As Judge Orders Release Of Tortured Guantánamo Prisoner, Government Refuses To Concede Defeat
31.7.09
On Thursday, in a long-anticipated ruling (PDF), Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle granted the habeas corpus petition of Mohamed Jawad, an Afghan teenager seized after a grenade attack on a jeep containing two US soldiers and an Afghan translator in December 2002, and ordered the government to transfer him to the custody of the Afghan authorities, who have already stated that he will be released on arrival.
Even if the government accepts Judge Huvelle’s ruling, Jawad will not be released immediately, because, under the terms of legislation recently forced on the government by Congress, the administration will have to provide lawmakers with “an assessment of any risk to the national security” posed by Jawad before he can be freed, which, it said, would take 22 days.
However, even as Judge Huvelle delivered her ruling, the government announced that it has not entirely given up on Jawad’s case. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Ian Gershengorn told the court that the government was still deciding whether to pursue a criminal case against Jawad, meaning that he could, conceivably, be transferred to the US mainland to stand trial in a federal court.
At Thursday’s ruling, Judge Huvelle acknowledged that the government had the right to file a criminal case, and gave lawyers three weeks to do so, but she urged them not to take this course of action. “After this horrible, long, tortured history, I hope the government will succeed in getting him back home,” she said. “Enough has been imposed on this young man to date.”
These may seem like harsh words, but they are nothing compared to the sustained scorn that Judge Huvelle poured on the government’s case in a hearing two weeks ago, and for those who have studied Jawad’s case in any detail, they are entirely appropriate, as the case against Jawad first collapsed nine months ago. It would not be an exaggeration to state that, if the Justice Department and the Defense Department decide to proceed with a criminal prosecution, it will demonstrate not only that they have, collectively, taken leave of their senses, but also that no one in a position of responsibility — President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder or defense secretary Robert Gates — has either the courage or the awareness to step in to prevent a clear message being sent out to the world that, far from addressing the excesses of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror,” the Obama administration is, instead, pursuing exactly the kind of cruel, unjust and incompetent policies that would bring a smile to the lips of former Vice President Dick Cheney.
To understand the significance of the decision facing the government, it is important to understand that the case against Jawad was always tenuous, as I reported in October 2007, when he was first put forward for a trial by Military Commission (the “terror trials” introduced by Dick Cheney in November 2001, and revived by Congress in 2006, after the Supreme Court ruled them illegal), and that it unraveled spectacularly last September, when the prosecutor in his proposed trial, Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, resigned.
Stating that he had once been a “true believer,” but had ended up feeling “truly deceived,” Lt. Col. Vandeveld explained, as I described it in an article two months ago, that he had come to regard the Commissions as “a dysfunctional system, which, both through accident and design, prevented the disclosure of evidence essential to the defense, thereby ensuring that no fair trial was possible.” He also “described how evidence proving that Jawad was a juvenile at the time of his capture, that he was tricked into joining an insurgent group and was drugged before the attack, and that two other men had confessed to the crime, had been deliberately suppressed.”
If a shred of credibility remained in the case, this dissolved in October and November, when, on two separate occasions, Jawad’s military judge, Army Col. Stephen Henley, ruled that the crux of the government’s case against Jawad — two “confessions” made on the day of his capture, the first in Afghan custody, and the second, just hours later, in US custody — were inadmissible because they had been obtained through treatment that constituted torture.
As I explained in my article two months ago,
On October 28 … [Col.] Henley found that there was “reason to believe Jawad was under the influence of drugs at the time of his capture and forced confession,” and also “accepted the accused’s account of how he was threatened, while armed senior Afghan officials allied with US forces watched his interrogation.” He stated that he believed Jawad’s account of an interrogator telling him, “You will be killed if you do not confess to the grenade attack. We will arrest your family and kill them if you do not confess.” He also made a point of stating that he was accepting Jawad’s account because the government had failed to provide “timely disclosure of evidence” for his trial, which was scheduled to begin on January 5, 2009. […]
Three weeks later, Col. Henley dealt another blow to the prosecution’s case by ruling that a second confession, made in US custody the day after his Afghan confession, was also inadmissible, because “the US interrogator used techniques to maintain ‘the shock and fearful state’ associated with his arrest by Afghan police, including blindfolding him and placing a hood over his head.” As Col. Henley explained in his ruling, “The military commission concludes the effect of the death threats which produced the accused’s first confession to the Afghan police had not dissipated by the second confession to the US. In other words, the subsequent confession was itself the product of the preceding death threats.”
