Mohamed Jawad - Attack and Capture

Attack and Capture

A white Soviet UAZ jeep, driven by Sergeant first class Michael Lyons with Sergeant first class Christopher Martin in the passenger seat and Afghan interpreter Assadullah Khan Omerk in the rear, had just finished an operation in the marketplace and was stopped in traffic, when somebody tossed a homemade grenade through the jeep's missing rear window.

Both soldiers from the 19th Special Forces were wounded, Lyons in the eye and both feet, and puncturing an eardrum, while Martin escaped with less serious injuries to his right knee, and the Afghan interpreter suffered only minor injuries.

Four American Humvees cordoned off the site of the attack, and Afghan police near the area arrested three men, holding Jawad and Ghulam Saki, while releasing a third suspect. A police officer said that he had seen one throw the grenade, and the other tackled by a fruit vendor as he prepared to throw a second. Jawad would later tell his tribunal that he had been handed devices he didn't recognise by the men with him, and told to put them in his pocket and wait for their return. When he went into his pocket to purchase raisins from a shopkeeper, he was asked why he had a "bomb" in his pocket - and the shopkeeper advised him to run and throw the two grenades in the river. It was while running toward the river, yelling at people to move aside because he had a bomb, that Jawad alleges he was "caught".

In an October 2009 interview Jawad asserted that his nose was broken during his first interrogation at an Afghan police station.