babysitter wanted to strike up a conversation and was full of advice on how cooperative I needed to be — “You need to be smart and tell these people everything they need to know”, “The sooner you start cooperating, the sooner you can get out of here”, and other nuggets of wisdom to make the interrogators’ job as easy as possible.

When the interrogators came back, they repeated many of their mundane questions for a little while, but then they circled back to Majid Khan. Specifically, they asked me about his driver’s license. After my initial attempt to resist and deny things, I tried to find a roundabout way of admitting that I did indeed know the guy by mentioning him by his nickname. I mentioned his immigration problem and how I was supposed to make some inquiries on his behalf (without mentioning that I was supposed to pretend to be him).

I expected there was going to be a problem. After all, this was more than an unreturned library book. I expected the worst and thought they might fine me or cause me other problems. I had just put in my application for citizenship but was still just a green card holder. Then the investigators told me that this man was part of Al-Qaeda.

They also tried to use this time to tell me what I was facing. One of them started citing some laws using legalese that flew over my head and explained to me that I might be looking at eight years in prison. The ground disappeared from beneath my feet. I felt as if I were pulled deep underwater, unable to swim.

A LAMB FOR SLAUGHTER

I tried to explain that he [Majid Khan] was from Baltimore, had a driver’s license and work IDs from a job here, and that he was more a part of America than even I was and he was just trying to get back home after carelessly overstaying in Pakistan. But I failed to realise that their job was to think suspiciously.

After 9/11 this suspicion had turned into paranoia, and they didn’t want to hear that I was clueless and didn’t know what was going on. They were in the mood to uncover a grand conspiracy. They asked me for my phone to see my call logs and I never got it back. They told me that if I continued to lie, they would have me moved to a military base. I pushed back that they couldn’t just do something like that, but they told me that they could, and they had.

They told me about someone named Jose Padilla who was uncooperative until he was recently moved to military custody to make him start talking. They added that I wasn’t even a US citizen like him, and it would be easier to move me than it was to move him. In fact, I could even be sent to a base outside the United States, such as Guantanamo Bay.

According to them, that system was a legal black hole, and once I was in it I could remain there for the rest of my life. There would be no courts or legal proceedings and I might be eating out of a bag for the rest of my life without any contact with anyone, including family and friends.

I insisted that there was nothing, but then they told me that my father had been captured in Pakistan by the FBI with the help of the Pakistani security forces and was being flown to a friendly country like Jordan. I was worried about my mother and my siblings back home and my fear for my father started reaching depths I had never known before.

The specificity with which they gave me immediate responses made me believe that this was very real, and my resistance to their accusations started to break down, hoping that I would not trigger a quick transfer that they were threatening me with. My best hope was that they would confirm their accusations and discover that there was no fire at the source of this smoke.

I also noticed they weren’t doing a lot of note-taking. I didn’t see any visible cameras, but they must have been recording this entire conversation, and the questions and my baseless answers in the face of their threats would be enough for a more senior figure to see the entire circus for what it was.

When they came back and forth from their breaks, I noticed that they weren’t willing to accept just any answer, good or bad. They were pushing for some type of corroboration, until I felt like I was in a pinball machine, being led away from certain types of answers and encouraged towards others.

If this interrogation was really about Al-Qaeda, were they just going to trust it to their memories? There had to be concealed recording devices. With that hope in mind I tried to toe a fine line between confrontational denial, which would risk a military base transfer, and admitting to a crime that not only did I not commit but that might not exist in the first place.

I was trying to follow the path of least resistance in order not to end up in the legal black hole they kept threatening me with. When I asked about a lawyer, they explained that I did have that right but that, in this post-9/11 world and the nature of their interest in me, they needed to speak to me without any restrictions. If a lawyer became involved and used legal ways to stop them, then they would probably need to put me in a different system, where such restrictions didn’t exist.

Their questions lasted until I could see daylight outside the window, when they sent me with some of their agents to a hotel. The agents came inside the room with me and told me to get some sleep while they were sitting in the same room. They had taken my luggage from my place during the night to retrieve Majid Khan’s documents, but I didn’t realise they had taken all my belongings, not just the documents. When I needed my toothbrush, clothes and other things they wouldn’t let me near my suitcase. I was supposed to tell them what I wanted, and they would hand it to me.

As soon as I lay down to bed a question popped into my head, and I asked one of the agents if I was free to go home. He said that I should have asked the agents assigned to my case. He added that I was the one who wanted the hotel room. I explained that I made the obvious choice when I thought it was either a hotel room or a jail cell for the night. But I was never told if I could go home. He asked me to speak to the case agents.

I then asked him if I was under arrest. He was getting frustrated and, after dodging the question a few times, he told me that I was being detained. I replied that that meant I wasn’t under arrest, but he shut me up and told me to go to sleep. There was no more arguing, but I did plan on bringing it up with the agents the next day.

