December 17, 2002: Teenaged Afghan Captured; Allegedly Attacked US Military Vehicle

Mohammed Jawad, a teenaged Afghan citizen, is captured after allegedly throwing a hand grenade at a US military vehicle in Kabul. The explosion injures two US soldiers and their Afghan interpreter. Jawad insists that he is innocent. After a brief stint in the custody of the Afghan police, where he is tortured into signing a “confession” he cannot read (see November 22, 2008), he will quickly be transferred to Guantanamo, where he will be one of the youngest detainees kept there. [Human Rights First, 9/2008; Salon, 1/21/2009] Jawad’s precise age is unclear. Salon’s Glenn Greenwald will later write, “At the time of his due-process-less imprisonment in Guantanamo, he was an adolescent: between 15 and 17 years old (because he was born and lived his whole life in an Afghan refugee camp in Pakistan, and is functionally illiterate, his exact date of birth is unknown).” [Salon, 1/21/2009]