Releasing Jawad: A Boy’s Life at Guantanamo

Mohamed Jawad was a teenager living in a Pakistani refugee camp when he was recruited by Afghan militia, drugged and forced into combat in Afghanistan. Eventually, he was captured. Afghan authorities beat him and made him confess to throwing a grenade at a US military vehicle, which he did by putting his thumbprint on a document written in a language he could not read or speak. Jawad was handed to the Americans and transferred to Guantanamo, where he was isolated from other Pashto speakers and put through a rigorous program of sleep deprivation. His mental health deteriorated so badly that interrogators soon saw him talking to the posters on his wall. On Christmas Day 2003, he tried to commit suicide.

In 2007, Jawad was tried before a military commission at Guantanamo. Prosecutors thought this was just the kind of case the public would rally behind once they found out that two US servicemen had been wounded in the grenade attack Jawad allegedly committed. Yet the government's case faltered as soon as Jawad showed up. "We're sitting there in the courtroom and in walks this kid," says Human Rights Watch's Stacy Sullivan, who traveled to Guantanamo to observe the proceedings. "He was clearly very young and, by that point, he had already been at Guantanamo for five years." In the courtroom, Jawad appeared uneasy-burying his face in his hands and losing his train of thought mid-sentence. Over and over, he said he did not understand why he was at Guantanamo.

Jawad doesn't know his birth date but thinks he was 16 when he was arrested. The US military claims he was 17. By any account, he was under 18 and should not have been detained with adults. Under US and international law, juveniles must be held in separate facilities, given educational opportunities, and allowed to contact their families. Sullivan wrote an article, "The Forgotten Kid at Guantanamo," for Salon.com, which first brought attention to the case. At that point, Omar Khadr, a 15-year-old Canadian, was the only known teenager in custody. "Until Jawad appeared in court, nobody knew there was another kid at Guantanamo," she said. The US military had failed to list Jawad as a minor.

At the military commission, Jawad's lawyer, US Air Force Maj. David Frakt, mounted a vigorous defense, exposing how Jawad was abused in Afghan and US custody. The military judge ruled that Jawad's confession was inadmissible because he had been tortured, and said that throwing a grenade at US troops was not a war crime anyway. With no crime and no confession, the government's case was unraveling. Disturbed by the revelation of torture, the chief prosecutor, Col. Darrel Vandeveld, recommended the government negotiate a plea and send Jawad home. But Vandeveld's superiors insisted on pressing forward. Eventually, Vandeveld chose to resign rather than prosecute Jawad.

Sullivan penned a piece about Vandeveld's struggle and later suggested he write about the experience himself. Vandeveld's own opinion piece, "I Was Slow to Recognize the Stain of Guantanamo," appeared in the Washington Post in January, just as President Obama took office and was deciding whether to allow military commission trials to proceed. Obama suspended the commissions, and Sullivan helped arrange for Vandeveld to testify before Congress as it began to debate whether or not the suspension would be made permanent. In the meantime, Jawad's lawyer, Maj. Frakt, teamed up with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to challenge Jawad's detention. In July, Jawad was released and returned to Afghanistan.

While we cheered Jawad's release, we feared what would become of him once he reached Afghanistan. Jawad's military defense team had requested and been denied permission from the US government to travel to Afghanistan to make sure the Afghan authorities did not imprison Jawad upon his arrival. The defense team then decided to travel on its own, not in an official capacity. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the ACLU appealed to our donors and managed to raise enough money to finance the defense team's trip. When Jawad's lawyers landed in Kabul, their fears were confirmed. Jawad was on his way to prison. Because the lawyers were on the scene, they were able to act. They persuaded the Afghan attorney general to send Jawad back to his family in Kabul. Now in his early 20s, Jawad is finally free and starting to rebuild his life.

In a thank-you note to Human Rights Watch, Maj. Frakt wrote, "Were it not for the presence of ... the Jawad defense team, things might have gone very differently."

Source: Human Rights Watch

Guantanamo inmate to be released

The Obama administration says it will release Mohamed Jawad, who has been held at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp since 2002. Earlier this month officials admitted that there was no military case for Mr Jawad's continued detention. But government lawyers had said they wished to keep him in detention pending a possible criminal prosecution. The decision could set a precedent leading to the release of other Guantanamo inmates.

