Booted Confession Gets Court Hearing

[unhappycamper]

Booted Confession Gets Court Hearing
January 13, 2009
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Pentagon prosecutors want a federal appeals court to reinstate a young Guantanamo detainee's confession after a military judge, who ruled the man had been tortured, threw it out.

Military prosecutors today were to ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to allow them to use Mohammed Jawad's confession against him during his trial by military commission.

Jawad is accused of throwing a grenade that injured two American soldiers and their interpreter in Kabul in 2002, when he was 16 or 17. Jawad is being held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, one of the youngest detainees there.

He was supposed to face trial early this month, the last military commission trial before President George W. Bush leaves office. But a military judge, Army Col. Stephen Henley, indefinitely delayed the case against Jawad after deciding to throw his confession out.

Henley ruled that Jawad's confession to Afghan police commanders and high-ranking government officials on Dec. 17, 2002, was only achieved after they threatened to kill him and his family - a strategy that Henley said was intended to inflict severe pain and constituted torture.


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/news/article/booted-confession-gets-court-hearing.html?col=1186032310810