In doing so, Mr. Khan became the 20th of the 38 detainees currently held at Guantánamo Bay for whom the United States needs to arrange safe transfer to another country. His lawyer, J. Wells Dixon, urged the Biden administration to “transfer him promptly to a safe third country.”
Mr. Khan, 42, is a Pakistani citizen who went to high school in suburban Maryland, but neither place appears to be a viable option. By law, no Guantánamo detainee can be taken to the United States. His lawyers say he cannot be returned to Pakistan because, when he first pleaded guilty, he became a U.S. government witness, and his life could be in danger were he sent there.
“There is no basis left to continue to hold Majid Khan at Guantánamo,” Mr. Dixon said. “The United States must send him to to a safe, third country where he can be reunited with his wife and his daughter, who he never met.”
Mr. Wood, a colonel in the Arkansas National Guard, was appointed to the civilian position of war court overseer during the Trump administration and has wide latitude to review and dismiss cases, as well as negotiate plea agreements. In the case of Mr. Khan, an agreement last year that was kept secret from the jury pledged to reduce his time in confinement.
As part of the deal, Mr. Khan was permitted to make a public plea for leniency to the jury in October. He offered a painful, lengthy account of his journey from a hipster high school graduate in suburban Maryland in the late 1990s to a Qaeda recruit in Pakistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, followed by his disappearance into the black sites of the C.I.A. for three years.