[E]ven if the accusations against Jawad were true — and a federal judge just ruled there was little or no credible evidence that they are — it would mean that he did nothing more than throw a grenade at two soldiers who were part of a foreign army that had invaded his country. Not even the Bush administration ever claimed he had anything to do with Al Qaeda, or was a high-level member of the Taliban, or had anything to do with any Terrorist plots.  Independent of whether the American invasion of Afghanistan was or was not justified, how could an act like that — an attack by a native citizen against soldiers of an invading army — possibly make someone a Terrorist or a war criminal, let alone justify shipping them thousands of miles away to a camp for Terrorists (or, more bizarrely still, trying them in an American criminal court under American criminal law)?
It’s as though we’ve interpreted the laws of war so that it’s perfectly legal for the U.S. to invade, occupy and bomb other countries, but it’s illegal and criminal — it turns someone into a Terrorist — if any of the citizens of those countries fight back against our army. When one adds to all of that Jawad’s very young age at the time of his detention, the fact that he was repeatedly tortured, and the fact that he’s now been kept in a cage for seven years, thousands of miles from his country, without any charges at all, his ongoing detention should horrify any decent person.
Glenn Greenwald | Salon.com