Lawyers seek release of young Gitmo detainee

KABUL (AP) — U.S. military lawyers asked Afghanistan’s highest court Monday to demand the release of a Guantanamo prisoner they say was only about 12 years old — not 18, as the military maintains — when he was sent to the detention center in Cuba.

Mohammed Jawad’s lawyers say they are enlisting Afghan courts because President Barack Obama’s decision to close Guantanamo and reconsider how detainees should be tried has indefinitely stalled their case in the United States.

“We were in a winning posture in the trial, so to now come along and change the rules in the middle of the game, who knows what’s going to happen,” said Marine Maj. Eric Montalvo, a Pentagon-appointed lawyer who deposited the petition at Afghanistan’s Supreme Court on behalf of Jawad.

Though attorneys for many detainees say the Guantanamo trials offered little chance of acquittal, a judge in the Jawad case had dismissed key confessions, and the chief prosecutor resigned after arguing unsuccessfully for a plea deal that would release Jawad after a brief period of rehabilitation.

A ruling by Afghanistan’s judiciary system, beset with corruption and deep structural problems, would not have legal authority in the United States. But Jawad’s lawyers hope to create political pressure to move the case forward.

“It’s somewhat of an embarrassment to the American judicial system,” Montalvo said.

Jawad was arrested in December 2002 and accused of tossing a grenade at an unmarked Jeep in an attack that wounded two U.S. soldiers and their interpreter. Afghan police delivered him into U.S. custody. He was held in Afghanistan for about a month before his transfer to the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Jawad’s lawyers have said he was 16 or 17 at the time of his arrest, but Montalvo said new information from the detainee’s family indicates he was much younger. Montalvo said the family can estimate how old Jawad is because they recall he was born in a refugee camp in Pakistan about six months after his father was killed in the battle of Khost. The battle — part of a struggle for control of the country in the aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal — took place in the winter of 1990-91.

“If you look at the picture of him when he was detained, I don’t think it was a stretch that he was younger,” Montalvo said.

The lead attorney for Jawad, Air Force Maj. David Frakt, said his client’s family might not know his age and acknowledged they would have an interest in making him seem younger. But he said the estimate is supported by records showing Jawad was only 5-feet-3 and 124 pounds when he arrived at Guantanamo in February 2003. He said Jawad is now roughly 5-feet-9 and 165 pounds.

A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, said military records show Jawad arrived at Guantanamo at age 18 and is now 24.

A bone scan study by the military shows Jawad was roughly 18 at the time of the grenade attack, according to a court filing by prosecutors, who say Jawad has given conflicting accounts of his age.