I know y'all can write some letters. Letters that in a better world would wring the salt from the reader's eyes with sorrow for the injustice of the plight of Guantanamo's Child Mohamad Jawad. Letters that reflect your passion and intelligence and resolve.

Letters that can and have made a difference.

We are practical individuals, no? I know when I come here and see that you've posted new diaries, I have such anticipation and delight 'cuz I've come to know that your words are tesorios, treasures, that never disappoint and always leave me feeling happier and more attuned to our world, to so much I didn't know about or didn't know much about until I heard it from you.

NION writers rock.

Will you join forces with me this week and write a letter for Mohamad Jawad?

Our companeros at Cage Prisoners have provided some specific tips for how we can craft our letters to best help Jawad. There are a few distinctive talking points to keep in mind because we are writing letters of appeal, instead of the letters to the editor or our elected representatives that most of us have become accustomed to writing in the past few years. A letter of appeal is in many ways like a blog post as you can put your spirit into this kind of letter in a way that "Senator Nelson, please, vote like a Democrat" letters aren't quite so amenable to.

Ready to get started? Me, too. The format preferred is an email with PDF attachment. Of course, you can snail mail your letter but we need to have them as early as possible for Jawad's defense attorney. No latter than September 12, mi gente. Sooner if you can.

Although we address Judge Crawford, please do not send your letters to her. Send to defense counsel Major David Frakt, please at fraktd at dodgc dot osd dot mil. I have tried here to munge the email address to throw off spam bots, but feel free to contact me, dorquiera at the Gmail dot com, if you have questions on that address.

If you have any questions, please e-mail or call (202)761-0133 extension 106. Once the letter is complete, you may e-mail it (a signed .pdf document is best) or fax it to (202)761-0510 (Attn: Major Frakt). If you wish to mail the letter, please keep the efficiency of the U.S. Postal Service in mind and allow plenty of time. The mailing address is:

Major David Frakt
Office of Military Commissions - Defense
1099 14th St. NW. Ste 2000D
Washington DC 20005

Section 1: Salutation and Opening.

The Honorable Susan J. Crawford
Convening Authority
Office of Military Commissions
1600 Defense Pentagon
Washington DC 20301-1600

Madam Convening Authority,

[State the purpose of the letter, e.g. “I am writing in support of the defense request to withdraw the charges against Mohammad Jawad.”]

[You may wish to talk a bit about yourself and explain your interest in the case, e.g. “As a longtime supporter of children’s rights…..” “As a former war crimes prosecutor….” “As the parent of two U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq….” ]

[In the body of the letter, state your reason or reasons why you believe it would be in the interests of fairness and justice to withdraw the charges. Don’t use every bullet point in this model letter. For individuals, try to keep it to one or two pages. Focus on what you are most passionate about and try to make it personal and heartfelt. You may wish to mention one or more of the reasons listed below. Feel free to add additional reasons.]

Section 2: Mohammad Jawad’s age.

• Mohammad Jawad is a child solder. He was a juvenile, either 16 or 17 years of age, at the time he was captured, which the State Department has recognized in official filings with the United Nations. Under international law, child soldiers are considered primarily to be victims of war, not war criminals. The evidence suggests that Mr. Jawad was lured to Afghanistan under false pretenses by an unscrupulous recruiter for the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (HIG) group, a group led by former Prime Minister Hekmatyar Gulbuddin. This group and its leader were designated as terrorists by the U.S. Government in February 2003, two months after the grenade attack allegedly perpetrated by Mohammad Jawad. At the time of the attack, they were a lawful group.
• There is no indication in the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA) that Congress intended military commissions to have jurisdiction over child soldiers. There is not a single reference to child soldiers, juveniles, or minors, either as a group or by name, in the legislative history of the MCA. It would be a major policy decision of the U.S. government to choose to try child soldiers for war crimes. Such a decision would reverse long-standing U.S. opposition to treating child soldiers as war criminals, and would run counter to the views of all of our major allies in the Global War on Terror.
• There is no precedent for trying child soldiers as war criminals in modern history. Only one other nation has ever even proposed trying child soldiers, Sierra Leone, but the Chief Prosecutor decided not to do so because his task was to prosecute only those “most responsible” for war crimes and by definition he found child soldiers to be excluded. No one under the age of 18 at the time of their offense has been tried for war crimes in modern history.
• If child soldiers are held and prosecuted as war criminals, international law requires that their confinement, prosecution and sentences be designed strictly for rehabilitation and reintegration purposes. No system of rehabilitation and reintegration exists within the military commissions, under the MCA or its implementing regulations. Mohammad Jawad has never been provided any of the required rehabilitation and reintegration services required by international law.
• MCA is required to be interpreted and implemented consistent with court-martial practice. No one under 18 has ever been prosecuted for a war crime in a court-martial. Courts-martial have jurisdiction only over active duty military members.
• One must be 18 (or 17 with the permission of a parent) to enlist in the U.S. Armed Forces. Under U.S. policy and international law, minors are strictly prohibited from serving in a combat zone, even in non-combat roles.

