Some Held at Guantánamo Are Minors, Lawyers Say

[dogday]

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.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/13/politics/13gitmo.html?ex=1276315200&en=9dd1907de5c88c00&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

[RPM]

1. God Bless the USA

We are gonna need it...

[bryant69]

2. Oh my

Great balls of fire. What the hell are people thinking?

Bryant
Check it out -- > http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[landoisnum1]

3. Who is to blame for this?

Who in our government is responsible for this?

[newyawker99]

6. Hi landoisnum1!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

4. This is very old news. There were many articles written about this

over two years ago.

http://www.hrw.org/press/2003/04/us042403.htm

[cynatnite]

5. First I heard of this

Thanks for the heads up.

God, this is fucking sickening. These assholes have no morals.

Next time I'm accused of being without morals I'll make a point of mentioning children are being tortured by this govt. Bastards! :grr:

[ThomWV]

7. In A Nation That Executes ....

We take minors and charge them as adults in this country and if I'm not mistaken more than one minor has been condemed to death WITHIN the confines of our legal system. So how could it possibly be a suprise to find a minor held outside of those same confines?

We are not teetering on the brink, we are in free-fucking-fall.