World Digest: Detainee Back in Afghanistan After Seven Years at Guantanamo

AFGHANISTAN

Detainee Arrives From Guantanamo

A young Afghan whose six-year detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, came to symbolize many of the problems of the Bush administration's detention policies in its anti-terrorism efforts arrived in his home country Monday, less than a month after a federal judge in Washington ordered his release.

Mohammed Jawad, whose confession to throwing a grenade that wounded two U.S. soldiers was rejected as coerced by torture, was taken to Kabul from Bagram air base and then to the office of the Afghan attorney general. One of his attorneys, Marine Maj. Eric Montalvo, said Jawad then met with President Hamid Karzai and was scheduled to be released to an uncle.

A U.S. military judge at Guantanamo Bay ruled in October that Afghan police had threatened to kill Jawad and his family during his interrogation. Those threats constituted torture, Army Col. Stephen Henley said, and the confession was not admissible as evidence.

U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle ordered Jawad's release on July 30, saying that without the confession, there was no evidence to link him to the grenade attack.

Justice Department lawyers said they would seek new evidence against him. But no additional charges were filed, the military withdrew its charges, and Jawad arrived in Afghanistan hours before the Justice Department was due to report to Huvelle on his status.

-- McClatchy Newspapers

RUSSIA

Putin Visits Chechen

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin showed support for Chechnya's controversial leader by praising his assassinated father -- the first Kremlin-backed Chechen president -- and laying flowers at his grave.

Russia sees Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, like his father Akhmad, as crucial to its efforts to maintain control over the province, which has been devastated by two bloody separatist wars since 1994.

Putin traveled to Chechnya hours before activists in Moscow staged a demonstration commemorating human rights activist Natalya Estemirova, who was murdered last month in Chechnya after spending years exposing abuses in the region. Colleagues have blamed Kadyrov for Estemirova's death, saying widespread abductions and killings go unpunished.

-- Associated Press

Pakistan Says Raid Thwarted Terror Attacks: Police arrested seven members of an al-Qaeda-linked group and seized suicide vests, explosives, assault weapons and heroin during a raid in Pakistan's southern commercial center that thwarted planned terrorist attacks, officials said. The raid on a Karachi hideout of the group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi provided rare intelligence on how drug money is transferred among Muslim extremist groups cooperating to fight the Pakistani and Afghan governments as well as foreign troops in Afghanistan, authorities said. Police officer Saud Mirza said the raid prevented attacks the militants were planning in Karachi on government officials, police and offices of intelligence agencies. He would not elaborate, saying it could jeopardize an investigation.

China to Try Hundreds: Authorities will have hearings in Urumqi for more than 200 people on trial for alleged involvement in China's worst ethnic violence in decades.

-- From News Services