SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO — A former prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay who roiled America’s war-crimes trials with accusations the Pentagon withheld evidence from detainees says he will continue to monitor his old cases for any wrongdoing.
Army Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld quit as prosecutor of a half-dozen cases at Guantanamo last month, accusing the government of keeping material from defense teams that could have helped their clients. The U.S. military then dropped charges against five Guantanamo prisoners who Vandeveld had been prosecuting but said it plans to charge at least some of the men again.
In some of his first public remarks since leaving active duty, the reservist told The Associated Press that military prosecutors named to take over his cases are honest, dedicated professionals — but that he will be watching and would testify if subpoenaed about any missteps.
“My guess is that the new prosecutors will be scrupulously adherent to the discovery rules given the circumstances of my departure from the commissions, particularly since they realize that I will know if they withhold anything,” the former prosecutor said Saturday from his home outside Erie, Pa.
Guantanamo’s chief prosecutor, Army Col. Lawrence Morris, has denied the government withheld evidence. He said charges were dropped against the five suspected al-Qaida and Taliban-linked defendants to allow the war-crimes courts, known as military commissions, to examine evidence more closely — not because of Vandeveld’s complaints.
But Clive Stafford Smith, an attorney for one of the detainees, said he suspects prosecutors wanted to restart the cases from scratch so that Vandeveld cannot be subpoenaed to testify as a critic.
“They want to have new prosecutors look at the cases so they can say Vandeveld’s criticisms are moot,” said Stafford Smith, an attorney for Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian resident of Britain whom the U.S. had charged with plotting to detonate a dirty bomb in the United States. Mohamed has denied the claim and said he falsely admitted to crimes under torture.
Vandeveld, a 48-year-old Iraq war veteran, is returning to his civilian job as a deputy Pennsylvania state attorney general. He was the fourth Guantanamo prosecutor to resign. His hometown newspaper hailed him last week as a patriot.
“Our country protects our rights of its citizens to disagree with official government actions, and to speak out against wrongdoing,” the Erie Times-News daily said. “Vandeveld has served his country, championed the Constitution and exercised his right to speak out about injustice. That is what it means to be pro-American.” Already, the former military prosecutor has helped his former adversaries on the defense team for one Afghan detainee. Within days of quitting, he alerted them that Afghanistan’s defense minister had expressed concerns about the prisoner’s young age and treatment at Guantanamo.
Vandeveld told them in an e-mail provided to the AP that his office had received at least five messages describing Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak’s concerns about Mohammed Jawad, who is accused of throwing a grenade that injured two U.S.
soldiers in Kabul. Jawad was 16 or 17 at the time of the 2002 attack.
Vandeveld, the prosecutor in the case, said he initially dismissed the defense minister’s concerns but then developed his own doubts about prospects for a fair trial. He encountered evidence — some of which was kept from defense attorneys — that Jawad was stripped naked during an interrogation shortly after his capture and subjected to sleep deprivation at Guantanamo.
Jawad was not among the detainees whose charges were dropped. He faces a maximum life sentence.
If Jawad’s defense attorney, Air Force Maj. David Frakt, could persuade the Afghan government to review the case itself, Vandeveld told the defense lawyer in an e-mail, it could build pressure on the U.S. to send Jawad back as “a political cause celebre.” Frakt said he has since discussed the case with the Afghan ambassador to the U.S.
