Let Him Go Home

Mohammed Jawad might be going home after a judge threw out most of the evidence against him because it was gleaned from torture.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Wednesday said that it's willing to send a young Guantanamo detainee home to Afghanistan after military and civilian judges banned almost all evidence against him as tainted by torture.

In a court filing, government attorneys, however, reserved the right to file new charges against Mohammed Jawad if they find evidence against him before he is released.

The Justice Department asked U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle to grant them 22 days to release Jawad — seven days to notify Congress of the release plans, as current law requires, and then 15 days till a cooling off period mandated by law expires.

If no new charges are filed during that time, the government said it would promptly release Jawad and send him back to Afghanistan. Huvelle, who earlier had scheduled a hearing for Thursday in the case, did not immediately rule on the request.

The Justice Department filing came as another federal judge in Washington ordered the release of Kuwaiti detainee after concluding that the government did not have enough evidence to continue to hold him.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said Khalid al Mutairi should be released as soon as arrangements can be made for him to travel to a third country and congressional notification requirements have been met.

Kollar-Kotelly's full opinion was classified, but she ordered that an unclassified version be released in two days.

Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said the department's handling of the Jawad case showed that the administration has “made a dramatic break with the policies of the past by rejecting the use of torture without exception or equivocation.”

“It is clear that, in addition to serving as a recruiting tool for terrorists, the status quo left behind by the previous administration at Guantanamo is legally unsustainable,” she said. “We are working to close Guantanamo and develop a new legal framework to govern detention policy that is grounded in the rule of law and will strengthen our national security."

I sincerely hope the Obama administration just gets the hell out of the way and lets this kid go home. Reports say he may have been as young as 12 when he was first picked up and he was put through torture, literally, just to incriminate himself. He didn't help stop any attacks or lead anybody to al Qaeda leadership. Its a shame that it even took this long for us to order his release. Its time to do the right thing and send him back to Afghanistan so we can truly start a new day in this country.

Update: It looks like he is going home after all!

A judge ruled today that one of the youngest detainees brought to Guantánamo Bay is being held illegally and must be released.

US district judge Ellen Huvelle's order does not end the case of Mohammed Jawad, however. Deputy assistant attorney general Ian Gershengorn told the judge that as the United States negotiates with the detainee's home country of Afghanistan for his return next month, the US justice department also is pursuing a criminal investigation.

Gershengorn said Eric Holder, the US attorney general, has not yet decided whether to indict Jawad, who allegedly threw a grenade that wounded two US soldiers and their interpreter in December 2002. That means it's possible he could be brought to the United States for a criminal trial.

Huvelle said she had no authority to prevent an indictment, but she encouraged prosecutors to think hard about problems with the case, including Jawad's mental competency to stand trial and the fact that he's already been incarcerated for six and a half years. "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."

Huvelle gave the government three weeks to fulfil legal requirements to report to Congress about any national security risks and diplomatic agreements for Jawad's release. She ordered the government to report back to her by 24 August and said she hoped by then he was on a trans-Atlantic flight.