Why did the US government torture and imprison a 12 year old for 6 years?

[Kuya]

So, other than the mistreatment (horrible understatement) at Guantanamo, I take it the military did nothing else to the boy and had no idea that the confession was acquired via torture? Or did the Afghan police outright tell them "Yea, we broke his kneecaps until he told us he threw that grenade."

They likely knew that he was tortured, since this is common knowledge to the US government. Aside from that, as the article says, he was also sleep deprived in order to get him to make a second confession. So even if they didn't know he was tortured before, they tortured him again for another confession.

[thomassmith]

So what you want me to say something everyone agrees with? That torture is bad we should never use it. Anyone that uses torture is a terrible person no matter what the circumstances.

[Jaybar]

Forgot there was a second confession (Didn't know why they needed two confessions so I must have browsed through that section).

[Kuya]

Forgot there was a second confession (Didn't know why they needed two confessions so I must have browsed through that section).

It should be noted, that the US government is aware of a lot of human rights abuses and massacres that were committed by its allies in Afghanistan:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/11/wo...m&st=cse&scp=2

WASHINGTON — After a mass killing of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Taliban prisoners of war by the forces of an American-backed warlord during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, Bush administration officials repeatedly discouraged efforts to investigate the episode, according to government officials and human rights organizations.

This CIA warlord executed about two thousand people. The US government most certainly knows that its allies torture. This is why the US sends some of its prisoners to Egypt (which currently is ruled by a dictator) where they will be tortured much more harshly.

[Jaybar]

At least those 2000 criminals aren't going to be throwing 2000 grenades at 2000 convoys. That's a lot of lives saved because of merciless execution.

[Kuya]

Also, adding to the fact that not only was the kid from Pakistan so this idea of the witnesses that currently cannot be found were not his comrades, one also has to consider that something that happens quite often is people selling people who are innocent to the US as terrorists.

Locked Up Alone | Human Rights Watch

Walid is a 28-year-old Palestinian. Reportedly sold to the United States by the Pakistani security forces, Walid was among the first arrivals to GuantanamoBay in early 2002. As of February 2008, he was "approved to leave" yet he continues to be housed in high-security Camp 5, where he has been held since early 2007.[63]

If the witnesses do in fact exist, they likely gave those interviews in return for payment. This is very likely seeing as how we already know that the kid, Jawad, did not throw that grenade.

[Stee]

You do a lot of assuming.

[Aerin]

I don't know just how much outrage there has to be for there to be prosecutions.

U.S. Citizens only. If you're not a U.S. citizen we don't care what happens to you. Thought our media would have taught you all that by now. Silly people.

[Jaybar]

You do a lot of assuming.

Don't need to assume when the offenders have already confessed.

[montijin]

X

[Stee]

Don't need to assume when the offenders have already confessed.

Kuya, not you.

[Skyylya]

As an american i'm ok with what happened. There's a lot of shit that sucks in this world and unfortunately some people get caught in the crossfire.

But the policy and the decisions made overall and in the big picture were for a reason and that reason is to protect the safety of as many people/americans as possible.

american courts would prove he's innocent? they say o.j. is innocent too.

he only confessed under duress? doesn't necessarily mean that he's innocent though i'm not contesting that. In that period of time, with no evidence even searched for you can't say that he didn't in fact do it.

If he wasn't a terrorist then, he sure as hell will be now.

[Kuya]

Interestingly, an innocent man was tortured to death in Bagram, weeks before Jawad arrived. I will note an interesting aspect of this story here:

Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him.

The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, was hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, at around 2 a.m. to answer questions about a rocket attack on an American base. When he arrived in the interrogation room, an interpreter who was present said, his legs were bouncing uncontrollably in the plastic chair and his hands were numb. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.

A sketch by Thomas V. Curtis, a Reserve M.P. sergeant, showing how Dilawar was chained to the ceiling of his cell.
Mr. Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two interrogators, Specialist Joshua R. Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle. But first he punched a hole in the bottom, the interpreter said, so as the prisoner fumbled weakly with the cap, the water poured out over his orange prison scrubs. The soldier then grabbed the bottle back and began squirting the water forcefully into Mr. Dilawar's face.

"Come on, drink!" the interpreter said Specialist Claus had shouted, as the prisoner gagged on the spray. "Drink!"

At the interrogators' behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.

"Leave him up," one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying.

Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.

Last October, the Army's Criminal Investigation Command concluded that there was probable cause to charge 27 officers and enlisted personnel with criminal offenses in the Dilawar case ranging from dereliction of duty to maiming and involuntary manslaughter. Fifteen of the same soldiers were also cited for probable criminal responsibility in the Habibullah case.

So far, only the seven soldiers have been charged, including four last week. No one has been convicted in either death. Two Army interrogators were also reprimanded, a military spokesman said. Most of those who could still face legal action have denied wrongdoing, either in statements to investigators or in comments to a reporter.


