Cuba, July 25: The US Justice Department has announced that a second Guantanamo Bay detainee, Mohammed Jawad, may face criminal charges in a federal court.
Jawad’s attorney, Jonathan Hafetz, blasted the government’s decision as a pathetic attempt to prolong an outrageous case and manipulate the court system.
The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission has said that Jawad was only 12 when arrested in 2002; but according to the Pentagon, bone scans indicated he was 18 when sent to Guantanamo in early 2003.
Jawad had been charged in a military court with throwing a grenade that injured two US soldiers and their Afghan interpreter at a bazaar in Kabul in December 2002.
In reviewing Jawad’s case, Justice Department prosecutors had uncovered an eyewitness account “not previously made available to the court,” said agency spokesman Dean Boyd.
Instead of providing fresh evidence against the detainee, they asked US District Court Judge, Ellen Juvelle, to withhold judgment on the detention challenge while they “expedite” a criminal investigation against Jawad, with a possible view to a US federal trial.
Jawad is among approximately 200 Guantanamo prisoners who have challenged their detention in federal court. Of the cases decided thus far, 26 prisoners have been ordered released while judges have upheld the continued detention of five detainees.
US President Barack Obama has ordered the closing of the internationally condemned Guantanamo prison by January. It now holds 229 detainees.
The prison was set up in 2002 to hold foreign prisoners in the US War on Terror, declared by former President George W. Bush in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
—-Agencies