Section Three: Significant doubt exists about Mohammad Jawad’s role in the grenade attack of December 17, 2007.

• Afghan Interior Minister Taj Wardak publicly stated in a press conference on December 18, 2008 that three men were arrested, one teenager and two adults, in connection with the attack, and all three men had confessed their role. Only one hand grenade was thrown.
• Contemporaneous press accounts and military incident reports all indicate there were multiple perpetrators involved in the attack, and that more than one person was arrested.
• The adult perpetrators of the attack are not in U.S. custody and have not been brought to justice for their role in the attack.
• According to Mohammad Jawad, he was forcibly drugged for weeks prior to the attack including on the day of the attack. Several officials involved in interrogating Mohammad Jawad after the attack, both Afghani and American, observed that he appeared to be under the influence of drugs or going through withdrawal from drugs.
• The case against Mohammad Jawad relies almost entirely on a “confession” purportedly taken from Mohammad Jawad by Afghan authorities on December 17, 2002. According to Mohammad Jawad, he was subjected to both physical abuse and coerced by threats while in Afghan police custody. The confession itself was not written by Mohammad Jawad, who was functionally illiterate, and bears only his thumbprint. The confession is not even written in Mohammad Jawad’s native language of Pashto. Virtually all of the independently verifiable facts in the so-called confession are demonstrably false.
• Mohmmad Jawad has been interrogated approximately 36 times at Guantanamo. In all of these interrogation sessions, he has never admitted throwing the hand grenade and has affirmatively and adamantly denied it, despite the use of illegal “enhanced interrogation techniques” on Mohammad Jawad, the same techniques which have broken hardened terrorists. Some of the interrogators and even the Combatant Status Review Tribunal have expressed doubt as to whether he threw the hand grenade.

Section 4: The purpose of the Military Commissions is to try terrorists and serious war crimes, not minor crimes committed by child soldiers in a combat zone.

• The military commissions were intended to try those persons involved in major terrorist attacks such as 9/11 and the East Africa embassy bombings.
• Mohammad Jawad is the only person charged under the MCA who has not been charged with any crimes of terrorism, material support for terrorism or conspiracy.
• Mohammad Jawad is the only person charged under the MCA who is not even alleged to have any affiliation with al Qaida or the Taliban.
• No one died in the attack allegedly perpetrated by Mohammad Jawad. The injuries sustained by the two Special Forces soldiers in the attack, while painful, were not life-threatening. Both soldiers have been fully rehabilitated. One is back on active duty with the military and the other is a police officer in California. The Afghan interpreter received a humanitarian visa to the United States and has resettled permanently in Virginia.
• Significant doubt exists over whether the commission has jurisdiction over the alleged offense of Mohammad Jawad. Hand grenades are lawful weapons and uniformed soldiers in a combat zone are lawful military targets.
• Mohammad Jawad’s alleged actions are not a violation of the law of war. Even if we assume that he did throw the hand grenade, and was able to form the specific intent to kill the U.S. soldiers, this constitutes the domestic crime of attempted murder, it does not constitute the offense of attempted murder in violation of the law of war.

Section 5: Mohammad Jawad has suffered enough and no point will be served by trying him as a war criminal.

