WASHINGTON -- A former military prosecutor today told a congressional committee that the system of military commissions used to try detainees held at Guantanamo Bay is "broken beyond repair" and should be abandoned altogether.

Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, an Army reservist from Erie, today told a House Judiciary subcommittee he became the seventh military prosecutor at Guantanamo to resign after becoming disillusioned by a system he says revealed itself in the case of detainee Mohammed Jawad.

Col. Vandeveld said Mr. Jawad, who was 16 at the time he was detained by U.S. forces, confessed under torture, twice attempted suicide, underwent abusive interrogations and never received evidence Col. Vandeveld said might have cleared him of accusations.

"In fact, the military had obtained confessions from at least two other individuals for the same crime," Col. Vandeveld told the committee.

Mr. Vandeveld's decision to quit as a prosecutor was the subject of a May 10 story in the Post-Gazette, and his testimony today was in large measure a restatement of his earlier arguments that the military commission system -- which bypasses both traditional military courts and the Geneva Conventions -- threatens to undermine U.S. credibility.

He was among five witnesses to appear this morning before the Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on the Constitution, civil rights and civil liberties.

Chairman Jerrold Nadler, in opening remarks, left little doubt that he favored the elimination of the commissions, and one witness, U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., called on Congress to enact regulations that would move the prosecution of enemy combatants to military courts martial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Col. Vandeveld, a Pennsylvania state prosecutor and Army reservist who has served in Iraq, Bosnia and Afghanistan, agreed with that assessment.

"The military commissions cannot be fixed because their very creation ... can now be clearly seen as an artifice, a contrivance, to try to obtain prosecutions based on evidence that would not be admissible in any civilian or military prosecution anywhere in our nation," Col. Vandeveld said.

The Senate Armed Services committee currently is crafting legislation to reform the system, but both Col. Vandeveld and an Army lawyer who defended another Guantanamo detainee, said the system cannot be repaired.

"Nobody knows what the new mousetrap is going to look like. All we know is it's going to be designed by the prosecutors," said Lt. Col. Barry Wingard, an Air Force reservist from Dormont, who was assigned Mr. Jawad's case as a military defense lawyer.

At present, the Senate is considering changes that would continue to allow the admission of hearsay evidence -- testimony not directly provided by a witness. In a separate interview with the Post-Gazette, Col. Wingard said that was one of the major problems in the case of his client, Fayaz Al-Kandari.

Mr. Al-Kandari, a Kuwaiti citizen, had traveled to Afghanistan in 2001 when he was detained by Northern Alliance troops who handed him over to American troops in return for a cash reward.

"All the local warlords set out to do bounty hunts for Arabs that were in Afghanistan at the time," Col. Wingard said.

Col. Wingard said his client, the son of a wealthy Kuwaiti family, had traveled to Afghanistan to do charity work required of his Muslim faith. He said Mr. Al-Kandari was subjected to sleep deprivation and subjected to extreme cold while strapped naked to a floor at Guantanamo. Col. Wingard said his client was beaten with a chain.

"He was given the full works, an enhanced interrogation," Col. Wingard said.

Since objecting to the commission system, the Air Force promoted Col. Wingard from the rank of major to lieutenant colonel, evidence, he said, that the military itself is displeased with the commission trial system imposed on it by the Department of Justice.

"The military's never been behind anything but the Geneva Convention," Col. Wingard said.

Military prosecutors have so far declined to press a case against Mr. Al-Kandari. He remains in custody at Guantanamo.

Col. Vandeveld, discussing his own experiences in the Jawad case as well as his disillusion with the military commissions, asked committee members to contemplate "the kind of role reversal that senior military officers routinely consider.

"Imagine that U.S. soldiers captured on the battlefield were, today, being subjected to the type of trial proceedings that we plan to set up through these military commissions. Imagine that our service members had been tortured or abused, and that the commissions hearing their cases allowed evidence obtained through coercion," he said. "How would our government react to such trials?"