Psyche, Science, and Society

Was Mohammed Jawad only 12 when captured?

An Afghan human rights group is reporting that Guantanamo prisoner Mohammed Jawad, ho has been torture a number of times by US forces at Bagram and Guantanamo since his 2002 capture, may have been only 12 when captured and imprisoned. He still languishes in a Guantanamo cell, waiting to hear if President Obama will release him or resume his farcical war crimes trial:

Afghan was taken to Guantanamo aged 12: rights group

By Sayed Salahuddin

An Afghan who has spent over six years at the U.S. military’s Guantanamo Bay prison was only around 12 years old when he was detained, not 16 or 17 as his official record says, an Afghan rights group said on Tuesday.

Interviews with the family of Mohammed Jawad, who like many poor Afghans does not know his exact age or birthday, showed he was probably not even a teenager when he was arrested in 2002, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission said.

The U.S. military, however, disputed the commission’s assertion, saying its records stated that Jawad was 18 when he was transferred to the prison at a U.S. Naval base on Cuba.

“Based on a number of factors, to include a bone scan, the government has maintained that Jawad was 18 when he arrived at Guantanamo in 2003,” said Navy Commander J.D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman.

Jawad was picked up by Afghan police in connection with a grenade attack in Kabul in which two U.S. soldiers and their Afghan interpreter were wounded. He was transferred to U.S. custody the same day and flown to Guantanamo in early 2003.

Afghan human rights commissioner Nader Nadery said in addition to being a minor at the time of his detention, Jawad was tortured and abused by the Afghan police and while at the Guantanamo detention center.

The Commission is seeking his release and repatriation, and in the course of looking into his case found out he was probably considerably younger than his records showed.

‘TORTURED AND ABUSED’

“We asked his mother what was the big event close to his birth that you can remember, any change in the president etcetera, and she said that he was born around six months after his father’s death,” Nadery told Reuters.

“We tried to explore more when his father died, and his father died in a battle in Khost,” he said.

That fighting was in 1991, according to a petition submitted to the Afghan supreme court this month on Jawad’s behalf, aiming to force President Hamid Karzai to seek his release.

Nadry said the commission checked Jawad’s mother’s story, interviewing other relatives and officials including a soldier who commanded Jawad’s father.

Major Eric Montalvo, a Pentagon-appointed U.S. Marine Corps lawyer representing Jawad, said his client — who may still be a teenager if his mother’s dates are correct — should be released.

“We have a child of Afghanistan that was wrongfully taken from this country and he needs to be returned. He was tortured, he was abused over seven years of custody,” he told a news conference in the Afghan capital.

Nadry said the commission had raised Jawad’s case with the Afghan and U.S. governments in the past, without success.

Gordon, the Pentagon spokesman, said the military believed Jawad was aged 17 when the Kabul attack took place but was 18 by the time he arrived at Guantanamo.

Since joining with Afghan troops to oust the Taliban in 2001, the U.S. has arrested thousands of suspected Taliban and al Qaeda militants in Afghanistan. Some were then transferred to other places, including the Guantanamo Bay prison.

(Writing and additional reporting by Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul and Andrew Gray in Washington; Editing by Sophie Hares and Sandra Maler)

May 28th, 2009

Witheld Abu Ghraib photos depict rape, Telegraph reports

The Telegraph reports what is in some of the photographs Obama is withholding.  This would match contemporaneous accounts of rape occurring inside the prison. It appears that President Obama lied when he said:

“I want to emphasise that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib.”

Such a lie is silly, as he has to know that the truth will come out in this case. Obama’s credibility is thus reduced:

Abu Ghraib abuse photos ‘show rape’

Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged.

By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent and Paul Cruickshank

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.

Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.

The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.

Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President’s decision, adding: “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.

“I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan.

“The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.”

In April, Mr Obama’s administration said the photographs would be released and it would be “pointless to appeal” against a court judgment in favour of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

But after lobbying from senior military figures, Mr Obama changed his mind saying they could put the safety of troops at risk.

Earlier this month, he said: “The most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to inflame anti-American public opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.”

It was thought the images were similar to those leaked five years ago, which showed naked and bloody prisoners being intimidated by dogs, dragged around on a leash, piled into a human pyramid and hooded and attached to wires.

Mr Obama seemed to reinforce that view by adding: “I want to emphasise that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib.”

The latest photographs relate to 400 cases of alleged abuse between 2001 and 2005 in Abu Ghraib and six other prisons. Mr Obama said the individuals involved had been “identified, and appropriate actions” taken.

Maj Gen Taguba’s internal inquiry into the abuse at Abu Ghraib, included sworn statements by 13 detainees, which, he said in the report, he found “credible based on the clarity of their statements and supporting evidence provided by other witnesses.”

Among the graphic statements, which were later released under US freedom of information laws, is that of Kasim Mehaddi Hilas in which he says: “I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid’s ***…. and the female soldier was taking pictures.”

The translator was an American Egyptian who is now the subject of a civil court case in the US.

Three detainees, including the alleged victim, refer to the use of a phosphorescent tube in the sexual abuse and another to the use of wire, while the victim also refers to part of a policeman’s “stick” all of which were apparently photographed.

May 28th, 2009