The ACLU has released documents relating to the child prisoners in Abu
Gharib, which it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act:
AP - Children held by the U.S. Army at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison included
one boy who appeared to be only about 8 years old, the former commander of
the prison told investigators, according to a transcript.
"He looked like he was eight years old. He told me he was almost 12," Brig.
Gen. Janis Karpinski told officials investigating prisoner abuse at Abu
Ghraib. "He told me his brother was there with him, but he really wanted to
see his mother, could he please call his mother. He was crying." .
The transcript released Thursday is the first government document
indicating that a child no older than 11 was held prisoner at Abu Ghraib.
Military officials have said that no juvenile prisoners were subject to the
abuses captured in photographs from Abu Ghraib. However, some of the men
shown being stripped naked and humiliated had been accused of raping a
14-year-old prisoner.
The documents released Thursday offer rare details about the children the
U.S. military has held in Iraq. Karpinski said the Army began holding women
and children in a high-security cellblock at Abu Ghraib in the summer of
2003 because the facility was better than lockups in Baghdad where they had
been held.
The documents also include statements from six witnesses who said three
interrogators and a civilian interpreter at Abu Ghraib got drunk one night
and took a 17-year-old female prisoner from her cell. The four men forced
the girl to expose her breasts and kissed her, the reports said. The
witnesses - whose names were blacked out of the documents given to the
ACLU - said those responsible were not punished.
Another soldier said in January 2004, troops poured water and smeared mud
on the detained 17-year-old son of an Iraqi general and "broke" the general
by forcing him to watch his son shiver in the cold.
The rape and abuse of children in Abu Gharib first broke in the Western
media on August 1st, but was not taken up by the US media with the
exception of Mike Malloy who devoted a whole show to it after we sent him
this story:
The Sunday Herald - It was early last October that Kasim Mehaddi Hilas says
he witnessed the rape of a boy prisoner aged about 15 in the notorious Abu
Ghraib prison in Iraq. "The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all
the doors with sheets," he said in a statement given to investigators
probing prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib. "Then, when I heard the screaming I
climbed the door . and I saw [the soldier's name is deleted] who was
wearing a military uniform." Hilas, who was himself threatened with being
sexually assaulted in Abu Graib, then describes in horrific detail how the
soldier raped "the little kid".
In another witness statement, passed to the Sunday Herald, former prisoner
Thaar Salman Dawod said: "[I saw] two boys naked and they were cuffed
together face to face and [a US soldier] was beating them and a group of
guards were watching and taking pictures and there was three female
soldiers laughing at the prisoners. The prisoners, two of them, were
young."
It's not certain exactly how many children are being held by coalition
forces in Iraq, but a Sunday Herald investigation suggests there are up to
107. Their names are not known, nor is where they are being kept, how long
they will be held or what has happened to them during their detention.
Proof of the widespread arrest and detention of children in Iraq by US and
UK forces is contained in an internal Unicef report written in June. The
report has - surprisingly - not been made public.
Journalists in Germany have also been investigating the detention and abuse
of children in Iraq. One reporter, Thomas Reutter of the TV programme
Report Mainz, interviewed a US army sergeant called Samuel Provance, who is
banned from speaking about his six months stationed in Abu Ghraib but told
Reutter of how one 16-year-old Iraqi boy was arrested.
"He was terribly afraid," Provance said. "He had the skinniest arms I've
ever seen. He was trembling all over. His wrists were so thin we couldn't
even put handcuffs on him. Right when I saw him for the first time, and
took him for interrogation, I felt sorry for him.
"The interrogation specialists poured water over him and put him into a
car. Then they drove with him through the night, and at that time it was
very, very cold. Then they smeared him with mud and showed him to his
father, who was also in custody. They had tried out other interrogation
methods on him, but he wasn't to be brought to talk. The interrogation
specialists told me, after the father had seen his son in this state, his
heart broke. He wept and promised to tell them everything they wanted to
know."
An Iraqi TV reporter Suhaib Badr-Addin al-Baz saw the Abu Ghraib children's
wing when he was arrested by Americans while making a documentary. He spent
74 days in Abu Ghraib.
"I saw a camp for children there," he said. "Boys, under the age of
puberty. There were certainly hundreds of children in this camp." Al-Baz
said he heard a 12-year-old girl crying. Her brother was also held in the
jail. One night guards came into her cell. "She was beaten," said al-Baz.
"I heard her call out, 'They have undressed me. They have poured water over
me.'"
He says he heard her cries and whimpering daily - this, in turn, caused
other prisoners to cry as they listened to her. Al-Baz also told of an ill
15-year-old boy who was soaked repeatedly with hoses until he collapsed.
Guards then brought in the child's father with a hood over his head. The
boy collapsed again.
Although most of the children are held in US custody, the Sunday Herald has
established that some are held by the British Army. British soldiers tend
to arrest children in towns like Basra, which are under UK control, then
hand the youngsters over to the Americans who interrogate them and detain
them.
Between January and May this year the Red Cross registered a total of 107
juveniles in detention during 19 visits to six coalition prisons. The aid
organisation's Rana Sidani said they had no complete information about the
ages of those detained, or how they had been treated. The deteriorating
security situation has prevented the Red Cross visiting all detention
centres.
Amnesty International is outraged by the detention of children. It is aware
of "numerous human rights violations against Iraqi juveniles, including
detentions, torture and ill-treatment, and killings". Amnesty has
interviewed former detainees who say they've seen boys as young as 10 in
Abu Ghraib.
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