(CNSNews.com) - A terror suspect charged with the attempted murder of two U.S. soldiers -- before a judge ruled that his confession was coerced and inadmissible -- returned home to Afghanistan on Monday, the same day news broke of a policy change in interrogations.
 
After many Democrats and some Republican lawmakers called the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation techniques such as playing loud music and waterboarding “torture,” President Barack Obama reassigned interrogation responsibilities from the CIA to the National Security Council – which is run out of the White House, the Washington Post first reported.
 
“They are taking a page right out of the Lyndon Johnson Vietnam playbook, where it’s ‘let’s run things right out of the White House on a day-to-day basis, because we trust no one else in the government to be competent enough, talented enough or dedicated enough to be able to run a major war time effort,” former USS Cole Commander Kirk S. Lippold told CNSNews.com.
 
The Cole was attacked by terrorists in 2000.
 
The release of Mohammed Jawad and his return to Afghanistan is the latest of dangerous decision by the Obama administration, argued Lippold, a senior military fellow at Military Families United, an advocacy group for military families. Obama has pledged to shut down the controversial prison by January 2010.
 
“Now we are in the awkward position of judges, lawyers and everyone else thinking they now have a piece of this legal pie with respect to detainees, when in fact the administration has no policy in place; they have no plan for how to deal with the detainees in Gunatanomo Bay,” Lippold said.
 
Also on Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder reportedly named a prosecutor to investigate the interrogation of terror suspects during the war on terror.
 
The Guantanamo Bay prison holds 229 terror suspects. So far, 26 terror suspects have been ordered released, while judges upheld the detainment of five. The remaining cases are pending.
 
U.S. authorities charged Jawad with attempted murder for allegedly throwing a grenade at two U.S. soldiers in Kabul, Afghanistan in December 2002. He confessed to the charge. However, both a military judge and a civilian federal judge determined the confession was coerced through torture and could not be used as evidence.
 
According to the Summary of Evidence from the Defense Department, six men recruited Jawad to clear Russian mines in Kabul, Afghanistan. “The detainee was affiliated with the Hazb-E-Islami organization,” the Pentagon report says. “The Hazb-E-Islami organization is a terrorist organization with long-established ties to [Osama] Bin Laden.”
 
The Pentagon Summary of Evidence states that “The detainee attended training camp in late 2002 and received instruction on the AK-47, shoulder held rocket launchers, and grenades.”
 
It continues, “The detainee admits to telling terrorist organization associates that he would kill Northern Alliance and American forces,” and “The detainee was captured approximately 17 December 2002 in Kabul, Afghanistan while fleeing from the scene of a grenade attack targeting American soldiers.”
 
Last October, McClatchy newspapers reported, a military judge Col. Stephen Henley, ruled the confession could not be used as evidence. Still, the federal government continued to rely on the confession in the habeas corpus case that went to U.S. District Judge Ellen S. Huvelle of the District of Columbia.
 
Huvelle ruled in July that the confession was inadmissible and gave the government until July 24 to produce more evidence. When the Department of Justice did not have additional evidence, Huvelle ordered Jawad be released by Aug. 21.
 
“Judge Huvelle made clear that Mr. Jawad has been illegally detained and the government has no credible evidence to continue holding him,” ACLU staff attorney Jonathon Hafetz said in a statement on July 30. “We are pleased that the Justice Department has expressed a commitment to getting him home so that this nightmare of abuse and injustice can finally come to an end.”
 
Though a federal court ordered the release, Lippold blames the Obama administration for not appealing the district court ruling. He argued politics were involved.
 
“If you want to close Guantanamo Bay and release as many people as possible, why would you want to present more evidence?” he said. 
 
The bigger problem, he said, is the prevailing wisdom of combating terrorism under law enforcement rules.
 
“A federal judge views the world through the mind of what evidence standards are for a U.S. court of law,” Lippold said. “If we are going to impose that standard of evidence on our U.S. soldiers when they capture someone, we have lost the war.
 
“You can’t expect a private out there, just finishing a firefight, to lay down his weapon and pick up an evidence bag and ensure whatever evidence he gathered that the al Qaeda guy that just tried to capture or just tried to kill him is al Qaeda. To have that standard of evidence in order to detain battlefield terrorists is setting us up for failure.”