WikiLeaks and the 22 Children of Guantánamo
source: http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2011/06/11/wikileaks-and-the-22-children-of-guantanamo/
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In May 2008, in a submission to the 48th Session of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (PDF), the Pentagon claimed that it had only held eight juveniles — those under the age of 18 when their alleged crimes took place — during the life of the Guantánamo Bay prison. This, however, was a lie, as its own documents providing the names and dates of birth of prisoners, released in May 2006 (PDF), showed that the true total was much higher.
In November 2008, the UC Davis Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas published a report, “Guantánamo’s Children: Military and Diplomatic Testimonies,” presenting evidence that 12 juveniles had been held, and this was then officially acknowledged by the Pentagon.
The next week, however, I produced another report, “The Pentagon Can’t Count: 22 Juveniles Held at Guantánamo,” providing evidence that at least 22 juvenile prisoners had been held, and drawing on the Pentagon’s own documents, or on additional statements made by the Pentagon, to confirm my claims.
Two and a half years later, I stand by that report, and am only prepared to concede that up to three of the prisoners I identified as juveniles may have been 18 at the time of their capture. In the meantime, I have identified three more juvenile prisoners, and possibly three others, bringing the total back to 22, and possibly as many as 28.
My new research coincides with a new report by the UC Davis Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas, “Guantánamo’s Children: The WikiLeaked Testimonies,” drawing on the recent release, by WikiLeaks, of classified military documents shedding new light on the prisoners, identifying 15 juveniles, and suggesting that six others, born in 1984 or 1985, and arriving at Guantánamo in 2002 or 2003, may have been under 18, depending on when exactly they were born (which is unknown, as it is in the cases of numerous Guantánamo prisoners).
However, crucially, the UC Davis report chose to make its assessments based on the prisoners’ dates of arrival in Guantánamo, which was often up to six months after their capture, whereas I have focused on their capture date, thereby demonstrating that at least 22 of the 28 prisoners identified in my research were indeed under 18 at the time of their capture.
Of course, to be strictly correct, this analyses should go further, dealing not with the dates of capture, but with the dates when the prisoners’ alleged crimes took place. However, I simply do not have the time at present to go through every file, and, while such research would undoubtedly yield more juvenile prisoners, I am content for now to have reinforced the claims that I made in November 2008, and to have made a case for there having been at least 22, and as many as 28 juveniles held in Guantánamo.
Just three of these former child prisoners are still held, but the US position has always been a disgrace. Notoriously, in May 2003, when the story first broke that juvenile prisoners were being held at Guantánamo, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a press conference, “This constant refrain of ‘the juveniles,’ as though there’s a hundred children in there — these are not children,” while Gen. Richard Myers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said:
I would say, despite their age, these are very, very dangerous people. They are people that have been vetted mainly in Afghanistan and gone through a thorough process to determine what their involvement was. Some have killed. Some have stated they’re going to kill again. So they may be juveniles, but they’re not on a little-league team anywhere, they’re on a major league team, and it’s a terrorist team. And they’re in Guantánamo for a very good reason — for our safety, for your safety.
Moreover, in May 2006, when the Independent reported on “The Children of Guantánamo Bay,” a senior Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, said that the DoD “rejected arguments that normal criminal law was relevant to the Guantánamo detainees,” as the Independent put it. In Gordon’s own words, “There is no international standard concerning the age of an individual who engages in combat operations … Age is not a determining factor in detention [of those] engaged in armed conflict against our forces or in support to those fighting against us.”
This was nonsense, because, under the terms of Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, which the US ratified on December 23, 2002, signatory nations are required to promote “the physical and psychosocial rehabilitation and social reintegration of children who are victims of armed conflict,” and not to punish them by imprisoning them alongside adult prisoners in an experimental prison devoted to coercive interrogation and — at its worst — torture.
Despite its obligations, however, only three of the juveniles held at Guantánamo were ever treated differently to the adults — three Afghan boys, Asadullah, Naqibullah and Mohammed Ismail, who were held in a separate camp until their release in January 2004. For the rest, however, there was, or has been no “physical and psychosocial rehabilitation and social reintegration” whatsoever, and, instead, they have been subjected to torture and abuse, as described by many of these prisoners, “extraordinary rendition” to a torture prison in Jordan in the case of one of the juveniles, Hassan bin Attash, and, in the case of Omar Khadr, a war crimes trial, based on charges invented by Congress. In order to secure an eight-year sentence, Khadr was obliged to agree to a disgraceful plea bargain in which he claimed responsibility for his actions aged 15, during the firefight that led to his capture (and the death of a US soldier), when he was not, in fact, responsible for his actions. He was also obliged to admit that he was an “alien unprivileged enemy belligerent” who was not allowed, under any circumstances, to be engaged with US forces in combat.
It remains disgraceful that so many juveniles were held at Guantánamo — and that three former child prisoners are still held — but it is just as disgusting that, under President Obama, one of these former child prisoners was obliged to accept that, in modern-day America, lawmakers and the executive branch, without a murmur of dissent from the judiciary, have arranged for opponents of the US military in wartime to be criminalized, their actions regarded incorrectly as war crimes, and their very existence declared illegal. This is effectively no different than it was under President Bush, when the twisted ideologues who surrounded the President, under the aegis of his dark assistant Dick Cheney, created the concept of “illegal enemy combatants,” people without any rights whatsoever, who could be held forever and tortured with impunity.
