[R-G] Former Gitmo prosecutor slams detention camp

[Sid Shniad]

Globe and Mail                                                                                                                    March 1, 2009 



Former Gitmo prosecutor slams detention camp 



OMAR EL AKKAD 



Lieutenant-Colonel Darrel Vandeveld had been a prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay for one year when he went to seek advice from a priest. He wondered whether he should resign from a legal system he had come to believe was a sham, but he expected to hear he should stick with it and work within the system. 



The priest offered no such advice. Instead he told the lawyer: "Quit. Do not co-operate with evil." 



Last fall, Mr. Vandeveld did quit the controversial Guantanamo Bay military commissions system, becoming the latest member of the U.S. military to resign for ethical reasons. Last week, he spoke to The Globe and Mail about his transformation from a hardened prosecutor bent on revenge, to one of Guantanamo Bay's harshest critics — a man who now believes that many of the Guantanamo detainees, including Canadian Omar Khadr, were grossly abused. 



"We've mistreated that poor fellow," Mr. Vandeveld said of Mr. Khadr, "regardless of what he's done." 



Once a Lieutenant-Colonel in the army reserve, Mr. Vandeveld, 47, now describes himself as having switched ranks to PFC — not Private First Class, but "Private F'in Citizen, free to speak my mind." 



When Mr. Vandeveld arrived in Guantanamo in May, 2007, he had already worked as a prosecutor in postwar Iraq. Some of his friends in Iraq had been killed, others had committed suicide. 



"I wanted revenge … and I was convinced this was the way to do it." 



But instead of an efficient system designed to deal with hardened terrorists, the lawyer said he found in Guantanamo a cluttered mess — there was no uniform collection of evidence, and some key evidence was never disclosed to the parties that needed to see it. 



Mr. Vandeveld was assigned several cases to prosecute, including that of Mohammed Jawad. Mr. Jawad's case — which bears many similarities to Mr. Khadr's — would cement Mr. Vandeveld's decision to leave Guantanamo. 



At about 16 or 17, Mr. Jawad was a year or two older than Mr. Khadr when he was captured in Afghanistan. Like Mr. Khadr, Mr. Jawad is accused of throwing a grenade at U.S. soldiers. No soldiers were killed in the attack, but two suffered serious wounds. 



Believing that Mr. Jawad had essentially confessed to the attack shortly after his capture in late 2002, Mr. Vandeveld travelled to Kabul to interview the Afghan security officers who detained and questioned the suspect. The Afghans produced a written confession with Mr. Jawad's thumbprint at the bottom. The only problem was, the confession was in Dari — Mr. Jawad speaks Pashto, and is functionally illiterate. In addition, witnesses to the attack had disappeared, as had much of the supporting evidence, he said. 



Eventually, a judge would rule that Mr. Jawad's confessions were the product of torture. 



Mr. Vandeveld also discovered that, after Mr. Jawad's transfer to U.S. authorities at the Bagram detention facilities in northern Afghanistan, he was subjected to several forms of abuse, including "linguistic separation" and the "frequent flier program," which involved moving detainees constantly from cell to cell for weeks at a time as a form of sleep deprivation. It emerged last year that Mr. Khadr had been subjected to the same program. 



"I couldn't bring myself to believe Americans could do this," he said. "This was just sadistic mistreatment of a kid." 



Mr. Vandeveld tried to work out a sentence for Mr. Jawad that would see him serve a few months, undergo rehabilitation and be returned to Pakistan. He said the response he received from his superiors was ridicule. Eventually, Mr. Vandeveld asked for a transfer out of Guantanamo, and later left his military position. 



The office of the Guantanamo Bay prosecution described his ethical qualms at the time of his resignation as baseless, and said he was instead simply angry that his case recommendation had been rejected. 



Mr. Vandeveld became one of about a half-dozen officials who have quit the controversial Guantanamo Bay legal system — a list that includes his former boss, chief prosecutor Colonel Morris Davis. However, he admits today that he didn't leave quickly enough. 



"I felt like I was losing a part of myself … but I lacked the courage," he said. "It took me too long to separate myself from this."