http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/05/27/gitmo_jawadThe forgotten kid of GuantánamoA teenager captured in Afghanistan and shipped to the U.S. prison remained unknown to the world for five years. Now he's being tried as an adult.Editor's note: Read Salon's full coverage of U.S. judicial proceedings at Guantánamo Bay.
By Stacy Sullivan
May 27, 2008 | GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- When Mohammed Jawad, a 23-year-old Afghan detainee, was summoned to appear before the military commissions at Guantánamo Bay for his arraignment in March, he told his military handlers that he would not go. After being held for more than five years here, he didn't believe he could get a fair hearing from the U.S. military.
But appearing at arraignments at Guantánamo is mandatory, so as has been done with others, military personnel forcefully extracted Jawad from his cell and brought him to court in shackles. Sitting before the judge in his orange jumpsuit, the color reserved for uncooperative detainees, Jawad buried his face into his hands and announced that he would boycott future proceedings -- a right the commissions allow.
So this month, when Jawad was scheduled to appear at the courthouse for another pre-trial hearing, nobody expected him to show up. But as a cluster of journalists, observers from nongovernmental organizations (including me, as a representative of Human Rights Watch) and military personnel gathered in the courtroom, Jawad, now dressed in khaki, a color reserved for more cooperative detainees, was escorted inside by two guards and quietly took a seat beside his defense counsel and an interpreter. Although he appeared uneasy and nervous, he was markedly calmer than at his arraignment.
Jawad put on the headset that would allow him to listen to a translation of court proceedings (something he refused to do during his March hearing) and politely asked the military judge, Col. Peter Brownback, if he could turn around to look at the audience in the courtroom. The judge agreed, and Jawad turned around to face us, revealing a wispy beard that only partly covers his post-adolescent acne.
The U.S. government claims that Mohammed Jawad is an unlawful enemy combatant who tried to murder two U.S. soldiers and their translator in Afghanistan by tossing a grenade into their vehicle in December 2002.
But Maj. David Frakt, his military-appointed attorney, argues that Jawad -- who was a teenager of 16 or 17 at the time of his alleged offense (Jawad doesn't know his birth date) -- is a victim. He says Jawad was a homeless teenager who was drugged and forced to fight with Afghan militia, then abused by the United States, which transported him halfway around the world and imprisoned him at Guantánamo for five years without charge and is now using him as a guinea pig to test a new system of military justice with no regard to his initial status as a juvenile.
When Frakt arrived at Guantánamo to meet Jawad, he said he found a profoundly disturbed young man who was reluctant to talk. "Jawad is in an extremely fragile mental state," Frakt said in an interview following the hearing. "He has been here for so long -- he has essentially grown up in Guantánamo. He has lost track of time, lost touch with reality, and suffers from severe depression. And he doesn't believe he can get justice from the military commissions."
Both U.S. and international law requires governments to provide children with special safeguards and care that take into account their vulnerability and culpability as children. They are supposed to be housed separately from adults, allowed to contact family members, provided with educational opportunities, and given prompt legal assistance.
The United States has acknowledged holding eight teenagers at Guantánamo, but although some of them were given special housing and educational opportunities and were eventually released, the U.S. has ignored Jawad's status as a juvenile.
Jawad's decision to attend commission hearings this month appears to owe much to his newly appointed military defense counsel, Maj. Frakt, a law professor in the Navy Reserves who was called up from Western State University in California to represent the young detainee (now 22 or 23) just a few days earlier. (Jawad's previous defense counsel left after his reserve duty ended in late March.) With the help of an Afghan interpreter -- an elderly man from the same tribe as Jawad who managed to establish a rapport with the detainee -- Frakt was able to persuade Jawad to appear before the court so that he can "challenge the legality and legitimacy of the military commissions" and possibly argue for an improvement in the conditions in which Jawad is being held.
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