A United States Air Force Reservist, Major David Frakt, JAG Corps, has promised to continue fighting on behalf of his client, as the Obama Administration is opposed to the young man's release. Major Frakt's expertise has earned accolades outside the courtroom, from the ACLU to firedoglake.

A federal judge who had earlier challenged the government's evidence against the detainee ordered him released today, offering a further curb to the unitary executive.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/us/31gitmo.html

“Enough has been imposed on this young man to date,” the judge, Ellen Segal Huvelle, said in a courtroom crowded with people drawn by what had become a confrontation between the judge and the Obama administration.

But it was not clear Thursday whether Judge Huvelle’s order will mean freedom for the detainee, Mohammed Jawad, who has long faced American charges that, as a teenager, he threw a hand grenade in Kabul in 2002 that injured two American servicemen and their Afghan interpreter.

The ruling on Thursday came after a concession by the government last week that it could no longer defend Mr. Jawad’s military detention in the habeas corpus case before Judge Huvelle. She had declared that the administration’s case for continuing his detention after nearly seven years was “riddled with holes” and that virtually all of the government’s evidence came from confessions he made after being threatened with death.

Justice Department officials said they were studying whether to file civilian criminal charges against Mr. Jawad. If they do, officials say, he could be transferred to the United States to face charges, instead of being sent to Afghanistan, where his lawyers say he would be released to his mother.

“It is a very real possibility,” a Justice Department official said in an interview, “but whether we can compile enough evidence to support a case is a question we don’t yet know the answer to.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the department does not discuss investigations.

Mr. Jawad’s military lawyer, Maj. David J. R. Frakt, said he would file court challenges to any effort by the administration to move his client to the United States to face charges. But Major Frakt conceded that the Aug. 21 deadline Judge Huvelle gave the government to send Mr. Jawad to Afghanistan also gave prosecutors time to work on a grand jury investigation.

“We have won the battle,” he said outside the federal courthouse here. “Have we won the war? Perhaps it remains to be seen.”

Mohamed Jawad's age is unknown. He was accused of taking part in a 2002 grenade attack that injured two GIs and a translator in Kabul, but Major Frakt has provided evidence that at least three adults also took part in that attack. Further details:

Guantánamo Detainee Is Charged in ’02 Attack
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
Published: October 12, 2007

Military prosecutors filed charges of attempted murder against a Guantánamo detainee this week, saying he threw a hand grenade at a jeep carrying two American servicemen and an Afghan translator, documents released yesterday show.

All three men were seriously injured in an attack in Kabul on Dec. 17, 2002.

The case was the fourth filed under the military commissions law Congress enacted last year for trials of war-crimes cases at the naval station at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The detainee, Mohammed Jawad, has told Guantánamo hearing panels that he had been caught with another grenade, but he denied that he was responsible for the Kabul attack, undated transcripts show. At the hearings, to determine if he was properly held as an enemy combatant, Mr. Jawad said he had falsely confessed to the attack after being tortured by Afghan police.

“I told them anything they wanted me to say,” he said,

(sic).

Mr. Jawad said at his Guantánamo hearing that he was a Pakistani working as a laborer in Afghanistan. He was combative and at times sarcastic during the hearings, the transcripts show.

An unidentified military officer referred to evidence that Mr. Jawad was not permitted to see, saying Mr. Jawad had told an unidentified “senior Afghani police officer that he was proud of what he had done, and, if he were let go, he would do it again.”

“I never said that,” Mr. Jawad replied.

This is the celebrated case in which the original prosecutor resigned. At the time Maj. Frakt

said Colonel Vandeveld “could no longer continue to serve ethically as a prosecutor.” He said Colonel Vandeveld had had disputes with his superiors about whether to give him information that might help the defense.

The chief prosecutor, Col. Lawrence J. Morris of the Army, said Colonel Vandeveld had asked to leave the prosecutor’s office for personal reasons and said, “there are no grounds for his ethical qualms.”

The dispute is the latest to stir up the war crimes system here, which has been plagued with prior defections from the prosecution office, judicial rulings that there was unlawful command influence over some cases and assertions of political influence from a former chief prosecutor.

Colonel Vandeveld did not respond to a call to his home and military public affairs officers said he did not wish to comment publicly. Prosecutors and defense lawyers said he had made his assertions in a filing in the Guantánamo tribunal that, like all filings here, can be released only by a military judge.

Major Frakt said Colonel Vandeveld had been troubled by the way he was directed to handle the case at the center of the controversy, which involves accusations against a Pakistani-born Afghan detainee, Mohammed Jawad. He is charged with attempted murder, accused of throwing a hand grenade in Afghanistan in 2002 at a jeep carrying two American servicemen and an Afghan translator.

Mr. Jawad was a teenager at the time, and Major Frakt has asserted that he was mistreated here, including being subjected to a program of sleep depravation.(sic)

Speaking to reporters here on Wednesday, Major Frakt said that one point of contention had been Colonel Vandeveld’s recommendation for a plea deal that would have set Mr. Jawad free soon. The colonel’s superiors said no to that deal.

If it's true that the government won't comply with the orders of federal judges presiding over the government's own courtrooms in regard to these prisoners of war, why won't the government comply? What is there left for the US to be afraid of in the case of this one young man?