Jawad is an Afghan citizen who, in late 2002, was taken into U.S. custody and then shipped from Afghanistan, his home country, to Guantanamo, where he has remained ever since -- more than six full years and counting. Nobody has ever accused Jawad of belonging either to Al Qaeda or the Taliban. Instead, he is accused of throwing a hand grenade at two U.S. soldiers inside his country, seriously injuring both of them. He vehemently denies involvement. At the time of his due-process-less imprisonment in Guantanamo, he was an adolescent: between 15 and 17 years old…posted by designbot at 7:35 AM on January 21, 2009 [7 favorites]
Suffice to say, Jawad's chief prosecutor at Guantanamo -- the Bronze-Star-recipient Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, who since 9/11 has served in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia and Africa -- became so repelled by the treatment to which Jawad was subjected, by the fact that virutally all of the evidence against him was severely coerced, and by the fact that there is "no credible evidence" to justify his detention, that he first demanded that Jawad be released, then, when Bush officials refused, unsuccessfully demanded to be relieved of his duty to prosecute, and then finally resigned…
In Afghanistan, Jawad was severely beaten, drugged, and threatened with death for both himself and his family if he refused to confess to the grenade incident… The confession Jawad "signed" (with his fingerprint, since he can't write his name) became the centerpiece of the Bush administration's case against him, and yet, it was written in a language Jawad did not speak or read, and was given to him after several days of beatings, druggings and threats -- all while he was likely 15 or 16 years old.
In December, 2003, when he was (at most) 18 years old, Jawad -- according to Guantanamo prison logs -- attempted to kill himself. In 2004, he was subjected to the so-called "frequent flier" program, where, in a two-week period alone, he was moved to a new cell 112 times -- an average of every 3 hours, in order to ensure he was sleep deprived and disoriented. Over the six years at Guantanamo, Jawad was repeatedly subjected to extreme cold, bright lights, and various stress positions. He was often kept in solitary confinement or in "linguistic confinement," isolated from anyone who spoke his only language (Pashto). As recently as May of 2008, while Jawad was at Guantanamo, he was beaten so badly by guards that, weeks later, he still had extreme bruises on his arms, knees, shoulders, foreheads and ribs.
Despite all of that, the Bush administration -- monstrous war criminals to the end -- just last week demanded in Jawad's habeas corpus proceeding that his military commission be allowed to commence this week as scheduled. The U.S. was about to place a tormented and destroyed human being -- a teenager when his ordeal began and now nothing resembling a healthy, functioning adult -- before a completely rigged tribunal and try him, ironically enough, for "war crimes." It was that repulsive travesty which Obama's order yesterday stopped, at least temporarily.
Q: What did the German say to the American Neo-Nazi?Is that joke funny, or just offensive? I'm curious about people's responses.
A: Nothing, he beat him to death with a tire iron.
“Justice O’Connor did a fulsome report ... (and) the government acknowledged and accepted its recommendations,” Cannon told the Star.Cannon doesn't know what fulsome means.
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posted by dunkadunc at 4:53 AM on January 21, 2009