A look at key dates in the life of Majid Khan, a former Maryland resident who pleaded guilty to war crimes before a military tribunal Wednesday at Guantanamo:
Feb. 28, 1980: Born in Pakistan.
1996: Moves with his family from Pakistan to the United States and settles in the Baltimore area. He is granted asylum within two years.
June 1999: Graduates from Owings Mills High School outside Baltimore. Gets jobs in database administration with the Maryland Office of Planning and a computer training center. Around this time he also volunteers to teach database administration in a youth program at the Islamic Society of Baltimore.
March 2001: Begins working at Electronic Data Systems Technology & Engineering as an infrastructure specialist, after passing a background check.
Jan. 4, 2002: Khan travels to Karachi, Pakistan, where he is later introduced to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks as well as many other terrorist plots. In the coming months, he begins working with Mohammed and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, Mohammed’s nephew, delivering messages and checking email accounts and discusses with Mohammed a plot to blow up underground fuel tanks in the U.S. He also volunteers to conduct a suicide attack against Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and records a “martyr’s video.”
Feb. 26, 2002: Gets married in Pakistan and shortly thereafter returns to the United States. At the end of the year, he returns to Pakistan with his wife, Rabia.
March 21, 2002: Khan returns to Baltimore and works at his family’s gas station for about five months.
Aug. 11, 2002: On orders from al-Qaida leaders, he returns to Pakistan, where prosecutors say he volunteers to go anywhere to help the group.
Dec. 24, 2002: Khan and his wife travel from Pakistan to Bangkok, Thailand, where he delivered $50,000 to the Southeast Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, an al-Qaida affiliate. The money helped pay for the Aug. 5, 2003, suicide bombing of the J.W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia, an attack that killed 11 people and wounded at least 81 others.
March 5, 2003: Pakistani security forces raid the family home in Karachi. Khan, his brother, sister-in-law and infant niece are taken to an unknown location. The sister-in-law and niece are released after a week and the brother is held for about a month. Khan is transferred to CIA custody.
Sept. 6, 2006: President George W. Bush announces that Khan and 14 other “high-value” prisoners have been transferred to the detention center at the Guantanamo Bay prison on the U.S. base in Cuba.
Jan. 12, 2007: Khan cuts through an artery in the first of two suicide attempts that he described later to a military review panel to protest conditions at Guantanamo.
April 15, 2007: Khan testifies before a military panel considering whether he is an “enemy combatant” who can be detained at Guantanamo. Khan denies that he is an extremist and says U.S. authorities tortured him. He denies that he is a member of al-Qaida, saying at one point, “How can a home owner in Baltimore, Maryland be an enemy combatant?”
April 16, 2007: An affidavit is released from his father, Ali Khan, alleging Majid Khan was beaten by U.S. interrogators while held in Pakistan. He said that that he was deprived of sleep and tied in painful positions during grueling interrogations in the days following his arrest. Ali Khan submitted the affidavit to the military.
Oct. 16, 2007: The Department of Defense allows a civilian defense attorney to meet with Majid Khan at Guantanamo.
Feb. 29, 2012: Khan agrees to plead guilty to charges that include murder, attempted murder and providing material support for terrorism, after reaching a plea deal with prosecutors that caps his eventual sentence at no more than 25 years in exchange for cooperating with U.S. authorities.
Sources: Court documents, statements from family and attorneys, the U.S. military, Associated Press archives.
