Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Miami Herald
June 20, 2008
Pg. 3
An Afghan captive sprang from his seat and asked a war-court judge to 'give me time to talk about my sleeplessness.'
By Carol Rosenberg
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- An Afghan detainee interrupted the testimony Thursday of a Harvard sleep disorder expert to describe first-hand a controversial Guantánamo sleep deprivation regime called the ``Frequent Flyer Program.''
''Give me time to talk about my sleeplessness,'' said Afghan captive Mohammed Jawad, about 23, before he practically rushed the war court witness stand soon after his military judge ordered his ankles unshackled. It was the first military commissions testimony claiming abuse directly from the lips of a war-on-terror detainee.
For two weeks in May 2004, according to prison camp records released in the commissions, guards made the young captive change prison-camp cells 112 times, shackling and shuffling him every two to four hours.
'Torture'
Jawad's Air Force defense attorney, Maj. David Frakt, has filed a motion calling the treatment ''torture'' and asking the trial judge to dismiss his attempted murder charges.
''Day and night they were shifting me from one place to another,'' Jawad said through a Pashto translator. ``Nobody answered why they were giving me this punishment.''
It was also the first witness testimony since Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., declared that Defense Department policies under former Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spawned detainee abuses.
The Bush administration says it does not engage in torture. While disputing that characterization, the prosecution at the pre-trial hearing of Jawad stipulated that the Afghan man accused of throwing a grenade that wounded two soldiers was subjected to sleep deprivation while a prisoner here.
The testimony also came during a day of persistent problems in the Pentagon's $12 million Expeditionary Legal Complex, where the military for the first time tried to let international journalists simultaneously report on two trials during a marathon court session that started at 8:30 a.m. It broke twice to let the detainee pray.
Glitches
The audio malfunctioned for 22 minutes while a case prosecutor answered a defense attorney's questions about alleged Pentagon misconduct. One judge's hearing drowned out another.
Moreover, portions of the Jawad trial were at times inaudible during a simultaneous morning session while a new war-court judge, Army Col. Patrick Parrish set an Oct. 8 trial date for Canadian captive Omar Khadr, 21.
The other former teenage captive at Guantánamo, Khadr is accused of throwing a grenade during a firefight in Khost, Afghanistan, in July 2002 that killed Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, 28, of Albuquerque, N.M., and faces a maximum penalty of life in jail.
Jawad is an Afghan man born in a refugee camp in Pakistan. He is accused of throwing a grenade into a military jeep-like vehicle carrying two U.S. soldiers and their Afghan translator as it passed through a Kabul bazaar in December 2002, more than a year into the U.S. invasion.
No one was killed, but all three passengers were wounded.
Jawad's impatience boiled over during a pre-trial hearing on Thursday that asked Army Col. Stephen Henley, the military judge, to dismiss the charges.
Bad hookup
Harvard Medical School sleep researcher Janet Mullington was testifying by video teleconference from an Air Force base near Boston about the effects of sleep deprivation -- in a link that shrieked and eerily echoed despite military technicians efforts to fix the testimony.
Prosecutors noted that Jawad didn't complain to military medical staff called ''psych technicians'' who visited him after the sleep-deprivation program.
June 20, 2008
Pg. 3
An Afghan captive sprang from his seat and asked a war-court judge to 'give me time to talk about my sleeplessness.'
By Carol Rosenberg
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- An Afghan detainee interrupted the testimony Thursday of a Harvard sleep disorder expert to describe first-hand a controversial Guantánamo sleep deprivation regime called the ``Frequent Flyer Program.''
''Give me time to talk about my sleeplessness,'' said Afghan captive Mohammed Jawad, about 23, before he practically rushed the war court witness stand soon after his military judge ordered his ankles unshackled. It was the first military commissions testimony claiming abuse directly from the lips of a war-on-terror detainee.
For two weeks in May 2004, according to prison camp records released in the commissions, guards made the young captive change prison-camp cells 112 times, shackling and shuffling him every two to four hours.
'Torture'
Jawad's Air Force defense attorney, Maj. David Frakt, has filed a motion calling the treatment ''torture'' and asking the trial judge to dismiss his attempted murder charges.
''Day and night they were shifting me from one place to another,'' Jawad said through a Pashto translator. ``Nobody answered why they were giving me this punishment.''
It was also the first witness testimony since Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., declared that Defense Department policies under former Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spawned detainee abuses.
The Bush administration says it does not engage in torture. While disputing that characterization, the prosecution at the pre-trial hearing of Jawad stipulated that the Afghan man accused of throwing a grenade that wounded two soldiers was subjected to sleep deprivation while a prisoner here.
The testimony also came during a day of persistent problems in the Pentagon's $12 million Expeditionary Legal Complex, where the military for the first time tried to let international journalists simultaneously report on two trials during a marathon court session that started at 8:30 a.m. It broke twice to let the detainee pray.
Glitches
The audio malfunctioned for 22 minutes while a case prosecutor answered a defense attorney's questions about alleged Pentagon misconduct. One judge's hearing drowned out another.
Moreover, portions of the Jawad trial were at times inaudible during a simultaneous morning session while a new war-court judge, Army Col. Patrick Parrish set an Oct. 8 trial date for Canadian captive Omar Khadr, 21.
The other former teenage captive at Guantánamo, Khadr is accused of throwing a grenade during a firefight in Khost, Afghanistan, in July 2002 that killed Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, 28, of Albuquerque, N.M., and faces a maximum penalty of life in jail.
Jawad is an Afghan man born in a refugee camp in Pakistan. He is accused of throwing a grenade into a military jeep-like vehicle carrying two U.S. soldiers and their Afghan translator as it passed through a Kabul bazaar in December 2002, more than a year into the U.S. invasion.
No one was killed, but all three passengers were wounded.
Jawad's impatience boiled over during a pre-trial hearing on Thursday that asked Army Col. Stephen Henley, the military judge, to dismiss the charges.
Bad hookup
Harvard Medical School sleep researcher Janet Mullington was testifying by video teleconference from an Air Force base near Boston about the effects of sleep deprivation -- in a link that shrieked and eerily echoed despite military technicians efforts to fix the testimony.
Prosecutors noted that Jawad didn't complain to military medical staff called ''psych technicians'' who visited him after the sleep-deprivation program.