Official American Sadism
By Anthony Lewis
New York Review of Books
Guantanamo: Beyond the Law
a series of five articles by Tom Lasseter
in the McClatchy Newspapers, June 15–19, 2008, available at www.mcclatchydc.com/detainees
The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight over Presidential Power
by Jonathan Mahler
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 334 pp., $26.00
Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact
a report by Physicians for Human Rights, with a preface by Major General Antonio M. Taguba
Physicians for Human Rights, 130 pp., available at brokenlives.info
1.
Mohammed Jawad, an Afghan accused of throwing a grenade at a convoy of American soldiers in Kabul in late 2002, wounding two, was brought to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp in February 2003. He was then seventeen years old. In December 2003 he attempted suicide. The following May he was subjected to what Guantánamo officials called the "frequent flyer program." Every three hours, day and night, he was shackled and moved to another cell—112 times over fourteen days.
We know about what was done to Mr. Jawad because the military lawyer assigned as his defense counsel, Major David J.R. Frakt (Air Force Reserve), sought and won from a military judge an order for his jailers to produce the records of his captivity. Major Frakt brought out the realities of Jawad's treatment in his closing argument at a pre-trial hearing on June 19, 2008—an argument that was a remarkable display of legal and moral courage.
"Why was Mohammed Jawad tortured?" Major Frakt asked. "Why did military officials choose a teenage boy who had attempted suicide in his cell less than five months earlier to be the subject of this sadistic sleep deprivation experiment?" Officers at Guantánamo said they did not believe he had any valuable intelligence information, and he was not even questioned during the "frequent flyer program." "The most likely scenario," Major Frakt said, "is that they simply decided to torture Mr. Jawad for sport, to teach him a lesson, perhaps to make an example of him to others."
(Continued here.)
New York Review of Books
Guantanamo: Beyond the Law
a series of five articles by Tom Lasseter
in the McClatchy Newspapers, June 15–19, 2008, available at www.mcclatchydc.com/detainees
The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight over Presidential Power
by Jonathan Mahler
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 334 pp., $26.00
Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact
a report by Physicians for Human Rights, with a preface by Major General Antonio M. Taguba
Physicians for Human Rights, 130 pp., available at brokenlives.info
1.
Mohammed Jawad, an Afghan accused of throwing a grenade at a convoy of American soldiers in Kabul in late 2002, wounding two, was brought to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp in February 2003. He was then seventeen years old. In December 2003 he attempted suicide. The following May he was subjected to what Guantánamo officials called the "frequent flyer program." Every three hours, day and night, he was shackled and moved to another cell—112 times over fourteen days.
We know about what was done to Mr. Jawad because the military lawyer assigned as his defense counsel, Major David J.R. Frakt (Air Force Reserve), sought and won from a military judge an order for his jailers to produce the records of his captivity. Major Frakt brought out the realities of Jawad's treatment in his closing argument at a pre-trial hearing on June 19, 2008—an argument that was a remarkable display of legal and moral courage.
"Why was Mohammed Jawad tortured?" Major Frakt asked. "Why did military officials choose a teenage boy who had attempted suicide in his cell less than five months earlier to be the subject of this sadistic sleep deprivation experiment?" Officers at Guantánamo said they did not believe he had any valuable intelligence information, and he was not even questioned during the "frequent flyer program." "The most likely scenario," Major Frakt said, "is that they simply decided to torture Mr. Jawad for sport, to teach him a lesson, perhaps to make an example of him to others."
(Continued here.)
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