Young detainee welcomed home
Judge threw out confession in October, saying Afghan’s story had been coerced
KABUL, Afghanistan – One of the youngest people ever held at Guantanamo was welcomed home Monday by Afghanistan’s president and joyful relatives after almost seven years in prison – freed by a military judge who ruled he was coerced into confessing to wounding U.S. soldiers with a grenade.
Mohammed Jawad, now about 21, flew to the Afghan capital in the afternoon and was released to family members late in the evening. Turbaned men, many who had traveled to Kabul from villages in a nearby province, greeted him with a flurry of hugs and wide smiles.
Jawad was arrested in Kabul in December 2002 and accused of tossing a grenade at an unmarked vehicle in an attack that wounded two U.S. Special Forces members and their interpreter. Afghan police delivered him into U.S. custody and about a month later he was sent to the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
A federal judge ordered Jawad released last month after a war crimes case against him unraveled over lack of evidence and concerns about his age.
“Today I am so happy. It is like Eid,” Jawad’s uncle Gul Nek said, referring to the biggest Muslim holiday.
Soon after his arrival, Jawad was taken to the presidential palace, where he met with President Hamid Karzai, according to Maj. Eric Montalvo, one of Jawad’s Pentagon-appointed defense lawyers.
The Afghan attorney general, who had appealed to the United States to release Jawad, drove him to meet his relatives at a family friend’s compound in western Kabul.
Justice Department officials have said the criminal investigation of Jawad is still open but his transfer back to Afghanistan makes prosecution unlikely. The judge who ordered him released said the government’s case was an “outrage” and “full of holes.”
The case was first complicated by doubts about Jawad’s age. Family members say he was about 12 when he was arrested. The Pentagon said a bone scan showed he was about 17.
Last October, a military judge at Guantanamo threw out Jawad’s confession. The judge found that Jawad initially denied throwing the grenade but changed his story after Afghan authorities threatened to kill him and his family. U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle ordered him released nine months later.