His lawyers say they are confident that Mr Jawad will be released and allowed to return to Afghanistan, but the US government still has three weeks to complete a separate criminal investigation before deciding his future. Mr Jawad was arrested in Afghanistan in December 2002, after being accused of throwing a grenade at a jeep and injuring two US soldiers and their interpreter.

His lawyers say he was 12 years old at the time of his arrest, although Pentagon officials say a bone scan indicates that he was actually 17. Shortly after his arrest, he was transported to the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, where he is still being held. His lawyers campaigned for his release, arguing that his confession had been obtained by Afghan officials using torture. In October 2008, a military judge ruled the confession inadmissible and on 16 July, Judge Huvelle described the US government's case against Mr Jawad as "an outrage" that was "riddled with holes".

On Friday US authorities said they no longer considered him to be a military prisoner. But they also said that they intended to construct a criminal case against Mr Jawad, and that he should remain in detention while they did so. "After seven years of injustice this was a victory for the rule of law," said Major Eric Montalvo, a lawyer for Mr Jawad. "Finally we've turned the corner on Guantanamo," he told the BBC's Jonathan Beale in Washington.

Observers say the decision could mean that other Guantanamo detainees will also be released. Shortly after entering the White House, US President Barack Obama pledged to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Since making the pledge, administration officials have been reviewing the case files of Guantanamo detainees in an attempt to determine which prisoners should face criminal trials, which should face military commissions, which should be released and which can neither be tried nor released. Mr Obama said he wanted the camp closed by January 2010.

Source: BBC

United States: Judge rejects 'forced' confession

A military judge in Guantanamo Bay has thrown out the U.S. government's evidence against an Afghan detainee because it was obtained under coercion, a rights group said yesterday. The decision came late Wednesday in a preliminary hearing in the trial of Mohammed Jawad, arrested in Kabul in 2002 on charges of throwing a grenade that wounded two U.S. soldiers and their interpreter.

A representative for the American Civil Liberties Union revealed that Mr. Jawad's confession had been rejected as evidence in the case. "Col. Stephen Henley held that evidence collected while Jawad was in U.S. custody cannot be admitted in his trial" because the evidence was "gathered through coercive interrogations," the ACLU said in a press release.

Lawyers for Omar Khadr, 22, accused of five war crimes charges including the murder of a U.S. serviceman, say the prosecution's evidence against the Canadian-born youth also relies on statements Mr. Khadr says have been coerced. Under the commissions system, a judge can accept "coerced" statements if he thinks they were true anyway, but cannot accept statements obtained under "torture."

Source: Canada

Two U.S. Soldiers, Interpreter Wounded in Kabul Grenade Attack

Attackers hurled a grenade into a jeep carrying two U.S. soldiers and an Afghan interpreter in the heart of Kabul on Tuesday, wounding all three, the U.S. military said. One of the soldiers was wounded in the head and "in the lower extremities," while the second soldier suffered wounds to the lower right leg, said Lt. Tina Kroske. She did not identify the soldiers or say how serious their injuries were. The interpreter's condition was not immediately known.

Kroske said three suspected assailants were arrested, but Kabul Police Chief Basir Salangi said only two men were in custody. He identified them as Amir Mohammed, of Khost in eastern Afghanistan, and Ghulam Saki of Jalalabad, the capital of Afghanistan's eastern Nangarhar province. Mohammed was arrested with at least two grenades in his pocket, Salangi told The Associated Press.

Four U.S. Humvees equipped with machine guns guarded the site of the attack, on a crowded corner in front of city's Blue Mosque. A policeman at the scene, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he saw a boy throw a grenade toward the vehicle and witnessed a second man, gearing up to throw another grenade, tackled by a fruit vendor.Attacks against U.S. service personnel in eastern Afghanistan, and in particular in Khost, are routine.

Tuesday's attack was the latest in a series of sporadic attacks on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, following a Nov. 28 incident in which a sniper shot a U.S. Special Forces soldier in the leg in eastern Afghanistan. The shooter escaped. Fifteen U.S. servicemen have been killed in combat or hostile situations in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led anti-terror campaign began last year. The most recent fatality was on May 19.

Source: Fox News