Some Held at Guantánamo Are Minors, Lawyers Say

En dergelijke inhumane regering wordt door Europa gesteund?

Monday 13 June 2005

Washington - 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 details of M.C.'s accusations are contained in a 17-page
account prepared by Mr. Stafford Smith, in which the prisoner
said that he was suspended from hooks in the ceiling for hours
at a time with his feet barely missing the floor, and that he
was beaten during those sessions. M.C. said a special unit
known as the Immediate Reaction Force had knocked out one of
his teeth and later an interrogator burned him with a
cigarette. Mr. Stafford Smith said he saw the missing tooth
and the burn scar.

Prof. Adam Roberts of Oxford University, a leading authority
on international law, said the definition of a juvenile was
not precise. The Geneva Conventions, the basic foundation of
international law, do not provide a definition. The Optional
Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which
has been signed by the United States and deals with the
related issue of how young a soldier may be recruited, says
that juveniles are those under 18. But the Optional Protocol
seems to acknowledge that some countries might use a younger
age at which soldiers may be recruited.

Although not a treaty, the United Nations Rules for the
Protection of Juveniles Deprived of Their Liberty, which more
directly deals with the issue of detentions, uses the age of
18 as a boundary.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/061305Y.shtml