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  1. #1
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    Why did the US government torture and imprison a 12 year old for 6 years?

    So some of you might have already heard about Mohamed Jawad, a kid who was accused of tossing a grenade at a military convoy, but the only evidence that was used against him was his own confession, which was extracted via torture, both by Afghanistan authorities and the US government. I don't know just how much outrage there has to be for there to be prosecutions. But let me reiterate, they held a 12 year old for six years in prison with no trial whatsoever, and they tortured him. Morals where?

    Here are two news sources and i quoted the parts i thought most important:

    Court Orders Release of Juvenile Prisoner at Gitmo—By Scott Horton (Harper's Magazine)


    When historians search through the materials relating to Guantánamo for a handful of cases that give a good sense of what was done there in the nation’s name, they’d be well advised to pause over the file of Mohammed Jawad. On December 17, 2002, a grenade was hurled at Americans traveling in a Soviet military vehicle, resulting in injury to several soldiers. Jawad was arrested and accused of the act. He may have been 12 years old at the time, and certainly was no older than 14. American officials consistently misrepresented him as older. Jawad states that he was near the passing convoy because he had been hired to clear landmines; he says he did not throw the grenade. The Government has never produced any meaningful evidence that he did.
    Instead, the Bush Administration attempted to push Jawad’s case through on the basis of a confession extracted through torture. A military judge reviewing the case, Colonel Stephen Henley, concluded that Jawad was turned over to Afghan authorities who threatened to kill Jawad or his family if he did not confess; he refused to allow the case to proceed on this basis.

    Jawad also sought habeas corpus review of his case before Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle in Washington. In the last week, the Justice Department admitted to the court that its defense of Jawad’s detention in Guantánamo was no longer tenable–a fact that had been plain to all outside observers following Judge Henley’s ruling. The Justice Department’s case rested entirely on confessions secured by torture; moreover, the Justice Department had consistently misled the court about the circumstances in which the confessions were obtained and insisted that no torture was involved—apparently relying to the bitter end upon the celebrated John Yoo understanding of the word “torture.” Yesterday, Judge Huvelle ordered Jawad’s release and return to Afghanistan. “Enough has been imposed on this young man to date,” she said. The judge gave the government until August 21 to arrange his return home to Afghanistan.

    U.S. Relies on Tortured Evidence in Habeas Case | The Washington Independent


    Mohammed Jawad may have been as young as 12 years old when he was seized by Afghan police and turned over to U.S. authorities in December 2002, according to a recent letter from the Afghan attorney general, who is requesting his return. Jawad is accused of throwing a hand grenade into a U.S. military vehicle and injuring two servicemen and their translator. But the primary evidence against him — his own confessions — were obtained by torture. Although the U.S. military commission created by President George W. Bush eventually charged him with war crimes for the attack in October 2007 — almost six years after the crime — a judge ruled in October 2008 that because they were tortured, his confessions were unreliable and inadmissible.
    By all accounts, Jawad’s military commission case has been a fiasco. In September 2008, military prosecutor Lt. Col. Darryl Vandeveld resigned from the case and from the military commissions altogether, saying he could not in good conscience prosecute someone for an act allegedly committed as a child and where virtually the only evidence against him is his tortured confessions. (Vandeveld was unable to convince the commission to drop the charges or let Jawad enter a plea agreement with a sentence to time served.) In October, a U.S. military judge at Guantanamo Bay agreed that Jawad had only confessed after armed Afghan police threatened to kill him and his entire family if he didn’t. Statements made to U.S. authorities just hours later, the judge subsequently ruled in November, were still tainted by the Afghan authorities’ torture, because U.S. authorities “used techniques to maintain the shock and fearful state associated with the Accused’s initial apprehension by the Afghan police.” Both confessions therefore were inadmissible(My addition: one confession made via torture in Afghanistan and another confession made via torture by the US).

    In addition to his torture by the Afghans, military records indicate that at Bagram and later at Guantanamo, Jawad faced more abuse. Jawad arrived at Bagram just days after two prisoners there were murdered during interrogations. Jawad says he was hooded, strip-searched, shackled and shoved down stairs, slapped and screamed at. Guards there later admitted to abusing prisoners in exactly those ways. And at Guantanamo, Jawad was subjected to the sleep deprivation technique known as the “frequent flyer” program — he was moved from cell to cell 112 times in 14 days to keep him from sleeping. He was also kicked, beaten, pepper-sprayed and at one point suffered a broken nose. In December 2003, Jawad tried to kill himself by banging his head repeatedly against one of his cell walls.

    “The Independent Commission for Human Rights has expressed its serious concern over the non-observance of national and international laws in regard to the detention of children, particularly the investigation and fair trial of Jawad.”

    The United States’ treatment of Jawad would seem to violate a United Nations Protocol that the U.S. signed and ratified in January 2003. According ot the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, children who were recruited or used in armed conflicts should be considered primarily as victims and provided with rehabilitation services. Jawad’s lawyers say he’s never received any such services.

