GUANTANAMO BAY, Sept 25: A US military prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay has quit because his office suppressed evidence that could clear a young Afghan detainee of war crimes charges, defence lawyers said on Wednesday.

The prosecutor, Lt Col Darrel Vandeveld, is now supporting a defence bid to dismiss the charges against Mohammed Jawad because of the alleged misconduct, according to Michael Berrigan, the deputy chief defence counsel for the Guantanamo tribunals.

The chief prosecutor, Col Lawrence Morris, denied that his office withheld evidence and said Vandeveld told him he was leaving his post for “personal reasons”.

“All you have is someone who is disappointed because his superiors didn’t see the wisdom of his recommendation in a case,” Morris told reporters.

Jawad, who was captured in Afghanistan when he was 16 or 17, is accused of throwing a grenade that wounded two American soldiers and their interpreter in Dec 2002. He faces a maximum life sentence at a trial scheduled to begin in December.

In a declaration submitted to the defence, Vandeveld said prosecutors knew Jawad may have been drugged before the attack and that the Afghan interior ministry said two other men had confessed to the same crime, Berrigan said. Pentagon officials refused to provide a copy of the declaration.

Vandeveld declined to comment through a tribunal spokeswoman.

“He decided he could no longer ethically serve either as a prosecutor in this case or for the Office of Military Commissions,” said Jawad’s Pentagon-appointed attorney, Major David Frakt. He said Vandeveld had endorsed settling the case and releasing Jawad after a short while.

Frakt said he has asked for Vandeveld to testify at Jawad’s pre-trial hearing, but the former prosecutor was denied authorisation to fly to the U.S. navy base in south-eastern Cuba.

At least three other Guantanamo prosecutors have quit their posts over allegations of misconduct. The former chief prosecutor, Col Morris Davis, resigned in October last year and accused his superiors of political meddling.

Davis testified last month that a Pentagon official who oversaw the tribunals until last week, Brig Gen Thomas Hartmann, pushed for Jawad to be prosecuted before others because the details of the case would grip the American public and help build support for the process.

“The guy who threw the grenade was always at the top of the list,” Davis said.

The military judge later ruled that disqualified Hartmann from the case, saying he had compromised his objectivity by aligning himself with prosecutors.

Two other former prosecutors, Majors John Carr and Robert Preston, asked to be reassigned after alleging in 2004 that prosecutors had deliberately misled senior civilian Pentagon officials about the quality of evidence against defendants.

Wednesday’s disclosure sparked new criticism of the Pentagon’s system for prosecuting alleged terrorists.

“This appears to be yet another example of the government pushing the commission’s case forward with total disregard of the truth or the rules,” said Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel for Human Rights Watch.

Jawad is one of roughly two dozen Guantanamo detainees facing charges. Military prosecutors say they plan trials for about 80 of the 255 men held here on suspicion of links to Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

—AP