Military spokesmen maintained that both men had died of natural causes, even after military coroners had ruled the deaths homicides. Two months after those autopsies, the American commander in Afghanistan, then-Lt. Gen. Daniel K. McNeill, said he had no indication that abuse by soldiers had contributed to the two deaths. The methods used at Bagram, he said, were "in accordance with what is generally accepted as interrogation techniques."


In February, an American military official disclosed that the Afghan guerrilla commander whose men had arrested Mr. Dilawar and his passengers had himself been detained. The commander, Jan Baz Khan, was suspected of attacking Camp Salerno himself and then turning over innocent "suspects" to the Americans in a ploy to win their trust, the military official said.

The three passengers in Mr. Dilawar's taxi were sent home from Guantánamo in March 2004, 15 months after their capture, with letters saying they posed "no threat" to American forces.

They were later visited by Mr. Dilawar's parents, who begged them to explain what had happened to their son. But the men said they could not bring themselves to recount the details.

"I told them he had a bed," said Mr. Parkhudin. "I said the Americans were very nice because he had a heart problem."

The corruption in Afghnistan is in such a level that it is common for innocent people to be handed over to the US as terrorists. No one has yet been convicted for his murder. Investigations and prosecutions anyone who facilitated this must be done. None of this, look forward and not to the past shit. A kid was tortured and locked up for six years with no trial, only to then find he was innocent.

edit: read page 7, it describes what was done to Dilawar.

[Kuya]

I find the whole "war is war, man" thing absolutely positively hilarious. Just what we need. Faced with the cold hard facts that an innocent kid was tortured, some people decide to give us some sophistry about how the "real world" works, or how "war is war".

Honestly.

[Skyylya]

i don't think anyone here is getting ready to throw a parade and say it was great that this kid was tortured and what his situation was.

but in the wake of 9/11 nobody was willing to take chances.

It's easy for you to sit here and 2nd guess and have your 20/20 hindsight and say how corrupt and horrible we all are.

But you really should try to join the real world. You're wannabe hippy utopian dream that everyone should wipe their ass with rose-petals mentality is kinda old and i usually just ignore you.

People always have a bleeding heart when it suits their own personal agenda, people get a shitty lot every day in this world yet you're not out there fighting for them. Instead of trying to sound like you care about people stop posting this shit on a forum so you can be more self-righteous and go write your congresspeople and voice your opinion to people who can do something about it.

[Xfaustx]

i don't think anyone here is getting ready to throw a parade and say it was great that this kid was tortured and what his situation was.

but in the wake of 9/11 nobody was willing to take chances.

It's easy for you to sit here and 2nd guess and have your 20/20 hindsight and say how corrupt and horrible we all are.

But you really should try to join the real world. You're wannabe hippy utopian dream that everyone should wipe their ass with rose-petals mentality is kinda old and i usually just ignore you.

People always have a bleeding heart when it suits their own personal agenda, people get a shitty lot every day in this world yet you're not out there fighting for them. Instead of trying to sound like you care about people stop posting this shit on a forum so you can be more self-righteous and go write your congresspeople and voice your opinion to people who can do something about it.

^this

Yeah this whole thread was super annoying, I was getting angry reading it. Between all the anti-american posts from Kuya and the equally annoying posts about racism and what not from Thomas and Rhinox, and the other posts about "torturing one person to save all of humanity". This thread is pointless and dumb, other than stirring up hate about an issue that will most likely go unresolved.

*edit* And no I don't agree with torture methods, but no one's actions and decisions are full proof especially when in the midst of war. Hindsight makes everything so much clearer. You gotta feel bad for the kid though. I'm pretty tired and can't find anywhere in the story that covers whether or not he was actually innocent or not, just stating they did not have any evidence he did do it?

[Skjie]

I'm sure most of the people in this thread can't deny that even if it was 100% proven that Mohamed Jawad tried to kill the American convoy full of our soldiers they would still think it's morally wrong to "torture" him just based on his age.

No, you see it's wrong to torture him because he's a human.

[Khamsin]

No, you see it's wrong to torture him because he's a human.

So its okay to torture animals?

[Skjie]

So its okay to torture animals?

More human than human?

[Kuya]

i don't think anyone here is getting ready to throw a parade and say it was great that this kid was tortured and what his situation was.

but in the wake of 9/11 nobody was willing to take chances.

It's easy for you to sit here and 2nd guess and have your 20/20 hindsight and say how corrupt and horrible we all are.

But you really should try to join the real world. You're wannabe hippy utopian dream that everyone should wipe their ass with rose-petals mentality is kinda old and i usually just ignore you.

People always have a bleeding heart when it suits their own personal agenda, people get a shitty lot every day in this world yet you're not out there fighting for them. Instead of trying to sound like you care about people stop posting this shit on a forum so you can be more self-righteous and go write your congresspeople and voice your opinion to people who can do something about it.

Nothing you said here responded to any practical or even principled issues at all. The only thing you did was spout rhetoric about how "this is the real world".

9/11 does not justify shit. Simple. 9/11 does not justify torture, it does not justify negating habeas corpus, and it does not justify letting people get away with breaking the law. Get your rudy guiliani bullshit out of here.