WASHINGTON (AFP) — A military prosecutor involved in war crimes cases in Guantanamo has quit due to ethical concerns, US media reported Thursday, citing defense attorneys.
Chief among those concerns was a failure by the prosecutor's office to turn over exculpatory materials to attorneys for Mohammed Jawad, a 24-year-old Afghan scheduled to go on trial in December, the Washington Post said.
Lieutenant-colonel Darrel Vandeveld was prosecuting Jawad, who is accused of tossing a hand grenade into a jeep carrying two US soldiers in Kabul in 2002.
Jawad's attorney, Major David Frakt, said another point of contention was that Vandeveld's superiors had rejected his recommendation for a plea deal that would have set Jawad free in the near future, the New York Times said.
Vandeveld declined to be interviewed and a document explaining his resignation to the military court in Guantanamo was not released.
The chief prosecutor at Guantanamo, Army Colonel Lawrence Morris, said Vandeveld had asked to leave for personal reasons.
"There are no grounds for his ethical qualms," he told the Times.
"All you have is somebody who is disappointed that his superiors did not agree with his recommendation in a case," Morris was quoted as saying.
Asked about the reports, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman would not confirm that a prosecutor had quit, and declined to comment on the specific case.
"As a matter of fact, they've turned over hundreds of thousands of pages of documents of evidence to the defense in the 22 cases that are currently in the military commissions process," Whitman said of military prosecutors at Guantanamo.
Of Vandeveld he would only say: "He's made some allegations that will certainly be adjudicated in the courtroom so I am not sure I specifically want to address an individual.
"However, I have been assured by the prosecutors that they take their responsibilities very seriously with respect to the rules of military commissions."
"They have oversight mechanisms and cross checks within the prosecution office," Whitman said.
The resignation was the latest blow for the US administration's attempt to prosecute "war on terror" detainees at the prison camp at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Colonel Morris Davis resigned last year as the Pentagon's chief prosecutor for terrorism cases, accusing his superiors of tolerating evidence obtained from waterboarding, an interrogation widely condemned as a form of torture.
Human rights groups have decried the US government's indefinite detention of suspects without trial. And Amnesty International has singled out the case of Jawad and Canadian national Omar Khadr because both were under 18 when captured.
"Both were children when they were taken into US custody in Afghanistan in July and December 2002 respectively," Amnesty said in August.
"Their years in US detention have been an affront to human rights principles, including standards governing the treatment of children in custody."
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