    The U.S. government is scheduled to appear before Judge Huvelle to defend its continued imprisonment of Jawad at Guantanamo and its reliance on tortured evidence on August 5.
    So they tortured a kid to the point where he tried to kill himself, and the Obama administration is still trying to keep him jailed up? What the fuck.

    Here are some excerpts from the court case.

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    His confession was ruled inadmissible because of just that.

    BBC says he is currently scheduled for release.

    What's the story here?

    I consider all that stuff he went through pretty fair game for throwing grenades at an American convoy.

  3. #3
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    As an addenum: It appears that more people in the US are in favour of torture than in China, Russia or Iran. How fucked up is that? And compared to Europe? While over 40% of Americans think that torture should be used, in Britain only 15% think so, in France only 16% think so, and in Spain only 12% think so. Here is the link.

    http://i26.tinypic.com/2vl5eea.jpg

    Let that sink in a little.

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    Ridill
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    Don't like the country, you're more than welcome to run to canada. The bleeding heart mentality plays well there. Kid threw a grenade at a convoy, deserved to be locked up.

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    Your poll sunk in. It tells me you are exhausting every last breath of yours to paint Americans as truly evil at heart. It's honestly kind of sad. You really need to take a trip to Europe, never come back, and have a blast with your universal health care and unwillingness to actually fight for your beliefs.

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    D. Ring
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kuya View Post
    As an addenum: It appears that more people in the US are in favour of torture than in China, Russia or Iran. How fucked up is that? And compared to Europe? While over 40% of Americans think that torture should be used, in Britain only 15% think so, in France only 16% think so, and in Spain only 12% think so. Here is the link.

    http://i26.tinypic.com/2vl5eea.jpg

    Let that sink in a little.
    None of the countries you've mentioned there(except for Spain) have dealt with a huge magnitute of terrorism in the last decade or so. And Spain is cooling down for years now.

    About torture, I'd say FUCK NO! personally but we all know how certain kinds of people can be mislead by mass media, etc.

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    The bulk of the government’s claim that Jawad can be held indefinitely (although he was deemed an “enemy combatant” by the Bush administration, the Obama administration no longer uses that term) appears to be that Jawad, an Afghan citizen born in a refugee camp in Pakistan and functionally illiterate, learned how to throw a grenade at a Madrassa in Afghanistan and was at the time of his capture as an adolescent associated with a group called Hezb-i-Islami Gulbuddin, or HIG, “an extremist organization long associated with [Osama bin Laden], with a 30-year history of supporting jihad in Afghanistan.” Its founder has been named a “specially designated global terrorist” by the U.S. government. The evidence supporting this charge is that Jawad was able to provide directions to and describe the appearance of the HIG camp. The government also originally claimed Jawad was a member of HIG based on a document it said indicated sworn loyalty to the group that was “signed” with Jawad’s thumbprint. A later forensic exam by the US Army laboratory concluded that the thumbprint was not Jawad’s.

    Vandeveld, the former military prosecutor who is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve Judge Advocate General’s Corps and a senior deputy attorney general for Pennsylvania, has submitted a 14-page sworn statement in support of Jawad’s petition for release. “I personally do not believe there is any lawful basis for continuing to detain Mr. Jawad,” he writes, describing the year he spent trying to collect reliable evidence against him. “[T]here is no reliable evidence of any voluntary involvement on Jawad’s part with any terrorist groups,” he concludes. The most credible evidence suggests “that Mr. Jawad was lured to Afghanistan under false pretenses — the promise of well paid work clearing landmines promised to him by unscrupulous recruiters for HIG.” To the extent that Jawad was affiliated with HIG at all, Vandeveld says, it was likely brief and involuntary. “[H]e was certainly not involved with the organization long enough to have any actionable intelligence, or even unique or otherwise unknown information about the group,” adding that his youth, lack of education and “manifest gullibility” marked him, at best, as “a low level foot soldier.” Moreover, according to military records and news reports, at least three other Afghans have since been arrested and subsequently confessed to responsibility for the grenade attack. The only supposed eyewitness accounts implicating Jawad were “two paragraph summaries of interviews conducted through an interpreter of these witnesses several months after the attack.” Despite his efforts, Vandeveld was never able to find the witnesses.
    No one saw the kid throw the grenade. The eyewitnesses that say they saw him were never found. Three people were arrested and they confessed to having tossed that grenade.

    =

    The US government tortured an innocent 12 year for six years.

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    Interested on what the above are using for evidence that he threw the grenade, considering the only evidence against him was thrown out.

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    So let's see. I posted multiple sources made up of investigations and research into the case that say that:

    A- His confession was obtained through threats and torture.

    B- Three people have claimed responsability for the grenade attack.

    C- The thumbprint that prooves he belongs to a terrorist organization is not his.

    And the only rebuttal i've received thus far is that i should move to Canada, and that i hate America.