When Col. Henley excluded Jawad’s first confession, Lt. Col. Vandeveld responded by stating that it was “among the most important evidence for his upcoming war crimes trial,” and adding, “To me, the case is not only eviscerated, it is now impossible to prosecute with any credibility.”
This really should have been the end of the whole sordid story, and Jawad should have been put on a plane and sent back to Afghanistan, but this didn’t happen, and, although Barack Obama suspended the Military Commissions for four months on his arrival in the White House on January 20, 2009, Jawad’s habeas corpus petition — one of hundreds allowed to proceed after a momentous Supreme Court ruling last June — reached a US District Court around the same time, accompanied by an even more scathing statement by Lt. Col. Vandeveld.
In an unparalleled dissection of the failures of the Military Commission system — and, in a wider sense, of the gathering of evidence in connection with the cases of all the Guantánamo prisoners — Lt. Col. Vandeveld described at length the “chaotic” state of the Prosecutors’ Office, and explained how he had discovered previously hidden evidence relating to Jawad’s abuse at Bagram and in Guantánamo, where he was subjected to a sleep deprivation program, which involved moving prisoners from cell to cell every few hours (over a two-week period, in Jawad’s case) and was known, euphemistically, as the “frequent flier program.” He also noted that Jawad’s continued detention was “something beyond a travesty,” and stated that he “should be released to resume his life in civil society, for his sake, and for our own sense of justice and perhaps to restore a measure of our basic humanity.”
A relative of Mohamed Jawad holds up photos of Jawad, taken just before his capture.
Given the glacial pace of most of the habeas reviews — primarily because of obstruction by the Justice Department, where officials have been behaving as though George W. Bush was still in power and Dick Cheney was still breathing down their necks — it took until June for Jawad’s case to reach a point where Judge Huvelle could finally confront the shattered remnants of the government’s supposed evidence. On that occasion, she indicated that the government would be in for a bumpy ride, declaring, “This case has been so thoroughly examined that it may be the one and only case not to be so difficult. This case is ready to go.”
However, few observers were prepared for the torrent of derision that Judge Huvelle subjected the government to just two weeks ago. In a 30-minute hearing on July 16 (PDF), Judge Huvelle’s patience was stretched to breaking point when the government responded to her ruling that every other confession made by Jawad at Guantánamo would also be excluded not by contesting the ruling (or, as would have made sense, by dropping the case outright), but by pleading that it needed more time to decide whether it could still build a case for a possible trial in federal court, or in a new Military Commission, based on what it described as new inculpatory evidence unearthed during a search of records.
Judge Huvelle’s criticisms were so sustained, and so damning of the government’s inability to recognize that it had no case, that I’m reproducing detailed excerpts in a separate article, but to pick out a few highlights, she repeatedly stressed that the government did not have a single reliable witness, and that the case was “lousy,” “in trouble,” “unbelievable,” and “riddled with holes.”
She also insisted that the government should have known that it had no case when Jawad’s proposed trial by Military Commission effectively collapsed last November, and repeatedly expressed her fears that the administration was planning some kind of underhand treachery to prevent her from granting Jawad’s habeas petition, stating, at one point, “I’m not going to wait to grant a habeas until you gear up a military commission. That’s what I’m afraid of. Let him out. Send him back to Afghanistan.” On another occasion, she stated, “If they [the government] think for one minute that I am going to delay this thing so they can come up with some other alternative to going forward with the habeas and pull this rug from under the Court at the last minute by saying, oh, he is going to the Southern District of New York, don’t bother — or whatever idea you come up with.”
To my mind, the very fact that a judge in a US District Court can, genuinely, fear that the government will attempt to usurp her authority spells out, succinctly, the dangers of the place in which the Obama administration finds itself, as it attempts to clear up the mess inherited from George W. Bush. I still have no firm idea why Obama and Holder have allowed the Justice Department to pursue unjustifiable and unwinnable cases in the habeas litigation, resulting, over the last few months, in humiliation after humiliation, first in the case of Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed, then in the case of Abdul Rahim al-Ginco, a young Syrian who was tortured by al-Qaeda, and now in the case of Mohamed Jawad.
