A former al Qaeda courier who grew up in suburban Baltimore has become the first ever ex-prisoner of the clandestine CIA facilities known as “black sites” to describe the brutal torture he endured there. In a shocking testimony Thursday to jurors considering his sentence for war crimes, Guantanamo Bay prisoner Majid Khan said he was imprisoned naked with only a hood to cover his head, repeatedly taken to the point of drowning by being doused in freezing cold water, and suspended from a ceiling beam for hours on end. He also alleged that CIA agents pumped water into his rectum with a “green garden hose” when he refused orders to drink, recounting: “They connected one end to the faucet, put the other in my rectum and they turned on the water.” Khan said he became so broken down by his treatment that he began to hallucinate a cow and a giant lizard charging at him inside his cell. A jury will deliberate Friday on his official sentence, but, according to The New York Times, an agreed plea deal could see Khan released from detention as early as February.