Continue Reading
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2011/06/11/wikileaks-and-the-22-children-of-gua...
In November 2008, the UC Davis Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas published a report, “Guantánamo’s Children: Military and Diplomatic Testimonies,” presenting evidence that 12 juveniles had been held, and this was then officially acknowledged by the Pentagon.
The next week, however, I produced another report, “The Pentagon Can’t Count: 22 Juveniles Held at Guantánamo,” providing evidence that at least 22 juvenile prisoners had been held, and drawing on the Pentagon’s own documents, or on additional statements made by the Pentagon, to confirm my claims.
Two and a half years later, I stand by that report, and am only prepared to concede that up to three of the prisoners I identified as juveniles may have been 18 at the time of their capture. In the meantime, I have identified three more juvenile prisoners, and possibly three others, bringing the total back to 22, and possibly as many as 28.
My new research coincides with a new report by the UC Davis Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas, “Guantánamo’s Children: The WikiLeaked Testimonies,” drawing on the recent release, by WikiLeaks, of classified military documents shedding new light on the prisoners, identifying 15 juveniles, and suggesting that six others, born in 1984 or 1985, and arriving at Guantánamo in 2002 or 2003, may have been under 18, depending on when exactly they were born (which is unknown, as it is in the cases of numerous Guantánamo prisoners).
However, crucially, the UC Davis report chose to make its assessments based on the prisoners’ dates of arrival in Guantánamo, which was often up to six months after their capture, whereas I have focused on their capture date, thereby demonstrating that at least 22 of the 28 prisoners identified in my research were indeed under 18 at the time of their capture.
Of course, to be strictly correct, this analyses should go further, dealing not with the dates of capture, but with the dates when the prisoners’ alleged crimes took place. However, I simply do not have the time at present to go through every file, and, while such research would undoubtedly yield more juvenile prisoners, I am content for now to have reinforced the claims that I made in November 2008, and to have made a case for there having been at least 22, and as many as 28 juveniles held in Guantánamo.
Just three of these former child prisoners are still held, but the US position has always been a disgrace. Notoriously, in May 2003, when the story first broke that juvenile prisoners were being held at Guantánamo, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a press conference, “This constant refrain of ‘the juveniles,’ as though there’s a hundred children in there — these are not children,” while Gen. Richard Myers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said:
I would say, despite their age, these are very, very dangerous people. They are people that have been vetted mainly in Afghanistan and gone through a thorough process to determine what their involvement was. Some have killed. Some have stated they’re going to kill again. So they may be juveniles, but they’re not on a little-league team anywhere, they’re on a major league team, and it’s a terrorist team. And they’re in Guantánamo for a very good reason — for our safety, for your safety.
Moreover, in May 2006, when the Independent reported on “The Children of Guantánamo Bay,” a senior Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, said that the DoD “rejected arguments that normal criminal law was relevant to the Guantánamo detainees,” as the Independent put it. In Gordon’s own words, “There is no international standard concerning the age of an individual who engages in combat operations … Age is not a determining factor in detention [of those] engaged in armed conflict against our forces or in support to those fighting against us.”
This was nonsense, because, under the terms of Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, which the US ratified on December 23, 2002, signatory nations are required to promote “the physical and psychosocial rehabilitation and social reintegration of children who are victims of armed conflict,” and not to punish them by imprisoning them alongside adult prisoners in an experimental prison devoted to coercive interrogation and — at its worst — torture.
Despite its obligations, however, only three of the juveniles held at Guantánamo were ever treated differently to the adults — three Afghan boys, Asadullah, Naqibullah and Mohammed Ismail, who were held in a separate camp until their release in January 2004. For the rest, however, there was, or has been no “physical and psychosocial rehabilitation and social reintegration” whatsoever, and, instead, they have been subjected to torture and abuse, as described by many of these prisoners, “extraordinary rendition” to a torture prison in Jordan in the case of one of the juveniles, Hassan bin Attash, and, in the case of Omar Khadr, a war crimes trial, based on charges invented by Congress. In order to secure an eight-year sentence, Khadr was obliged to agree to a disgraceful plea bargain in which he claimed responsibility for his actions aged 15, during the firefight that led to his capture (and the death of a US soldier), when he was not, in fact, responsible for his actions. He was also obliged to admit that he was an “alien unprivileged enemy belligerent” who was not allowed, under any circumstances, to be engaged with US forces in combat.
It remains disgraceful that so many juveniles were held at Guantánamo — and that three former child prisoners are still held — but it is just as disgusting that, under President Obama, one of these former child prisoners was obliged to accept that, in modern-day America, lawmakers and the executive branch, without a murmur of dissent from the judiciary, have arranged for opponents of the US military in wartime to be criminalized, their actions regarded incorrectly as war crimes, and their very existence declared illegal. This is effectively no different than it was under President Bush, when the twisted ideologues who surrounded the President, under the aegis of his dark assistant Dick Cheney, created the concept of “illegal enemy combatants,” people without any rights whatsoever, who could be held forever and tortured with impunity.
Continue Reading
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2011/06/11/wikileaks-and-the-22-children-of-gua...
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