Government Abandons Effort to Use Tortured Evidence in Gitmo Habeas Case
The Justice Department informed a federal district court Wednesday that it was no longer seeking to rely on coerced and tortured evidence in the habeas corpus
Jul 31, 202096.5K Shares1.3M Views
The Justice Department informed a federal district court Wednesday that it was no longer seeking to rely on coerced and tortured evidence in the habeas corpus case of Mohammed Jawad, who was arrested as a child in Afghanistan, interrogated under torture, and then locked up at Guantanamo Bay for the last six and a half years.
As I explained when I wrote about thisin late June, the government had been relying on confessionsthat even a Bush military commission judge had ruled were elicted by torture and unreliable. The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents Jawad, filed a motion to suppress the evidence. On Wednesday, the day the government was due to file its opposition to the motion, the Justice Department instead filed papers saying that it would not oppose suppressing the evidence.
As ACLU lawyer Jonathan Hafetz put it to me in an e-mail last night: “This is huge and shows the importance of habeas and court review.”
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Rhyley Carney
Reviewer
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