However, it’s conceivable that, in its desire to fully comprehend the cases — and to “own” them, if you like — the administration has poured all its energies into the inter-departmental Task Force that is currently halfway through reviewing all the Guantánamo prisoners’ cases. This is, perhaps, understandable, but by neglecting to cast a genuinely critical eye on the habeas litigation, senior officials are committing three unforgivable errors:
- firstly, they are treating the judiciary with scorn, even though the habeas litigation began five years ago on the orders of the Supreme Court, and the District Courts are, moreover, the only genuinely open forum for discussion of the Guantánamo cases;
- secondly, they are demonstrating that, whatever fine words they may utter, they are, in practice, cleaving to the Bush administration’s insanely broad detention policies regarding “enemy combatants,” and are effectively failing to distinguish between genuine terrorist suspects (al-Qaeda) and low-level fighters in an inter-Muslim civil war that preceded 9/11 and had nothing to do with it (recruits for the Taliban);
- and thirdly, by failing to understand how little “evidence” is actually credible, because it is the product of the dubious interrogations of other prisoners, or of intelligence procedures, designed to produce a “mosaic” of intelligence, which, in reality, cannot stand up to independent scrutiny, they are repeatedly pursuing cases that only end up embarrassing or humiliating the government, and are, yet again, reinforcing notions that they are essentially happy with the Bush administration’s unprecedented and unforgivable decision to create a category of prisoner that is neither a prisoner of war nor a criminal suspect.
The response to these errors is the same as it should have been on Day One of the Obama administration, when many of us thought that real change was coming: speed up the habeas cases; focus solely on issues relating to acts of terrorism or genuine support for terrorism; abandon every other case, especially those that look dubious or unwinnable; and prepare federal court trials for those regarded as genuinely dangerous, in the knowledge that federal courts have a proven track record of successful terrorist prosecutions, and that no jury will fail to convict if any real evidence is presented.
In addition, the administration needs to swear that, in future, anyone seized in wartime or in connection with terrorism will be treated either as a prisoner of war, protected by the Geneva Conventions, or as a criminal suspect, to be prosecuted in a federal court, so that “lousy” and “unbelievable” cases like that of Mohamed Jawad become a thing of the past, consigned to history as securely as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and all the other architects of the unprecedented flight from the law that was initiated in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed, and also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009.
As published on the Huffington Post, CounterPunch, Antiwar.com and ZNet. Cross-posted on Common Dreams and uruknet.
For a sequence of articles dealing with the Guantánamo habeas cases, see: Guantánamo and the Supreme Court: the most important habeas corpus case in modern history and Guantánamo and the Supreme Court: What Happened? (both December 2007), The Supreme Court’s Guantánamo ruling: what does it mean? (June 2008), Guantánamo as Alice in Wonderland (Uighurs’ first court victory, June 2008), What’s Happening with the Guantánamo cases? (July 2008), Government Says Six Years Is Not Long Enough To Prepare Evidence (September 2008), From Guantánamo to the United States: The Story of the Wrongly Imprisoned Uighurs (October 2008), Guantánamo Uyghurs’ resettlement prospects skewered by Justice Department lies (October 2008), Guilt By Torture: Binyam Mohamed’s Transatlantic Quest for Justice (November 2008), After 7 Years, Judge Orders Release of Guantánamo Kidnap Victims (November 2008), Is Robert Gates Guilty of Perjury in Guantánamo Torture Case? (December 2008), A New Year Message to Barack Obama: Free the Guantánamo Uighurs (January 2009), The Top Ten Judges of 2008 (January 2009), No End in Sight for the “Enemy Combatants” of Guantánamo (January 2009), Judge Orders Release of Guantánamo’s Forgotten Child (January 2009), How Cooking For The Taliban Gets You Life In Guantánamo (January 2009), Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics (February 2009), Bad News And Good News For The Guantánamo Uighurs (February 2009), The Nobodies Formerly Known As Enemy Combatants (March 2009), Farce at Guantánamo, as cleared prisoner’s habeas petition is denied (April 2009), Obama’s First 100 Days: A Start On Guantánamo, But Not Enough (May 2009), Judge Condemns “Mosaic” Of Guantánamo Intelligence, And Unreliable Witnesses (May 2009), Pain At Guantánamo And Paralysis In Government (May 2009), Guantánamo: A Prison Built On Lies (May 2009), Free The Guantánamo Uighurs! (May 2009), Guantánamo And The Courts (Part One): Exposing The Bush Administration’s Lies (July 2009), Obama’s Failure To Deliver Justice To The Last Tajik In Guantánamo (July 2009), Obama And The Deadline For Closing Guantánamo: It’s Worse Than You Think (July 2009), How Judge Huvelle Humiliated The Government In Guantánamo Case (Mohamed Jawad, July 2009), Guantánamo As Hotel California: You Can Check Out Any Time You Like, But You Can Never Leave (August 2009), Judge Orders Release From Guantánamo Of Kuwaiti Charity Worker (August 2009). Also see: Justice extends to Bagram, Guantánamo’s Dark Mirror (April 2009), Judge Rules That Afghan “Rendered” To Bagram In 2002 Has No Rights (July 2009).