• Mohammad Jawad has been in U.S. custody since December 17, 2002, nearly 69 months, more than one quarter of his life. Salim Hamdan, Osama Bin Laden’s personal driver and bodyguard received a sentence of only 66 months.
• Mohammad Jawad, while still a minor, suffered horrifying physical abuse at Bagram Prison from December 18, 2002 to February 6, 2003. Mohammad Jawad was present while the 377th Military Police Company were performing guard duties at the prison. Mohammad Jawad was beaten, pushed down the stairs, hooded, deprived of sleep and chained to a wall. During this period, two Afghan prisoners were beaten to death, one was found to have been beaten so badly that his body was “pulpified.” Army CID treated these deaths as criminal homicides and substantiated dozens of cases of detainee abuse at Bagram consistent with the abuse suffered by Mohammad Jawad. A major investigation by McClatchy Newspapers about detainee abuse at Bagram also corroborated that beatings and other abuse were routine.
• Mohammad Jawad, while still a minor, was placed in isolation for 30 days upon his arrival at Guantanamo, a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions. He was placed back in isolation for 30 more days in the fall of 2003 at the recommendation of the Behavioral Science Consultation Team psychologist who believed such isolation would break him.
• Mohammad Jawad has been held with adult prisoners (contrary to international law) in conditions more severe than supermax confinement conditions for virtually his entire period of confinement at Guantanamo.
• Mohammad Jawad was subjected to the frequent flyer program, an intentional and illegal sleep deprivation regime, from May 7-May 20, 2004. This occurred after the JTF-GTMO Commander claims that he ordered this abusive program stopped in late March 2004. This program was specifically found to be abusive by Lt Gen Randall Schmidt in the Schmidt-Furlow report, but he did not recommend any corrective action because he was informed that the program had ceased. Testimony at the August 14 hearing in the Jawad case from the intelligence officer for the Joint Detention Operations Group (JDOG) established that the frequent flyer program continued until at least April 2005 with the knowledge and concurrence of the JTF-GTMO and JDOG Commanders.
• All of the evidence of detainee abuse of Mohammad Jawad, including physical and linguistic isolation, sleep deprivation and physical abuse was discovered after charges had been sworn and referred in this case.
• The Acting Chief Prosecutor responsible for swearing and forwarding the charges against Mohammad Jawad testified that he was unaware of any abuse of Mr. Jawad at the time charges were sworn, and that, as a matter of personal ethics, he would not swear charges against someone he believed to have been tortured.
• The Legal Advisor also testified that he was unaware of any evidence of abuse of Mohammad Jawad at the time that he recommended referral.
• The lead Trial Counsel in this case has specifically recommended to the Chief Prosecutor that a pretrial agreement be offered to Mohammad Jawad with a sentence of “time served."

Section 6: Mohammad Jawad is not a threat to the United States or its allies.

• From his first days at Bagram prison, Mohammad Jawad repeatedly expressed his concern for the servicemembers injured in the grenade attack and the Afghan interpreter. When he was falsely informed that the soldiers were “not expected to make it” he expressed deep sorrow and repeatedly stated that he was praying for their recovery.
• In 69 months of captivity, Mr. Jawad has never indicated that he harbors any ill will towards the United States. He has expressed no intent to return to the battlefield or to engage in jihad against the United States. To the contrary, all he has ever requested is to return home to his family to pursue a normal life.

A template from the above talking points follows. Please be creative, focus on your area of interest, and consider the above just a sample letter which encapsulates the key points of the letter of appeal.

[Close with an appropriately respectful and hopeful ending, e.g. “Thank you very much for taking my/our views into consideration. I am confident that when you review all of the matters in extenuation and mitigation, you will agree that the interests of justice will be best served by withdrawing and dismissing the charges against Mohammad Jawad.”]

(address and date)

Madame Convening Authority:

With respect, I ask you to carefully consider the defense request to withdraw the charges against Mohammad Jawad.

As the first generation daughter of an immigrant, a mother, a teacher and translator who understands acutely the critical disadvantages of Mohammad's read and write, and inability to speak or understand English and express himself, and as an individual distressed by the plight of this young man, I appeal to you for redress.

As you know, Madame, there is not a single reference to child soldiers, juveniles, or minors, either as a group or by name, in the legislative history of the MCA. The MCA is required to be interpreted and implemented consistent with court-martial practice. No one under 18 has ever been prosecuted for a war crime in a court-martial. Courts-martial have jurisdiction only over active duty military personnel.

