The Justice Department said in a federal court filing Wednesday that it would not rely upon evidence obtained through torture in the habeas corpus case of a Guantanamo detainee.

Two weeks ago, the American Civil Liberties Union accused the Obama administration in court papers  of relying on statements obtained through torture to support the indefinite detention of Mohammed Jawad, a prisoner being held at Guantanamo Bay who the civil rights organization is defending.

In a 37-page legal brief dated July 1, portions of which are redacted, the ACLU asked a U.S. District Court Judge overseeing the case to suppress all statements obtained against their client through torture.

On Wednesday, the DOJ said it would not challenge the ACLU’s motion, but it needs until Aug. 3 “to determine how [the Obama administration] will proceed in connection with this habeas action.

Jonathan Hafetz, an attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project who is one of the lawyers representing Jawad, said his client should be released because there is now no credible evidence that can be used against his client to justify his indefinite imprisonment.

“We commend the government for halting its reliance on evidence obtained through torture and other abuse in Mr. Jawad’s habeas case,” Hafetz said. “Now it is time to send Jawad home to Afghanistan because there is no credible evidence against him. Nearly seven years of unlawful detention is long enough.”

Jawad, an Afghan who was believed to be 12-years-old when he was captured in December 2002, was “subjected to repeated torture and other mistreatment and to a systematic and sustained program of highly coercive interrogation” on more than 50 occasions. The Department of Defense claims Jawad was as old as 17 when he was arrested.

“U.S. personnel at Bagram [Air base in Afghanistan, where Jawad was detained after his arrest] subjected Mr. Jawad to beatings, forced him into painful ’stress positions,’ deprived him of sleep, forcibly hooded him, placed him in physical and linguistic isolation, pushed him down stairs, chained him to a wall for prolonged periods, and subjected him to threats, including threats to kill him, [his family], and other intimidation,” the ACLU’s legal brief states.

“While in an isolation cell, Mr. Jawad remained hooded and restrained with handcuffs. Guards made him stand up and, if Mr. Jawad sat down, he was beaten. Guards also kicked Mr. Jawad and made him fall over, as he was wearing leg shackles and was unable to take large steps. Sometimes guards fastened Mr. Jawad’s handcuffs to the door of his isolation cell so that he was unable to sit down. At one point Mr. Jawad became so sick from his treatment in the isolation cell at Bagram that he was taken to the hospital and was treated for pain in his chest and problems with urination.”

Immediately after his arrest for allegedly throwing a grenade at an unmarked jeep that wounded two U.S. soldiers, Jawad was taken to an Afghan police station where he was coerced into signing a confession written in Farsi, a language Jawad could not speak, much less read or write. In fact, Jawad was functionally illiterate even in his native language of Pashto.

Once transferred to U.S. custody, Jawad was illegally rendered to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, where he was interrogated at least 11 times.

“Typically, beatings by guards preceded interrogation sessions,” the ACLU’s legal brief says. “Interrogators often placed Mr. Jawad in a position along the wall where he was sitting without a chair and with his arms outstretched.”

The U.S. later transported Jawad to Guantanamo, where he was subjected to the notorious “frequent flyer” sleep deprivation program as well as the Survival Evasion Resistance Escape (SERE) interrogation methods recently exposed in a bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report. Eventually, Jawad tried to commit suicide in his cell by slamming his head repeatedly against the wall. The Afghan government recently sent a letter to the U.S. government demanding Jawad’s return and suggesting he was as young as 12 when he was captured nearly seven years ago.

Last October, the judge in Jawad’s military commission proceedings suppressed statements made by Jawad to Afghan and U.S. officials following his arrest for allegedly throwing the grenade at U.S. soldiers, concluding that they were the product of torture and were made after Afghan authorities threatened to kill his family. However, the Obama administration, like the Bush administration, continues to rely on those same statements in arguing that Jawad should be held indefinitely.

“Since his arrest in 2002, Mr. Jawad has been subjected to repeated torture and other mistreatment and to a systematic program of harsh and highly coercive interrogations designed to break him physically and mentally,” said Jonathan Hafetz, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. “The statements wrung from Mr. Jawad in Afghanistan and at Guantánamo during more than 50 interrogations do not remotely meet the standard for admissibility in a court of law.”

Hafetz sharply criticized the Obama administration for continuing to defend the Bush administration’s position in the case.

“That Mr. Jawad was a juvenile – perhaps as young as 12 – when his abuse began makes the coercive nature of his interrogations all the more barbaric and the government’s continued reliance on his statements all the more egregious,” Hafetz said.

Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, the former lead prosecutor in Jawad’s military commission case, left the military commissions because he did not believe he could ethically proceed with the case and signed a declaration in support of the ACLU’s position.

In an interview with the Washington Post earlier this year, Susan J. Crawford, the convening authority for military commissions at Guantanamo, said that she would not allow Mohammed al-Qahtani’s prosecution to move forward because his interrogation met the legal definition of torture and as such the evidence against him was tainted.