Who's still at Guantánamo?
34 Responses
Andy Worthington says...
So here’s an interesting comment from RumiSouth on the Huffington Post:
“I still have no firm idea why Obama and Holder have allowed the Justice Department to pursue unjustifiable and unwinnable cases in the habeas litigation, resulting, over the last few months, in humiliation after humiliation”
A theory:
Take a step back and look at this from the purely political perspective. Dismissing charges and setting people free is a recipe for a century of neocon historical revisionism. Letting the process continue until there is no way to hold these prisoners has a completely different result: the utter repudiation of the Cheney Doctrine in legal theory and historical fact without the stain of political interference.
Like I said, it’s just theory.
...on July 31st, 2009 at 10:31 pm
Andy Worthington says...
This was my reply:
It’s a good theory, and there may well be some truth to it, but it doesn’t make it any less agonizing to watch it in practice!
What will be interesting will be to see how the habeas process works in conjunction with the review being undertaken by Obama’s Task Force, and this may also back up your theory that the administration will leave the majority of the decisions to the courts, so that it can wash its hands of all responsibility. So far, for example, the Task Force has cleared 50+ prisoners for release, but it appears that the overwhelming majority of those prisoners were already approved for release by military review boards convened under the Bush administration, which gets the administration off the hook again.
...on July 31st, 2009 at 10:32 pm
Andy Worthington says...
In a similar vein, TRYKER wrote:
Two things come to mind when reading of these matters. One, there are still a lot of Bushies pushing buttons and pulling strings in the Justice Dept.
Two, the Obama govt is letting these matters go all the way…in order to have on record the judge’s decisions outlining the illegality of the whole mess. All the better for future prosecution of the Bushies.
Unfortunately the poor guys held in Gitmo seem to matter not-at-all when the timetable runs on indefinitely yr after yr.
Send these poor men home with an honest settlement of cash to start their lives over and many countries would be clamoring to take them…its all about the money now.
...on July 31st, 2009 at 10:34 pm
Andy Worthington says...
PWM wrote:
Either we are a nation of laws or we are not.
Let the man go and the ruling of the court stand.
...on July 31st, 2009 at 10:35 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Billy Hell wrote:
The words “Kangaroo Court” come to mind. Whatever happened to independence of the judiciary? Congress seems to be saying because it makes the laws, it has the right to impose an interpretation on a judgment.
One of the tenets of good judicial governance is that justice must be swift. That impinges on another that justice must be seen to be done. Both of these go crashing down in this case, with the length of time this boy has been held. The nature of his treatment in captivity is another issue and illustrates man’s inhumanity to man…animalistic behavior.
He’ll be kept in prison indefinitely under the pretext he’d revert to “terrorism”. What seems to be ignored entirely is one’s patriotic right and in fact obligation to defend and resist foreign invasion and occupation. How can that be a crime? The crime is that of the invader and all atrocities and injury, no matter by which party, has its cause in the invasion.
...on July 31st, 2009 at 10:36 pm
Andy Worthington says...
And here’s another interesting comment. from Obedient Servant on Common Dreams:
http://www.democracynow.org/
In their first extended interview, the parents of John Walker Lindh, Marilyn Walker and Frank Lindh, join us for the hour to tell their son’s story.
_________________________________
I was particularly primed for Worthington’s article after watching this program at noon.
