Earlier this morning I was at the U.S. District Court downtown for a hearing on the Mohammed Jawad case. Jawad is a Guantanamo detainee who is accused of throwing a grenade at an American convoy in Afghanistan. He's been in custody for almost seven years. We know he was a minor when he was apprehended in 2002, but a recent letter sent to the U.S. from the Afghan government suggests he was as young as 11 or 12. But based on the folks I've spoken to who are familiar with the case, that seems unlikely.
In any case, the hearing itself was mostly procedural stuff, focused on scheduling dates for other motions and hearings. But there was an amusing exchange between the judge and a lawyer from the DoJ who tried to explain that she had a scheduling conflict with one of the dates the judge had set. "I'm going on vacation that week," the lawyer explained.
The judge paused and stared at the lawyer. "He's been incarcerated for a very long time," she said.
-- A. Serwer
