April 27, 2003

Gitmo Update: Rummy, Myers Dis Concerns for Child Welfare

A senior United Nations envoy has called on the United States to take prompt action over the fate of three teenage boys being held with other terror suspects in its prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Olara Otunnu, the special representative for the rights of children in war, told BBC News that the UN expected America to fulfil its obligations under international law.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has defended the detention of the boys — aged between 13 and 15 — at Camp Delta, saying they are “enemy combatants”, captured while fighting for the Taleban or al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

General Richard Myers, chairman of the US military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the boys were being held “for a very good reason — for our safety”.

“They may be juveniles — but they’re not on a Little League team anywhere,” he said at a news conference along with Mr Rumsfeld at the Pentagon on Friday.

“They’re on a major league team, and it’s a terrorist team. Some have killed. Some have stated they’re going to kill again.” …

If the teenagers were found to have been fighting as child soldiers, Mr Otunnu said, they should be demobilised, reintegrated and rehabilitated. …

“We do not sentence children to jail. We do not punish them. We give them healing and get them rehabilitated.”

One of the youths has been identified by Canadian media reports as a Canadian citizen wanted by the US over a grenade attack in Afghanistan which killed a US soldier. …

“That the US sees nothing wrong with holding children at Guantanamo and interrogating them is a shocking indicator of how cavalier the Bush administration has become about respecting human rights,” [Amnesty International] spokesman Alistair Hodgett told the Associated Press news agency.

US challenged over boy prisoners
BBC News
April 26, 2003