I think concepts like “future shock” and “compassion fatigue” have merit; having been overwhelmed by the surfeit of atrocities perpetrated by our government this century, I find it harder to retain details of even the most publicized cases.
By which I meantersay, I thought I “knew” the John Walker Lindh story, such that I almost turned off the TV after the news summary. Fortunately, my laziness in failing to hit the off button revealed the laziness in my assumption.
I don’t intend, or need, to summarize the details of this horror story. If one needs to refresh one’s recollection, use the link. I just want to report that being walked through the sordid details forcefully reminded me that Lindh is surely a political prisoner subjected to undue, vicious, barbaric, terroristic treatment by US authorities, which is perpetuated by his sham sentence.
I previously referenced the concept in jurisprudence that if any part of witness testimony is incontrovertibly proven false or unreliable, that the tryer of fact is free to reject all of the testimony.
I extended that logic to suggest that the US government has collectively impeached its credibility due to its extensive record of structural and systematic prevarication and deceit.
Put another way: generally, the Law is very careful to compartmentalize case-by-case judgements; that’s why a jury isn’t allowed to know about the other ten rapes the defendant was arrested for when considering whether he is guilty of the one for which he’s on trial.
But outside the special circumstances of a trial, discerning and thoughful, not to say skeptical, persons normally take notice of patterns of conduct and extrapolate conclusions from such patterns.
Here, I don’t need no stinkin’ statistician to tell me that the cases reported on by Worthington and a few others, like the Lindh case, are NOT good-faith EXCEPTIONS to the rule; they are the rule.
Likewise, I’m offended by the collective punishment embedded in HYPOTHETICALS: “probabilities” that purport to defend the status quo or provide a “reasonable” basis for continued detention based on guesswork and worst-case scenarios.
So I feel no compunction in stating that I would be perfectly “comfortable” if the Bastilles were unlocked and ALL inmates freed. The “pragmatic” approach of piling wrong upon wrong for the ostensible purpose of making things right must be rejected wholly and decisively.
Since virtues like honor, personal integrity, and courage are vitiated in our present amoral and technobarbaric politics, expect no “leadership” in confronting the dreadful truth that “The Worst of the Worst” are not hiding in caves in Afghanistan, or hidden away by cruel and malevolent captors in Supermax cells and isolated “Communication Management Unit”s. They’re sitting in leather chairs inside marbled moral sepulchres in Washington DC.
Or maybe I’m just wrapped a little too tight today, and my man Obama will settle all this by inviting the detainees up to the White House for Sunday brunch and a refreshing brewski.
I hope they have a Kids’ Menu.
· Yr Obd’t Servant
...on July 31st, 2009 at 10:42 pm
As Judge Orders Release Of Tortured Guantánamo Prisoner, Government Refuses To Concede Defeat by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] by Andy Worthington Featured Writer Dandelion Salad http://www.andyworthington.co.uk 31 July 2009 […]
...on August 1st, 2009 at 4:07 am
How Judge Huvelle Humiliated The Government In Guantánamo Case by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] Thursday, as I reported in a separate article, “As Judge Orders Release Of Tortured Guantánamo Prisoner, Government Refuses To Concede Defeat,” District Court Judge Ellen Segan Huvelle granted the habeas corpus petition of Mohamed Jawad, […]
...on August 1st, 2009 at 4:29 am
mui says...
I wish the ACLU hadn’t declared this a victory on their site. They should have qualified: federal judge orders release of juvenile gitmo prisoner, BUT battle not yet won, and here’s why: Obama, congress.
...on August 3rd, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Mui. Although in the ACLU’s defense, I suspect that they declared victory as part of an attempt to persuade the administration not to proceed with any more challenges.
Jawad will hopefully receive some very good news in the next few weeks …
...on August 4th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
susanphall says...
When I began to realize how lawless, ruthless and barbaric President Bush’s administration was, I thought about how President Washington had not wanted the new nation to have a President because he feared it would be another word for KING. I’m sure if he and President Adams were alive today they would realize that something has happened to the US to make it become a country for the powerful with limited to no rights for the vulnerable. Perhaps there is a group or someone behind these presidential administrations with more power (such as the generals, the weapons corporations or the oil companies). Although it is a wonderful idea to have an African American President, he is certainly no better than his predecessor so far. Cynthia McKinney, the people from Link TV, and Andy Worthington have made a bigger difference for present day justice than Mr. Obama as President. I have been trying to write letters to send to the congressman and the senators about doing what they can to release these poor tortured individuals & I would like to do more. I want the world to know, (as Walter Cronkite reminded us about the Germans during the holocaust, that not knowing is not an excuse) I am using my voice to say I want no part of such cruel, illegal and dictatorship type activity of torturing and locking people up in secret or off shore prisons with no due process and for decades knowing some are innocent and some are still children.
