A federal judge is scheduled to review a challenge this morning to the indefinite detention of Mohamed Jawad, a terrorism suspect who was captured in Afghanistan on suspicion of throwing a grenade at an American convoy when he was 16 or 17, and has been held in detention ever since. The original prosecutor in Jawad's military commissions case, Lt. Col. Darrel J. Vandeveld, resigned because he felt the military commissions process didn't allow for exculpatory information that might have proved Jawad's innocence. Today, his lawyers will be arguing that he's being held indefinitely based on a confession obtained through torture. Jawad says he was subjected to Guantanamo Bay's "frequent flier program" which is a method of sleep deprivation implemented by moving the detainee from cell to cell. Jawad claims that in May 2004, he was was moved to a different cell 112 times over the course of 14 days. Last Wednesday, a judge dismissed the Obama administration's attempt to delay Jawad's ability to challenge his detention, essentially until the administration had developed a policy for dealing with detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
Beyond the ethical and moral problems with torture, the use of something like sleep deprivation to obtain evidence or intelligence makes that information completely unreliable -- because it makes the victim completely incoherent. That's why evidence gained that way is inadmissible in court. But say you made a legal exception for confessions obtained through torture -- do I even need to explain why giving the government a license to torture and the ability to use torture confessions in court would be a bad idea?
-- A. Serwer
