Freed Gitmo detainee is still tortured

By GottaLaff

The effects of being locked up in a cell at Guantanamo Bay and tortured for years, especially if you're an impressionable teenager, lasts well beyond the time spent imprisoned. Case in point:

Old friends he last saw when they were flying kites are now in college, married with children, enjoying their careers. He's happy for them, but he feels like he's watching life flash by and he's not a part of it.

These are the shadows of the lost youth of Mohammed Jawad, the Afghan who many believe was Guantanamo's youngest prisoner. [...]

Six inches taller and 40 pounds heavier than when he left his country nearly seven years ago, Jawad alternately smiles shyly, tenses with anger, then smiles again, the mood swings of someone trying to figure out how he lost a third of his life. [...]

He says he was grabbed by police who beat him and threatened to kill his family unless he put his thumbprint to paper and admitted he'd tried to kill two U.S. soldiers. The Pashto speaker, largely illiterate, didn't understand their Persian and had little idea what he'd agreed to, he says. A U.S. judge would later agree. [...]

Eventually, military and civilian judges threw out most of the Pentagon's evidence against Jawad, with U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle describing the case as an outrage "riddled with holes." In August, Jawad was set free. [...]

But he suffers from frequent headaches, he says, and often rests during the day. Prison memories haunt him, something doctors warn may never end. He worries about those left behind, his de facto family. He's out and they're not, and that's a source of guilt. Though the Obama administration has said it will close Guantanamo, hundreds of detainees remain there and at Bagram.

He asks a reporter to tell President Obama, the United Nations, someone, to help them. "People there are sick," he says. "They should be treated. They should be freed." [...]

He talks about having his hands bound behind his back and being forced to eat like a dog, being kicked, beaten and pepper-sprayed and subjected to excessive heat, loud noise, solitary confinement.

After a year, Guantanamo records show, Jawad tried to commit suicide by banging his head against his cell wall repeatedly.

"I was tortured and faced many problems," he says. "They also play with your mind."

His jailers refused to put him with other Afghans, he said, only with Arabs whose language he didn't understand. He says officials hung heartwarming pictures of families in the interrogation room, then asked about his family. They repeatedly denied his requests for school books or a Pashto dictionary.

Guantanamo military officials did not immediately respond to questions about his alleged mistreatment. [...]

Jawad says only faith and a Koran prevented him from going insane. [...]

Jawad's family is now mulling a lawsuit, which his lawyer says could be filed within the next month.

Hey Judith Miller, would you care to revise your assessment now?

Imagine how well you, or a loved one, would hold up under these circumstances. Imagine having done nothing to deserve being abused and tortured for nearly a decade, finally getting released, and having to deal with the culture shock and emotional trauma encountered as a result. None of it is fair, none of it is deserved, but all of it is horrifying and bewildering.

There is much more to the article, so please read the rest here.

Here is a refresher course, courtesy of Rachel Maddow, on Jawad's case (I've previously posted about Jawad's former lawyer Darrel Vandeveld's p.o.v. here, and also here, here, and here):



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Lt. Col. Barry Wingard is a military attorney who represents Fayiz Al-Kandari in the Military Commission process and in no way represents the opinions of his home state. When not on active duty, Colonel Wingard is a public defender in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

All my previous posts on this subject matter can be found here; That link includes one specific to only Fayiz al-Kandari's story here. Here are audio and video interviews with Lt. Col. Wingard, one by David Shuster, one by Ana Marie Cox, and more. My guest commentary at BuzzFlash is here.

If you are inclined to help rectify these injustices: Twitterers, use the hashtag #FreeFayiz. We have organized a team to get these stories out. If you are interested in helping Fayiz out, e-mail me at The Political Carnival, address in sidebar to the right; or tweet me at @GottaLaff.

If you'd like to see other ways you can take action, go here and scroll down to the end of the article.

Then read Jane Mayer's book The Dark Side. You'll have a much greater understanding of why I post endlessly about this, and why I'm all over the CIA deception issues, too.

More of Fayiz's story here, at Answers.com.