Susan Hall
...on August 6th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
susanphall says...
Whoops-left out a few words & left out the “d” in Andy Worthington’s name. I’m sorry and may I say I admire and am grateful for Andy Worthington’s work.
Susan Hall
...on August 6th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Hi Susan,
Great to hear from you. I made corrections to your comments as I thought appropriate (I was wondering who this Any Worthington was!).
On a more serious note, I appreciate your heartfelt analysis of the betrayal of the United States’ founding values. Personally, I wouldn’t include the generals in the list of culprits, as it seems to me that they follow orders rather than making the rules (although they don’t always implement their decisions very well, of course), but I think you’re dead right about the weapons corporations and the oil companies — and the list goes on: financial institutions, health providers …
However, I think another problem is with the politicians themselves, with too many vested interests to allow for any kind of significant change.
Hoping to hear from you again.
Best,
Andy
...on August 6th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Guantánamo And The Courts (Part Three): Obama’s Continuing Shame by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] place in which the Obama administration finds itself,” and although Judge Huvelle proceeded to grant Jawad’s habeas petition, and it is likely that he will soon be returned to Afghanistan, the Justice Department continues to […]
...on August 18th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Reflections On Mohamed Jawad’s Release From Guantánamo by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] his lawyers’ discovery in May that Jawad may have been as young as 12 when he was first seized, the savage denunciation of the government’s case that was delivered by Judge Ellen Segan Huvelle during his habeas corpus hearing in July, when she […]
...on September 5th, 2009 at 12:34 am
Andy Worthington Discusses Guantánamo And Bagram On Antiwar Radio « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] military defense attorney for Mohammed Jawad, an Afghan prisoner released in August after a judge granted his habeas corpus petition and condemned the government for having no […]
...on October 7th, 2009 at 1:46 am
Lawyer Blasts “Congressional Depravity” On Guantánamo by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] on the experience of Mohammed Jawad — just one of the 30 prisoners (out of 38 in total) whose release has been ordered by a judge after finding that the government had failed to establish, “by a preponderance of the […]
...on October 9th, 2009 at 11:28 am
Rep. Jerrold Nadler and David Frakt on Obama’s Three-Tier Justice System For Guantánamo by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] It is my understanding that at a hearing this morning the judge, in fact, ordered his release. […]
...on November 21st, 2009 at 7:13 am
Innocent Guantánamo Torture Victim Fouad al-Rabiah Is Released In Kuwait « freedetainees.org says...
[…] been exposed by the judges, as well as other examples of cases that “defie[d] common sense” or exposed the use of torture, but until al-Rabiah’s case was examined, the existence of a clear chain of torture and threats […]
...on December 12th, 2009 at 6:40 am
“Model Prisoner” at Guantánamo, Tortured in the “Dark Prison,” Loses Habeas Corpus Petition « freedetainees.org says...
[…] 2009), How Judge Huvelle Humiliated The Government In Guantánamo Case (Mohamed Jawad, July 2009), As Judge Orders Release Of Tortured Guantánamo Prisoner, Government Refuses To Concede Defeat (Mohamed Jawad, July 2009), Guantánamo As Hotel California: You Can Check Out Any Time You Like, […]
...on December 16th, 2009 at 6:26 am
Daily Dispatch: Health Care Hairball - Dec 21, 2009 - Gold Speculator says...
[…] to advocate much the same policies. While there are many examples one could point to quizzically, the case of Mohamed Jawad, an Afghan teenager who was captured and charged with tossing a grenade at a U.S. jeep during the […]
...on December 21st, 2009 at 11:49 pm
Bagram: Graveyard of the Geneva Conventions « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] since August 2007 have ended up. The one exception is Mohamed Jawad, released last August, who won his habeas corpus petition in a US court, but the other 45 have been subjected to equally opaque policies regarding their […]
...on February 6th, 2010 at 1:13 am
Torture Whitewash: How “Professional Misconduct” Became “Poor Judgment” in the OPR Report « freedetainees.org says...