  10. #10
    blax n gunz
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    Quote Originally Posted by Leif View Post
    His confession was ruled inadmissible because of just that.

    BBC says he is currently scheduled for release.

    What's the story here?

    I consider all that stuff he went through pretty fair game for throwing grenades at an American convoy.
    If the confession is inadmissable then he comitted no crime by the standards of the american legal system. He never threw that grenade. I thought you loved this country and did not want to see its judicial system shat on by the torture of innocents.You're insane if you are saying the kid is innocent in your first sentence but saying it's okay what he went through because he's really guilty in your last.

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    Ridill
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    No one saw the kid throw the grenade. The eyewitnesses that say they saw him were never found. Three people were arrested and they confessed to having tossed that grenade.

    =

    The US government tortured an innocent 12 year for six years.
    Did you not read the "later found" and "after" parts of what you keep quoting? At the time, his own countrymen were pointing fingers at him, and that was the only evidence. It was later the 3 men professed to throwing the grenade. The whole thing is vague on dates and times. I wholeheartedly agree the torture should have never happened, it's really sad it did, but I agree with the arrest.

    And the only rebuttal i've received thus far is that i should move to Canada, and that i hate America.
    Seems pretty clear the only reason you posted this is to get some anti-US support going. What was the point of this again? Everyone knows Guantanamo was a fucked up ordeal. As I said before, feel free to move to another country.

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    Ridill
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    I agree some degree of evidence should be used, but nowhere near as strict as what's required in US trials. If you see a boy throw a grenade at you in a volatile wartorn area, you probably don't have the luxury of bringing out the forensics crew and doing a full on CSI investigation at the scene. Are there even grenade fragments to dust for fingerprints?

    In those situations, having 2-3 witnesses should be enough if they apprehend him then and there at the scene.

    And while the boy may be innocent or guilty, he wouldn't be the first little kid to attempt to murder American soldiers. Those are adult crimes and deserve adult punishments. Imagine how horrified their parents would be to hear what their own son or daughter was caught doing.

    Whether that's torture or not is another story.

  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by Guitarman View Post
    Did you not read the "later found" and "after" parts of what you keep quoting? At the time, his own countrymen were pointing fingers at him, and that was the only evidence. It was later the 3 men professed to throwing the grenade. The whole thing is vague on dates and times. I wholeheartedly agree the torture should have never happened, it's really sad it did, but I agree with the arrest.



    Seems pretty clear the only reason you posted this is to get some anti-US support going. What was the point of this again? Everyone knows Guantanamo was a fucked up ordeal. As I said before, feel free to move to another country.
    The primary evidence, which you can see if you read the links i posted. Was his confession via torture. But that was thrown out.

    This whole ordeal reveals to huge problems and compel both the investigation and prosecution of the Bush admnistration and anyone involved. One was that torturing people is and should always be illegal, much less the fact that they used it on a fucking kid. And lastly, that detaining someone without a trial is fucking absurd.

    Let me reiterate this if you did not get it.

    The kid's innocense could have been proven years ago had he been given a trial in a civilian court, but he was held without any trial for 6 goddamn years.

  14. #14
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    Oh, so posting that the US government tortured an innocent kid is anti US posting. Let me get my lapel pin.

  15. #15
    Demosthenes11
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    THIS IS THE CHANGE I BELIEVE IN

  16. #16

    Is it just me or is the word "torture" being overused here?

  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by Stee View Post
    Is it just me or is the word "torture" being overused here?
    lol

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    The kid's innocense could have been proven years ago had he been given a trial in a civilian court, but he was held without any trial for 6 goddamn years.
    You moron. He was held as an enemy combatant.

    Like, is there anything particularly significant about this case that separates him from the rest of these terrorists? He's "innocent"? He was "tortured"? He was "held without trial"? You still haven't even proved waterboarding is torture. Hell, the Obamessiah can't even do that.

    It looks like this kid is just your chance to preach your anti-US, anti-military, and practically pro-terrorist policy.

    Since you can't even vote and get a huge tax break, what have you got to lose? Get out of the USA. I welcome you if you would like to contribute something that rises above "America is the worst place on Earth", but that doesn't seem to be the case.

  19. #19
    Ridill
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    so wait. wait
    let me think about this. just..
    ok...


    this guy was 12 years old for 6years and they were torturing him only to find out if he chucked a grenade? I would have at least tried to find out how he stayed 12 for so long.

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    Read what Khamsin wrote. He summed it up beautifully. Maybe you live in a wonderful fantasy land where everything is fair, but war is not fair. He was identified by two of his own countrymen as throwing that grenade. In war that's more than enough to keep his ass locked up.

    And again, in case you are selectively reading what i said, I think the torture is fucked up too. But given the evidence at the time, I'm not suprised in the least he was locked up.

    Edit:

    this guy was 12 years old for 6years and they were torturing him only to find out if he chucked a grenade? I would have at least tried to find out how he stayed 12 for so long.
    I spit out my water. Thanks i needed the laugh lol.

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