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This is an update to my previous post on the Jawad case.
On July 24, 2009, the government filed papers with Judge Huvelle in the matter of Jawad’s habeas petition regarding his Guantanamo detention stating that Jawad would no longer be considered a detainee but that he would continue to be held for investigation and to face possible charges in a civilian US court. The government says it had, miraculously it would seem, discovered eyewitnesses since its last filing on June 1, 2009 concerning the evidence it held against Jawad. The odds that the government is being honest here are vanishingly small. That it did not produce this evidence for the first 7 years of Jawad’s detention, during his various hearings in Guantanamo or his military commission trial there, but suddenly finds, as a federal judge is about to order his return to Afghanistan, “new” evidence does not so much strain as torture credulity. The government is told after 7 years it has no case and in a week it says it has a new one.
The Obama Administration and Attorney General Holder were supposed to restore credibility to the Justice Department. Their handling, or rather mishandling, of the Jawad case does the reverse. This was never about the law. From Jawad’s indefinite detention in what the government hoped was a legal blackhole, the disregard of his status as a minor, his torture, the sham Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs), the hopelessly flawed military commission, and now this habeas action, the government has sought to ignore or twist the law for policy and political purposes.
And this continues. The Obama Administration is afraid to return Jawad to Afghanistan because of likely criticism from Republicans, even though Bush released hundreds of these supposedly “worst of the worst” during his time in office. They are perpetuating this dreadful case not because they think Jawad is guilty but because they find it politically embarrassing to release him. They don’t want to be blamed for releasing someone accused of trying to kill American troops, not someone who did, mind you, but someone who was simply accused of doing so, based on torture and evidence that was beyond flimsy. They are demonstrating that the Justice Department remains unchanged and as much a creature of political decisions and a stranger to the rule of law as ever. We can only hope that at some point the courts say no more. And after 7 years that point should be now.
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This is distressing and worrisome, Hugh. It’s a crime against Jawad, now an aggravated crime, and it gives us reason to fear that the Obama DoJ will go on lying about many other souls at GTMO and elsewhere for political reasons alone.
Is Obama genuinely that scared of the relatively small numbers of extreme xenophobes in the U.S.? That says horrible things about what he believes is true of his own culture, things I know not to be true because I know too many sane Americans. Why is he not getting this message?
Recommended. Thanks, Hugh. Here is the link to today’s WAPO article on this.
I only quickly read today’s WAPO article, but I think it mentions some newly found videos as well as the just discovered witnesses. Now that is truly a miracle in light of the mass destruction of tapes.
With this pathetic move I no longer harbor any hopes for real justice or return of the rule of law with AG Holder at the helm.
Why are Obama and Holder scrambing to cover up the shameful, illegal acts perpetrated by Bush and Cheney, thereby blackening their own names?
My bad, link in my @2 is to page 2 of 2 pages. Here’s link to page 1.
I re-read it and yes, it states they have videotapes of the witnesses. What’s the penalty for bearing false witness?
Some of this was brought up at the July 16 hearing by the government on the fly after Judge Huvelle told prosecutors they had no case. Because it was Huvelle actually demanded that prosecutors provide affidavits stating who had found what and when they had found it, i.e. after June 1.
Judge Huvelle pointed out that there were no American eyewitnesses and that statements by Afghani officials were unpersuasive. Statements from other captives, if any, suffer from the problem that they were likely the product of coercion (my observation). Huvelle noted that the likelihood that the government could find other previously unknown Afghani eyewitnesses whose memories could be relied on after 7 years was close to zero. And finally, Judge Huvelle pointed out that if there were such witnesses, Afghani authorities were always free to prosecute Jawad upon his return to Afghanistan.
What is really going on here is what Judge Huvelle warned about, that the government not getting the outcome it wanted is trying to change the rules. The whole Jawad as detainee case has collapsed so now they are trying to resurrect it by moving Jawad into the civilian court system. This is a replay of Padilla. The Padilla as detainee case was going to the Supreme Court and the Bush Administration knew they were going to lose there because of the executive’s encroachment on judicial turf. So they just transferred Padilla to the civilian courts where he was eventually convicted in a really lame case in Florida that had nothing to do with the first few discredited rationales for why he was a dangerous terrorist.
The Obama Administration and its DOJ are just playing legal games and you really have to ask yourself what this says about them, how does this persecution, not prosecution, add to their credibility or demonstrate their respect for the rule of law? I have said this many times on many issues, but this is change we can’t believe in.
Thank you, Hugh. The idea that Obama/Holder would try to pull this pathetic trick on Judge Huvelle is, as you say, very telling about their true character and intentions;admit nothing, deny all, blame scapegoat.
Looks like one realm above the law for gov criminals, the regular law for the
vassalsus.Hugh, I think that Obama/Biden/Odierno are pulling a fast one on us in Iraq while all the attention is focused on the health care fight. I’ll pull my thoughts and some links together and post in another comment here. The matter deserves to be presented by someone with your expertise; I’m short by a country mile.
Hugh, my thoughts and searches re Iraq followed this path:
(1) Iraqi poor are selling one of their kidneys to survive. Al-Jazeera. (text)
Video.
(2) My question: “where is the Iraq oil money going? It belongs to the Iraqi people.”
Answers a-plenty in this article by Michael Schwartz. (95% of it is deposited in The Federal Reserve Bank of New York).
Audio of interview by TomDispatch.com is here in which he discusses the article. [note in the inerview that MS states that the plan for the Iraq Oil Law was drawn up in Bethseda, MD before the war began!
(3) Spencer Ackerman’s 07/23/09 article in The Washington Independent, Iraqi Prime Minister Open to Renegotiating Withdrawal Timeline.
I think you can discern what is going on here. I’ll check my links – will be really lucky if they all fly.
A miracle! All my links work.
Thanks for the links. I don’t know if I can get to this right now. A lot of money doesn’t cross sectarian divides. A lot is used to prop up various political groups. I haven’t seen much about improved employment or infrastructure projects that might indicate that money was going to benefit the Iraqi people. Oil remains the focus of everything but I haven’t seen anything to show that even here production has increased that much.
The Schwartz article stated that unemployment was officially at 18%, but the truth is more like 30%.
It’s a broad subject, Hugh, and I realize I was perhaps asking too much.