Some Held at Guantánamo Are Minors, Lawyers Say

[rodeodance]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/13/politics/13gitmo.html?th&emc=th

June 13, 2005
Some Held at Guantánamo Are Minors, Lawyers Say
By NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON, June 12 - Lawyers representing detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, say that there still may be as many as six prisoners who were captured before their 18th birthday and that the military has sought to conceal the precise number of juveniles at the prison camp.

One lawyer said that his client, a Saudi of Chadian descent, was not yet 15 when he was captured and has told him that he was beaten regularly in his early days at Guantánamo, hanged by his wrists for hours at a time and that an interrogator pressed a burning cigarette into his arm.

The lawyer, Clive A. Stafford Smith, of London, said in an interview that the prisoner, who is now 18 and is identified by the initials M.C. in public documents, told him in a recent interview at Guantánamo that he was seized by local authorities in Pakistan about Oct. 21, 2001, a few months shy of his 15th birthday, and taken to Guantánamo at the beginning of 2002.

Barbara Olshansky, a senior lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, which is coordinating a program to match volunteer lawyers with detainees, said she believed he may be one of six current detainees who were imprisoned at Guantánamo before their 18th birthday........

[MountainLaurel]

1. Didn't we know this

Three years ago? I distinctly remember articles about the fact that there were kids as young as 13 in Gitmo.

[rodeodance]

2. well, i knew there were minors in Abu grabe but not Gitmo.

[soup]

3. Yes. But, for some reason, I thought they'd been released.

Have no idea where that comes from, though. There's been so much going on, it's just impossible to keep track of it all.

Here's an older cached article refering to the kids at Gitmo:


Posted on Wed, Apr. 23, 2003

U.S. Urged to Release Guantanamo Minors

MICHELLE FAUL

Associated Press

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -Amnesty International urged the United States on Wednesday to release or charge three minors who are being held in the U.S. detention camp for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The military has not provided exact ages, confirming only that the three are 16 years old or younger. They are among about 660 detainees from 42 countries held on suspicion of links to al-Qaida terrorist network or the ousted Afghan Taliban regime.

"The detention of children in these circumstances is particularly repugnant and flouts basic principles for the protection of children under international law," William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said in a statement.

The group called on the U.S. military to either release them or file formal charges and transfer them to a juvenile detention facility.
http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/post911/attacks/sunherald_minors.html

---

and so it goes...

Wasn't there also something a couple of years ago about 2 children being held either at Camp Xray/ by the U.S. with the hope that that knowledge would get their father to either talk/ give himself up? Can't remember the particulars. Everything kind of runs together into one huge nightmare of outrage and insanity. Things tend to pop up on the radar, then disappear in favor of some other atrocity. My head has exploded so many times, it's scattered everywhere.

[MountainLaurel]

4. I think that was in Iraq or Afghanistan

That the children were being held.

[soup]

5. Thanks.

My memory is so sketchy that I can't even put together something to use in a search.

[merwin]

6. That's OK. They're all terrorists. Every single one of them!

Or at least that's what Cheney was saying...
:puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke:

[shantipriya]

7. Minors at Gitmo

Where are the UNICEF and all the other children's welfare organizations? Why are they not making a big stink about this? Is it because no white kids are involved? What gross hypocrisy!!!!

[LynnTheDem]

8. DAMN that evil-doer Saddam, locking up CHILDREN!

Oh...at GITMO...

Never mind.

[lebkuchen]

9. What they don't tell you about are the seniors

that have been held at Guantanamo, for over a year, seventy years and up, whom Rumsfeld considers a threat to the US.

[adigal]

10. Bush executed minors, why not torture them?

Wasn't Texas one of the states in which a crime committed as a minor left you eligible for the death penalty? Can't get a beer, can't even vote, but you can be deemed cognizant enough to get the death penalty for a crime you committed.

[struggle4progress]

11. kick