[…] Jawad (June 2009), Torture In Guantánamo: The Force-feeding Of Hunger Strikers (June 2009), As Judge Orders Release Of Tortured Guantánamo Prisoner, Government Refuses To Concede Defeat (Mohamed Jawad, July 2009), Torture And Futility: Is This The End Of The Military Commissions At […]
...on February 24th, 2010 at 1:57 am
The Black Hole of Guantánamo by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] and six lost. Those who won included a Syrian who had been tortured by al-Qaeda as a spy, an Afghan (also a child at the time of capture) whose confessions were tainted by threats of torture, and a Kuwaiti businessman who had been […]
...on March 3rd, 2010 at 10:18 pm
Abu Zubaydah’s Torture Diary « freedetainees.org says...
[…] Jawad (June 2009), Torture In Guantánamo: The Force-feeding Of Hunger Strikers (June 2009), As Judge Orders Release Of Tortured Guantánamo Prisoner, Government Refuses To Concede Defeat (Mohamed Jawad, July 2009), Torture And Futility: Is This The End Of The Military Commissions At […]
...on March 15th, 2010 at 7:39 pm
New Book: The Guantánamo Lawyers – and a talk by Jonathan Hafetz by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] Judge Ellen Huvelle in Mohammed Jawad’s case, before ordering Jawad’s release from illegal detention: “[S]even years and your case is […]
...on March 26th, 2010 at 2:38 am
AWorthington: Guantanamo Habeas Results, Prisoners 34 – Government 13 « On Now says...
[…] WON: Mohamed Jawad (Afghanistan, ISN 900) Released August 2009. For my analysis of the ruling, see: As Judge Orders Release Of Tortured Guantánamo Prisoner, Government Refuses To Concede Defeat. Also see: How Judge Huvelle Humiliated The Government In Guantánamo Case. For Judge Ellen […]
...on April 20th, 2010 at 2:54 pm
No Surprise at Obama’s Guantánamo Trial Chaos | Dark Politricks says...
[…] was delivered by Lt. Col. David Frakt, the military defense attorney for two Guantánamo prisoners, Mohamed Jawad (released last August) and Ali Hamza al-Bahlul. (who received a life sentence after a one-sided […]
...on September 3rd, 2010 at 2:32 pm
No Surprise at Obama’s Guantánamo Trial Chaos | NW0.eu says...
[…] was delivered by Lt. Col. David Frakt, the military defense attorney for two Guantánamo prisoners, Mohamed Jawad (released last August) and Ali Hamza al-Bahlul. (who received a life sentence after a one-sided […]
...on December 17th, 2010 at 8:46 am
WikiLeaks And The 22 Children Of Guantanamo says...
[…] that his confessions had been extracted through torture, and his prosecutor resigned, and he then won his habeas corpus petition in July […]
...on June 22nd, 2011 at 6:20 am
The Full List of Prisoners Charged in the Military Commissions at Guantánamo | MasterAdrian's Weblog says...
[…] inadmissible because they had been obtained through torture and intimidation. In July 2009, he had his habeas corpus petition granted by Judge Ellen Huvelle in the District Court in Washington D.C., and he was repatriated to […]
...on April 2nd, 2014 at 12:12 am
U.S. report condemns CIA harsh interrogations, says did not work - Page 13 - Political Wrinkles says...
[…] […]
...on December 12th, 2014 at 4:45 pm
The Full List of Prisoners Charged in the Military Commissions at Guantánamo | Patriot News II says...
[…] inadmissible because they had been obtained through torture and intimidation. In July 2009, he had his habeas corpus petition granted by Judge Ellen Huvelle in the District Court in Washington D.C., and he was repatriated to […]
...on July 22nd, 2015 at 12:13 pm
Judge Denies Guantanamo Prisoner’s Habeas Petition, Ignores Torture In Secret CIA Prisons - The Constantine Report says...
[…] derailed other habeas petitions challenged by the government — in, for example, the cases of Mohamed Jawad and Fouad al-Rabiah (who were subsequently released), Farhi Saeed bin Mohammed, an Algerian who is […]
...on January 10th, 2023 at 2:13 am