Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
US Admits It has No Case Against Teen Held at Guantanamo
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department conceded Friday that it lacks the evidence to hold a teenage Guantanamo detainee as an enemy combatant after a federal judge last week ruled that his confession was inadmissible.
In this photo, reviewed by the U.S. military, a Guantanamo detainee speaks with guards inside the Camp 6 detention facility at Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in Cuba, May 31, 2009. (REUTERS/Brennan Linsley/Pool)
In a hearing last week, U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle ruled
that Mohammed Jawad's confession to Afghan officials was inadmissible
because it had been extracted through torture. She also questioned
whether the Justice Department had any evidence to proceed with a trial
to determine whether he can be held as an enemy combatant.
Huvelle called the case an "outrage" and told Justice Department lawyers that their case against Jawad had been "gutted."
"Without his statements, I don't understand your case," she told Justice Department lawyers. "Sir, the facts can only get smaller, not bigger. . . . Face it, this case is in trouble. . . . Seven years and this case is riddled with holes."
She then urged the lawyers to "let him out. Send him back to Afghanistan."
Department lawyers, however, signaled they may bring him to the U.S. for a criminal trial.
The lawyers asked a judge to delay Jawad's immediate release to allow criminal investigators to review allegations that he threw a grenade at soldiers. A Justice Department spokesman said late Friday that Attorney General Eric Holder has ordered the investigation be "expedited."
In a statement issued Friday, Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said the department had to determine whether it has enough evidence to prosecute him in criminal court.
Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer with the ACLU's National Security Project, was skeptical that the government could come up with new evidence to prosecute Jawad in federal court.
"They're simply trying to manufacture new ways to prolong his detention," he said.
The Justice Department's case against Jawad, whom Afghan officials say was captured when he was just 12 years old, underscores the difficulties the U.S. government faces in justifying its continued imprisonment of Guantanamo detainees.
President Barack Obama ordered the closure of Guantanamo by January, but the administration has struggled to come up with a way to either release or try detainees.
A task force convened by Obama to review Guantanamo cases considered Jawad's case and referred him for possible prosecution, Boyd said.
He added that prosecutors have also reviewed statements by an eyewitness that was "not previously made available to the court."
Boyd didn't elaborate on what that evidence entailed. If the judge refuses to grant more time for the criminal investigation, however, the Justice Department said it would need several weeks to prepare his transfer back to Afghanistan.
Last year, a military judge determined that Afghan police threatened Jawad's family while he was undergoing interrogation at a Kabul police station. The judge also concluded there was evidence that Jawad was under the influence of drugs at the time of his capture and forced confession.
''You will be killed if you do not confess to the grenade attack,'' the detainee quoted an interrogator as saying. "We will arrest your family and kill them if you do not confess.''
- Posted in
18 Comments so far
Show AllSo a Judge said to let the boy go, but they wont.
I have been waiting for the supreme court to make the Patriot Acts illegal for one simple reason, balance of power.
By allowing the Patriot Acts to over rule the constitution , our judiciary system has been weekend.
They can no longer judge based on rule of law, the Patriot Acts are the law.
So when will it stop, when lawyers ,Senators, congressmen, wealthy men , corporations , start to fall victim to the Patriot acts.
And it will happen, as the stazi spy rat snitch network grows,and it is growing, they will have to start spying on people who have money. All the small fish will be caught, and they will have gotten bored because the busts are minor.
But the big boys with money, they will become high value spy targets, they have plenty to loose.
The more money you have , the more involved you will be.
Warrant less surveillance will transfer power from the haves to the have nots.
Self destruction by the stupid arrogant wealthy in an effort to control the masses. The masses will end up in charge as the spy network grows out of control.
I am a dumb ass, and I can see it happening.
That isn't a path for the masses assuming control. It's a path for power to shift from the wealthy corrupt to the corrupt aspiring to be wealthy. The stazi never represent the people.
Sandy
We have a new administration, but the policies have not changed. Obama even has his own war now- Pakistan. I remember when I stopped looking at Bush on TV because all I saw was the face of torture and death and lies. Obama has the same effect.
How sick can a Government be? The only change I see between Bush and Obama is rtheir color. Bush is yellow, Obama is black.
The combined arrogance and depravity of Jawad's incarceration underscores the fact that the United States government, the military justice system, and the tentacled military itself have lost what little honor and credibility it once may have had.
Such things are to be expected when we allow Neo-Nazi skinheads to openly tout their bigotry while still on active duty. And it is further exacerbated when the system allows the military Christian fundamentalists to openly proseletyze their beliefs to not only recruits, but also to the inhabitants of the lands the US military now occupies - both of which are strictly forbidden by military regulation. And who has gone to jail?
And who have we punished for these crimes? Where are the prosecutions for those that tortured Jawad? Maher Arar? Where are the prosecutions of the people who actually killed detainees, unarmed detainees? Some of them have actually been labeled as homicides - yet not one prosecution of the killers.
