Guantanamo plea deal prisoner said to have a cat
A former Maryland resident who is detained at Guantanamo Bay seems to have acquired a cat at the isolated prison on a U.S. base in Cuba, a fellow prisoner says in a letter released Friday.
Majid Khan
has not been seen in public since he pleaded guilty in February to
aiding al-Qaida in a deal that requires him to testify against others at
Guantanamo. Details of his confinement are shrouded in secrecy as he is
one of about a dozen men the Pentagon calls "high-value detainees," who are kept apart from others.
The
letter from prisoner Rahim al-Afghani has one intriguing bit of
information and little else: "Majid Khan has a cat," he writes to his
lawyer, Carlos Warner, a federal public defender in Cleveland, Ohio.
Warner,
who released the letter after it had undergone a required government
security review, said he suspects Khan may have gotten a pet as a reward
for agreeing to cooperate. He can't disclose anything else the prisoner
has said about this or any other subject because al-Afghani is also a
high-value detainee and everything he says, even to his lawyer, is
considered classified.
"I can't confirm or deny whether he wants an adorable kitten," Warner said in a phone interview.
Khan's lawyer, Wells Dixon, declined comment and a Pentagon spokesman, Army Lt. Col. Joseph Todd Breasseale, said he is prohibited from discussing any details about Khan's confinement.
Prisoners
are not allowed to have pets but Breasseale said there are stray cats,
as well as banana rats and iguanas, that roam the base and prisoners
have been known to feed them, though prison officials discourage the
practice. "It's possible he's befriended one," the spokesman said.
Due to time constraints, we now move to further action...
Al-Afghani's lawyer, meanwhile,
complained that the chief prosecutor for the Guantanamo tribunal, Gen.
Mark Martins, has been unwilling to hold discussions with attorneys for
other prisoners unless their clients agree to cooperate with the
government.
In his case, that might seem unlikely considering a second letter he released which references a famous side-switcher, Lebron James, the NBA superstar known for ditching the Cleveland Cavaliers for the championship-winning Miami Heat.
"Lebron James is very bad man," the prisoner wrote. "He should apologize to the city of Cleveland."
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