One of Guantánamo's Youngest Inmates to Sue US Over Seven Lost Years

[tekisui]

Source: The Guardian

One of the youngest prisoners ever held at Guantánamo Bay plans to sue the US over mistreatment and an adolescence lost to nearly seven years in a cell, his lawyers said today.

Mohammed Jawad returned to Afghanistan on Monday after a US military judge ruled that he was coerced into confessing that he threw a grenade at an unmarked vehicle in Kabul in 2002. The attack wounded two American soldiers and their interpreter.

Afghan police delivered Jawad into US custody and about a month later he was sent to Guantánamo.

Jawad and his family say he was 12 when he was arrested, and that he is now 19 . The Pentagon has said a bone scan showed he was about 17 when taken into custody. His defence lawyers decline to give an exact age for Jawad, who does not have a birth certificate, but say photographs taken in Guantánamo showed that he had not gone through puberty.

"I was an innocent child when they put me in prison," he told the Associated Press.

Lawyers and family members say Jawad was submitted to various types of torture while imprisoned, including sleep deprivation and beatings.

The family plans to sue for compensation in US courts, said Major Eric Montalvo, one of the military lawyers who was defending Jawad. Montalvo, who finishes his military service this month, said he would help in the process but would not necessarily file the suit.

more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/28/mohammed-jawad-guantanamo-sue-pentagon

[daedalus_dude]

1. We are a barbaric country.

[Obamanaut]

3. Some of the individuals who live here might be. I don't think that I

am. Do you think that you are?

I don't agree with or approve of some of the stuff that goes on by some of us, but I don't think I am barbaric.

[daedalus_dude]

4. Individually we are not.

But the policies or our government were.

[markbark]

2. Wow...

I'd say he's perfectly assimilated into our culture; after all, litigation is America's favorite indoor sport :P

--MAB

[NoPasaran]

5. I'd like to do the same to the producers of "Sunshine"

Although my claim is only for 107 minutes.

[Bill McBlueState]

9. rofl n/t

[lunatica]

6. If this is true then I hope his lawsuit is successful

And I hope he can have a healthy life. The fact that Jose Padilla is little more than a vegetable haunts me. Any life totally ruined forever over one administrations need to find an 'enemy combatant' just to justify their greed and their hubris and their intent to wage illegal and criminal wars is more than disgusting. It's criminal and should be seriously prosecuted.

[The Stranger]

7. Didn't see this in the U.S. media -- is this being blacked out in the U.S.?

[tekisui]

10. Not sure about blacked out, but like all things related to our wars

it is mostly ignored by the US media.

[Solly Mack]

8. K&R