This insanity will persist because this country must look outward, it must seek adventure and domination, it must seek control elsewhere - and it is because there is no soul left here at home. If we truly looked inward we would be both horrified and disillusioned, and above all, an empire cannot bear the proof of disillusionment. It cannot bear introspection and true and honest self-analysis. If it were to seek such a route it would have to admit to the world the hollowness of its logic, describe the greed that drives it outward, admit to the paranoia that propels all empires in their search for both victims and control. If we now sought such a route - this government would fall, and those now in power would lose dominion, and status, and in all likelihood - their freedom and possibly their lives. I won't hold my breath for such revelations.
odoco July 25th, 2009 9:07 am........ "If we now sought such a route - this government would fall, and those now in power would lose dominion, and status, and in all likelihood - their freedom and possibly their lives......."
When the truth of 9/11 is revealed as a result of NYC CAN in November's NYC referendum, the government may come close to collapse. If this is what it takes to cleanse this institution of the vermin that have taken countless lives and caused endless misery, SO BE IT.
Do not be surprised if another false flag occurs prior to the possibility of this referendum...too much power and too many citizens unaware of what is really happening.
The powers that have taken over, will never go quietly. BUT, truth and sanity will eventually prevail. They will consume themselves with their own greed and cowardice.
Please support NYC CAN. It may well be our final opportunity to expose 9/11 and return some form of justice and dignity to this torn apart country.
Seven years in prison since he was twelve years old. They stole his youth. A confession gained through torture of a twelve year old. They stole his dignity and innocence. We illegally invaded his country and he was doing what any of us would do (if it is true that he tossed a grenade at soldiers)...defended his country from invaders. The judge said let him go. If the Patriot Act over-rides our system of justice, why bother at all with the prodeedings?
Our country has been invaded and taken over by an unidentified shadow regime. What are we doing?
odoco
Most are doing nothing except wallowing in their self-prescribed state of either ignornace or denial. And that is exactly how the system is set up to work.
Solutions?
Well said "E". If our country's MSM had any sort of responsible journalism, this issue would have been brought up long ago and resolved through public outrage. However MSM's lack of reporting is a form of collusion with those in power.
This is another act that belongs in the "Museum of Disgraceful US Policies and Supporters"
Does anyone doubt that this and other detainee cases will make their way to the Supreme Court for further determinations on the limits of executive power in these cases? And did anyone, I mean anyone, think to ask the grinning Cheshire cat Sotomayor what might be her position on the general issue of whether "activist judges" could put restraints on the President? With a court on a 5-4 divided seesaw, her elevation to the Court could very likely land the Court on one side or the other of preserving the Constitution. I don't want to say I told you so before the "so" has even happened, but I've been saying in numerous posts for the last couple of months that the people of the U.S. have just one shot---the confirmation process---for input on whether we will keep the Constitution as anything more than the "quaint" doctrine a Bush lawyer described it as being. Looks like we've already blown that chance.
deleted
I think the entire Bush administration should put in seven years in GITMO or Abu Ghraib
The media was a lot like that kid. You were put under fear by the Bush/Cheney nazi regime and had to give up the freedom of speach. Or lose the job you had spent so much time and money to achieve. Bush and Cheney and their cabal totally destroyed this country in every way possible. Obama and do nothing Eric Holder need to get a life, and do their jobs. Bring the war criminals to trial.
thank you, Obama voters. Worse than Bush in civil liberties.
After the FISA vote, there was no excuse for voting for him.
I believe the u.s. is the first country in history to claim the right to invade other countries, and claim further that if anyone tries to fight back, to defend his country against the invaders, they can be arrested and tried as some kind of criminal. we can therefore claim the title of most cowardly country.
in international law child soldiers are victims, and cannot be prosecuted as perpetrators.
the relentless, endless prosecution of guys like Mohammed is one of the most revolting legacies of cheneybush justice. for the obama justice dept. to insist on perpetuating this monstrosity is worse.
No, it has been done before - by the Americans, but also by others.
Think of the current and recent Israeli oppression of its neighbors, the Nazi entry into Czechoslovakia and Poland and so forth, the Japanese attempt to create the Pan-Asian Prosperity Sphere at the start of WWII, "white man's burden" in general all over the world.
The excuses go on and on. One population calls another unfit for sovereign rule because of their color, their language, the bumps on their head, the width of the bridge of their nose, the word they use for "God," or some detail of their marital relations.
They have had seven years to build a case... it hasn't happened. We must stop the war crimes!
One more thing: the boy is held because there is no case against him, not despite it.
At this point, all or almost all the detainees of the gulag are held because no case exists against them, not despite it, regardless of their original guilt or innocence.
They have been illegally held and tortured over a course of years. Folks, this is no simple Miranda Warning violation. This is the rough equivalent of the czars' or Stalin's Siberia.
They hold the detainees because no case exists against them.