Freed Afghan Guantanamo detainee to sue US for mistreatment: lawyer

Aug 27, 2009, 13:32 GMT

Washington - One of the youngest Afghan detainees, who was released from the US prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, earlier this week, will sue the US government to compensate him for mistreatment for seven years in custody, his lawyer said Thursday.

'The mistake has already been made, and I don't think that the American government could really resolve that in his favour,' lawyer Eric Montalvo told a press conference on Thursday.

'So the way forward right now is to avail the Afghanistan government and the US government of funding to help train him and get him back to normalcy,' he said.

'You cannot have this argument that we are scared that we are letting people go when they are going to harm, or we are scared that they are going to be problems, but yet you create the problems yourselves,' he said.

Mohammed Jawad, who is believed to be in his early 20s now, was released after nearly seven years in US custody. He was captured in Kabul in 2002 on charges of throwing a hand grenade at US military vehicle in downtown Kabul, wounding two US soldiers and their Afghan interpreter.

Eric, a US military lawyer, who first found Jawad in Guantanamo and then helped him to get freed, said it was unacceptable to deprive an innocent individual from freedom for seven years and then 'not give him any compensation.'

'There is no difference between being confined in Guantanamo Bay or being left out in the wild without assistance,' he added.

President Hamid Karzai welcomed Jawad's release and asked government authorities to assist him and his family after receiving Jawad in his presidential palace, Karzai's office said in a statement.

A US federal judge ordered the Justice Department to release him last month and the government was given until Monday to respond. Jawad was flown by a US military plane to Kabul, where he joined his mother, the only member of his family.

Jawad is the latest prisoner to leave the controversial facility, which President Barack Obama has directed to be closed by the end of the year. More than 200 detainees remain locked up there.