BREAKING HOPE

It was late Saturday afternoon when we arrived, but the interrogators weren’t there yet. As I waited for them, I stared out of the window high above the street and my misery became overwhelming. My eyes fell on a small box with a button, and it occurred to me that if I could somehow open the window and have the courage to jump out, this unbearable experience would all be over. At the very least, I was feeling claustrophobic and wanted to see if I could get some fresh air.

As soon as I pressed it, the whole building started echoing with an alarm of some type. It was a distress button. Since it was a weekend, there was no one to turn it off and it took a while to find a way to get rid of the noise. The alarm was deafeningly loud, and I wish I could have stepped outside the building for some peace and quiet until they turned it off. Everyone was extremely annoyed by what I had done and the babysitter at the door wouldn’t let me out of the interrogation room.

When they asked me why I pressed the button, I mentioned that I wanted some fresh air because I was feeling claustrophobic. God knows how they would have reacted if I had told them I was thinking of jumping out of the window.

The first thing that the interrogators did was read me my rights. When I asked if I was under arrest, they told me that their superiors hadn’t decided if they were going to put me in a regular prison or a military base, but if I stopped giving them such a hard time, they could put in a good word for me. What could this good word achieve?

The possibility of going home wasn’t mentioned on that list but this was a terrorism investigation, and they would obviously get to the bottom of it. Until then, I needed to avoid their black hole. So much for my plan from last night to ask on what basis they were holding me.

They also had my hands swabbed for any type of residue from explosive devices or the like. In their custody I felt completely helpless, as they told me to open up my hands while they did a swab with some sterile liquid that smelled like rubbing alcohol. Then they did some type of scan.

This otherworldly experience was mind-numbing. No matter how much someone might say that you have nothing to fear if you’ve done nothing wrong, everyone in such an environment has plenty of scary thoughts, such as what if it shows up positive because of human or computer error? Or what if I’ve been in contact with something without knowing about it? It was all so overwhelming.

That night they put me in a different hotel and told me I had to be strip searched. I was not a very religious person. I was always skipping my weekly prayers. But in the country and culture that I grew up in, I never took my clothes off in front of anyone else. It was humiliating enough when I thought I would have to strip down to my undergarments. But I had no idea how thoroughly invasive an actual strip search was. I wasn’t married yet. I had never even needed to do anything of this sort for a doctor. Long before this demand, I had lost any sense of control over myself and my things, and the only resistance I put up was to ask that two of the three men in the room turn around while I had to undress further in silent surrender.

GOOD COP, BAD COP

On Sunday, back at the FBI office, I started by making a short plea that they were only making conjectures and it wasn’t right. They didn’t interrupt me. In fact, there was silence after I was done. Then the detective started breathing heavily and said, “I’m getting angry. I feel like breaking something.”

I started to panic. With a smile that made me even more anxious, the agent looked at the detective and said, “Now you’ve made him angry.” They told me that maybe they should let their superiors know that I wasn’t being cooperative and have me moved. They offered to take a break and pretend that this conversation never happened. Otherwise, they would tell their supervisors and then it was out of their hands.

Sometime later, the detective came back after he recovered from his lost temper and asked me if I wanted to continue, and I agreed. He asked me if I was hungry, but I had lost my appetite since Friday evening. He also said that this was just business and not something personal. That I seemed like a nice guy and, under different circumstances, I seemed like the type of person he would have liked to have a drink with.

I understood his gesture, but it was worthless. He was trying to be friendly to a lamb he was leading to the slaughter.

That day was no better than the other days and that night was just as disturbing as the previous nights. The agents were busy with their banter as I was trying to get some rest. In their post-9/11, hyper-paranoid frenzy, I felt my efforts to stop them from sending me to Guantanamo Bay or some other military base could fail, and I wanted to say goodbye to everyone who was a part of my life so that they would have some sense of closure.

But I also feared that if I did get in touch with anyone, they would become a target of suspicion. I expected that my family and friends would be worried about me by now. I wasn’t the type of person who would just disappear and be unreachable like this, even for a few hours. Besides, I was supposed to take some relatives out for ice cream. It was going to be my treat.g

Excerpted with permission from The Man Who Refused to Plead Guilty: How a Muslim Convicted of Terrorism Won His Freedom by Uzair S. Paracha and published by Pluto Press

Denise LeBoeuf is a retired capital defence attorney based in New Orleans, Louisiana. She was the Director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s John Adams Project, assisting the capitally charged detainees on Guantanamo in the military commissions, and was formerly the Director of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project and the Director of the Louisiana Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana

Uzair S. Paracha is an Institute of Business Administration-graduate and a Pakistani citizen who was arrested in 2003 in New York for providing “material support” to Al-Qaeda. He was convicted by a court in 2005 and received a 30-year prison sentence, which was later voided. In March 2020, he was released and repatriated after being imprisoned for 17 years

Published in Dawn, EOS, June 7th, 2026