Charges filed against Guantanamo inmate

Attempted murder charges were filed this week against a 22-year-old Afghan imprisoned here for nearly five years, accusing him of trying to kill a U.S. soldier by lobbing a grenade into his car, the Pentagon announced Thursday.

The indictment of Mohammed Jawad was the fourth brought against the 330 or so prisoners at the U.S. detention center since the Supreme Court quashed the Bush administration’s war-crimes tribunal process last year and Congress replaced it with the 2006 Military Commissions Act.

Jawad wasn’t previously identified as one of the terrorism suspects whose cases soon would be brought before the commissions.

The three others indicted this year were among 10 Guantanamo detainees charged with war crimes and brought before the Bush tribunals prior to the high court’s ruling against the process.

The Afghan, who was 17 at the time of his capture, is accused of attempted murder and intentionally causing serious bodily harm in the Dec. 17, 2002, grenade attack on a car carrying Sgts. 1st Class Michael Lyons and Christopher Martin and an Afghan interpreter near Kabul.

Jawad is accused only of trying to hurt Martin, not kill him, for reasons that weren’t clear in the two-page charge sheet drafted by the Office of Military Commissions in Washington.

A separate case, the war-crimes trial of Canadian Omar Khadr, who is charged with murder in a July 2002 grenade attack against a U.S. soldier, is set to open Nov. 8.

A commissions judge must first clear a technical impediment, which prompted a June ruling that the tribunals lack jurisdiction to try Khadr or any other Guantanamo detainee.

None of the prisoners were deemed “unlawful enemy combatants” during their initial screening by Combatant Status Review Tribunals, and only those determined to have been fighting unlawfully are subject to commissions prosecution.

A hastily assembled Court of Military Commission Review overturned that ruling last month and said the judge hearing Khadr’s case could make the “unlawful” designation himself.

In Jawad’s indictment, prosecutors clearly labeled him an “alien unlawful enemy combatant.” He must be arraigned within 30 days of the charges being served, and his trial must begin within 120 days.

--

carol.williams@latimes.com