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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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July 22nd,
2009 - U.S. Judge Challenges Evidence on a Detainee |
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U.S. Judge
Challenges Evidence on a Detainee By William Glaberson New York Times July 22, 2009 The Obama administration has
until Friday to decide whether to continue to defend the six-year
imprisonment of an Afghan at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who was a
teenager when he came into American hands. The decision was prompted by
Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle of Federal District Court, who last week criticized
the government’s case against the detainee as “an outrage” that was “riddled
with holes.” Judge Huvelle’s comments, made at a hearing in district court in
Washington, were not reported at the time. The detainee, Mohammed
Jawad, has drawn international attention because of questions about his
treatment as one of the youngest prisoners at Guantánamo. Judge Huvelle expressed fury
at the government for “dragging this out for no good reason” after “your case
fell apart,” according to a transcript of the hearing. The federal court case is
becoming a test of how the Obama administration responds to the skepticism
from several federal judges who are reviewing evidence against some of the
remaining 229 detainees at Guantánamo as part of habeas corpus cases. The case against Mr. Jawad
has long been one of the most publicly troubled at Guantánamo. His exact age
is unknown, but a military judge ruled last fall that, while still a
teenager, Mr. Jawad was tortured by Afghan officials before he was turned
over to American forces in 2002 and was later abused at the detention camp at
Guantánamo Bay. Also last fall, the military
prosecutor in a war crimes case against Mr. Jawad on charges of attempted
murder drew wide notice by saying publicly that the evidence was weak and
that he had grave questions about the fairness of the military commission
system for prosecuting detainees. Now, Judge Huvelle has given
the government until the end of the week to tell the court whether it would
produce any witnesses and suggested that she might rule that Mr. Jawad should
be returned to Afghanistan. “You’d better go consult
real quick with the powers that be, because this is a case that’s been
screaming at everybody for years,” Judge Huvelle said. American officials say Mr.
Jawad threw a hand grenade that seriously wounded two American servicemen and
their Afghan translator in an attack in Kabul in 2002. But their claims have
been undermined by the judicial findings that almost all of the evidence
against Mr. Jawad was the confessions he made as a result of torture. Judge Huvelle is handling
the habeas corpus case challenging Mr. Jawad’s imprisonment. Of about 200
habeas cases in the federal court in Washington, judges have so far ruled
that five Guantanamo detainees are properly held and that 26 are not. Jonathan Hafetz, Mr. Jawad’s
lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, said Judge Huvelle’s comments
were an indication that judges were growing uneasy about many of the
government’s claims. “It reflects the pent-up
frustration among judges who have seen first hand the government’s lack of
evidence,” Mr. Hafetz said. Dean Boyd, a spokesman for
the Justice Department, did not respond to that assertion. But he said, “We
are not going to release anyone if it would endanger our national security.” At the hearing last week,
when Justice Department lawyers asked for more time to confer within the
government, Judge Huvelle noted that Mr. Jawad had been held for years
despite questions about his guilt. The Afghan government claims he may have
been as young as 12 when he was first detained. Military records show that
Mr. Jawad was subjected to a sleep deprivation program in which he was moved
from cell to cell 112 times in a 13-day period and that he was isolated,
beaten and kicked by guards at Guantánamo. He attempted suicide in Guantánamo
in 2003. Judge Huvelle’s anger was
prompted by a battle over whether the government planned to use Mr. Jawad’s
confessions as evidence in defending his detention. Until last Wednesday,
Justice Department lawyers had been relying heavily on those statements. Mr. Jawad’s lawyers had
repeatedly noted that in the separate military commission case, the military
judge, Col. Stephen R. Henley, ruled that those statements could not be used
because they had been the product of torture. Judge Henley wrote last year
that Afghan officials had threatened to kill Mr. Jawad and his family if he
did not confess to the grenade attack. Judge Henley also ruled that
confessions Mr. Jawad had given hours later to American interrogators in
Afghanistan also could not be used against him because they were the product
of what he called torture by the Afghan officials. Still, since this spring,
Justice Department lawyers continued to cite the confessions as evidence in
the case before Judge Huvelle. Last week, they abruptly said they would not
oppose a request by Mr. Jawad’s lawyers that Judge Huvelle, too, bar the use
of those confessions. In his comments Wednesday,
Mr. Boyd, the Justice Department spokesman, said the Obama administration
made “a dramatic break with the policies of the past” by deciding not to rely
on statements obtained through torture, including in Mr. Jawad’s case. He did
not comment on why the department had based its case on those statements for
months. Last week, Judge Huvelle
demanded to know what the administration claimed as evidence against Mr.
Jawad, saying that 90 percent of the case had been based on his confessions.
“There is no evidence otherwise,” she said. Mr. Jawad’s military lawyer,
Maj. David J. R. Frakt of the Air Force Reserve, said that as many as three
adults had also confessed to the grenade attack but that they were not in
custody. Judge Huvelle noted that the
military prosecutor who publicly raised questions about the case said he had
failed to find other persuasive evidence. The prosecutor, Lt. Col.
Darrel Vandeveld, an Army Reserve officer, was transferred after his public comments
and is no longer on active duty. In an interview, Colonel
Vandeveld said he doubted that the government could find any credible witness
who would claim to have seen Mr. Jawad throw the hand grenade. He added that his concerns
about any case against Mr. Jawad were not based on technicalities but on an
opinion he had developed working to convict Mr. Jawad. “The evidence suggests to
me,” Colonel Vandeveld said, “that he is not guilty.” Copyright 2009 The New York
Times Company External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/us/23gitmo.html |