January 14, 2009	Wednesday	Muharram 16, 1430

WASHINGTON, Jan 13: Lawyers for a young Guantanamo detainee called on Tuesday for a federal appeals court to uphold the dismissal of his confession to attacking US forces. The lawyers argue that the confession was obtained by American interrogators soon after he was tortured by Afghan authorities.

While Mohammed Jawad, an Afghan, was not tortured by US interrogators, “the effects are going to linger,” said Air Force Major David J. R. Frakt, the detainee’s lawyer, argued to a three-judge panel at the United States Court of Military Commission Review.

Pentagon lawyers argued to the panel, which met at the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, that the American interrogation was legal and should not be tainted by what Afghan authorities did to Jawad before he was given over to US custody.

“This was a separate and distinct interrogation,” said Navy Cmdr. Arthur L. Gaston III.

Jawad is accused of throwing a grenade that injured two American soldiers and their interpreter in Kabul in 2002, when he was 16 or 17. Jawad is being held at the notorious US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, one of the youngest detainees there.

A military judge, Army Colonel Stephen Henley, ruled that Jawad’s confession to Afghan police commanders and high-ranking government officials on Dec 17, 2002, was achieved only after they threatened to kill him and his family — a strategy that Henley said was intended to inflict severe pain and constituted torture.Henley disqualified Jawad’s second confession while in US custody on Dec 17 and 18, in part because the US interrogator used techniques to maintain “the shock and fearful state” associated with his arrest by Afghan police, including blindfolding him and placing a hood over his head.—AP