Mohammad Jawad is the only person charged under the MCA who has not been charged with any crimes of terrorism, material support for terrorism or conspiracy.

Mohammad Jawad was beaten, pushed down the stairs, hooded, deprived of sleep and chained to a wall. During this period, two Afghan prisoners were beaten to death, one was found to have been beaten so badly that his body was “pulpified.” Army CID treated these deaths as criminal homicides and substantiated dozens of cases of detainee abuse at Bagram consistent with the abuse suffered by Mohammad Jawad.

In 69 months of captivity, Mr. Jawad has never indicated that he harbors any ill will towards the United States. To the contrary, all he has ever requested is to return home to his family to pursue a normal life.

Thank you for your consideration of the request to withdraw charges against Mohammad Jawad.

Sincerely,
your name here

So here you have it, easy as pie, with one or two talking points included from each area of the criteria supplied by Major Frakt and Cage Prisoners. With these facts, you can add your own perspectives and write a very compelling letter. Or two.

Please refrain from general attacks on the Bush Administration and its policies in the Global War on Terror.

• The Convening Authority is a loyal Bush administration insider and such attacks will not be helpful.
• Please refrain from general attacks on the legitimacy of military commissions (however valid such attacks may be).
• Remember that your audience is the Convening Authority, a person deeply committed to the commissions. A better approach is to try to convince her that withdrawing the charges against Mohammad Jawad would enhance the legitimacy of the commissions by ensuring that commissions focus on real terrorists, and by demonstrating that the Convening Authority will respond fairly and reasonably when new evidence comes to light which casts doubt on earlier decisions.

Here's a timeline in case you'd like to "refresh" the key events and dates in your minds.

Mohammed Jawad – in his sixth year of military detention:

1985

– Mohammed Jawad born in Afghanistan. He spends much of his youth in Pakistan to where his family fled to a refugee camp.

13 November 2001 – President Bush signs Military Order authorizing military commission trials of foreign nationals.

7 February 2002 – President Bush signs memorandum that Article 3 common to the four Geneva Conventions will not apply to detainees captured in Afghanistan, and that humane treatment is a “matter of policy” rather than a legal requirement. In a public “fact sheet”, the White House says the Guantánamo detainees “will not be subjected to physical or mental abuse or cruel treatment."

17 December 2002 – Jawad, aged 16 or 17, arrested in Kabul by Afghan police after a grenade attack on a US military vehicle; transferred to US custody that night, and taken to Bagram airbase the next day. Allegedly subjected to hooding, isolation, sleep deprivation, stress positions, forced standing, physical assaults, and cruel use of restraints in Bagram.

6 February 2003 – Mohammed Jawad transferred to US Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He is put into 30-day isolation.

7-20 May 2004 – Mohammed Jawad subjected to 14 days of the sleep disruption technique known as the “frequent flyer program”. Subsequently transferred to conditions of isolation in Camp 5.

28 June 2004 – Supreme Court rules, in Rasul v. Bush, that US courts have jurisdiction under federal law to consider habeas corpus petitions from foreign nationals detained in Guantánamo.

4 November 2004 – Combatant Status Review Tribunal affirms Mohammed Jawad’s status as an “enemy combatant.”

29 June 2006 – Supreme Court rules in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that military commission system under 2001 Military Order is unlawful.

17 October 2006 – Military Commissions Act (MCA) passes into law, stripping US courts of jurisdiction to consider habeas corpus petitions from foreign “enemy combatants” and authorizing revised military commissions to try “alien unlawful enemy combatants.”

9 October 2007 – Charges under MCA sworn against Jawad. He is given access to a lawyer for the first time in nearly five years.

30 January 2008 – Charges approved by Convening Authority and referred on for trial by military commission.

2 June 2008 – Guantánamo guards allegedly beat, kick, and pepper spray Mohammed Jawad, who is already shackled. He is then moved from Camp 5 to Camp 6 and subject to disciplinary regime

12 June 2008 – Supreme Court rules, in Boumediene v. Bush, that the Guantánamo detainees have the right to challenge the lawfulness of their detention in habeas corpus petitions.