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US 'holding' 60 youths in terror jail
More than 60 minors, some as young as 14, have been held as prisoners at the US detention centre for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, according to a London-based human rights group.
Those detainees were under 18 when they were captured by US forces, and at least 10 of them still being held at Guantanamo Bay were 14 or 15 when they were seized, held in solitary confinement, subjected to repeated interrogation and allegedly tortured, the charity Reprieve stated in a report.
Britain's Independent newspaper, which carried the allegations, suggested the charges could threaten America's relationship with Britain, its closest ally in the "war on terror".
"We would take a very, very dim view if it transpires that there were actually minors there," it quoted a British Government official as saying.
Unnamed Government sources said the allegations directly contradicted Washington's assurances to London that no minors were held at Guantanamo Bay.
Reprieve's legal director and a lawyer for a number of detainees, Clive Stafford-Smith, said the US could have broken not only its own laws but all human rights conventions by putting children in adult jails.
Mr Stafford-Smith said that even if it were proved that the 10 still held there — who are now all thought to have turned 18 — were involved in fighting, they should be treated differently from adults.
Washington has admitted that only three Guantanamo Bay inmates were treated as children.
The US military also admitted that 17 of those on the first definitive list of detainees released earlier this month were under 18 when they were captured.
In other developments:
¦US President George Bush, likening the war against Islamic radicals to the Cold War threat of communism, told US Military Academy graduates that America's safety depends on an aggressive push for democracy.
Mr Bush chided previous US administrations, saying that decades of excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in various countries in the Middle East did nothing to make America safer.
¦A senior US military official has outlined plans for the American hand-over of security to Iraqi police in the capital and three other provinces before the end of the year.
But Iraqi politicians have failed to meet a deadline to appoint the ministers who eventually will be responsible for those forces.
¦Iran has filed a lawsuit against ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein for his regime's 1980s war against Tehran, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said in a joint statement with his Iraqi counterpart.
theage.com.au |
