May 19, 2008 7:03 am US/Eastern
U.S. Holds 500 Juvenile 'Enemy Combatants' In Iraq
BAGHDAD (AP) ―
The U.S. military is holding about 500 juveniles suspected of being "unlawful enemy combatants" in detention centers in Iraq and has about 10 detained in Afghanistan, the United States has told the United Nations.
A total of 2,500 youths under the age of 18 have been detained, almost all in Iraq, for periods up to a year or more in President Bush's anti-terrorism campaign since 2002, the United States reported last week to the U.N.'s Committee on the Rights of the Child.
Civil liberties groups such as the International Justice Network and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) denounced the detentions as abhorrent, and a violation of U.S. treaty obligations.
In the periodic report to the United Nations on U.S. compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the United States confirmed that "as of April 2008, the United States held about 500 juveniles in Iraq."
"The juveniles that the United States has detained have been captured engaging in anti-coalition activity, such as planting Improvised Explosive Devices, operating as lookouts for insurgents, or actively engaged in fighting against U.S. and Coalition forces," the U.S. report said.
The majority are believed to be 16 or 17 years old. In the United States a 17-year-old can enlist in the U.S. army, with parental consent.
The report said that of the total of 2,500 juveniles jailed since 2002, all but 100 had been picked up in Iraq. Of the remainder, most were swept up in Afghanistan.
A total of eight juveniles have been held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, but all were released from 2004 to 2006.
"It remains uncertain the exact age of these individuals, as most of them did not know their date of birth or even the year they were born," the report says. But U.S. military doctors who evaluated them believed that three were under age 16.
In Afghanistan, "as of April 2008, there are approximately 10 juveniles being held at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility as unlawful enemy combatants," the report said.
In Bagram, a U.S. military spokesman, Marine 1st Lt. Richard K. Ulsh, told the AP on Sunday: "At any time there are up to 625 detainees being held at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility. There are no detainees being held under the age of 16 and, without getting into specifics due to the frequent fluctuation in the number of detainees being held, we can tell you that there are currently less than 10 detainees being held under the age of 18."
Civil liberties groups were outraged.
"It's shocking to me that the U.S. government has not figured out a way to keep children out of adult prisons. It's outrageous, and it is not making us any safer, I can say that about Afghanistan from personal experience," Tina M. Foster, the executive director of the International Justice Network, said Sunday.
Her group brought lawsuits on behalf of the Guantanamo detainees in 2006, and has taken on the cases of adult detainees in Bagram. She said the U.S. military does not release the names of juveniles it is holding in Bagram, so her group is trying to learn who they are by finding Afghan relatives.
"It is shocking to know that the U.S. is holding hundreds of juveniles in Iraq and Afghanistan, and even more disturbing that there is no comprehensive policy in place that will protect their rights as children," Jamil Dakwar, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Human Rights Program, said in a statement. "Juveniles and former child soldiers should be treated first and foremost as candidates for rehabilitation and reintegration into society, not subjected to further victimization."
According to the ACLU, the lack of protections and consideration for the juvenile status of detainees violates the obligations of the U.S. under the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict that the U.S. ratified in 2002, as well as universally accepted international norms.
The U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child is scheduled to question the U.S. delegation on its compliance with its obligations on May 22 in Geneva.
The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted by the General Assembly in 1989, with backing at the time from the U.S. government of President Bill Clinton, and with strong lobbying from then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, who now is competing for the Democratic Party presidential nomination with Barack Obama.
Separately, a police chief was killed Monday by a bomb planted in his office, in a southern Iraqi town that saw heavy clashes last month between government forces and the Shiite militia of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, police said.
Also on Monday, Iraqi security forces launched raids in Shiite militia strongholds in the city of Basra after gunmen killed one policeman and wounded three others.
The violence was the latest to shake fragile truces between Shiite gunmen and the government that eased widescale clashes that erupted in early April over a crackdown on militiamen in Basra. The south and the Shiite district of Sadr City in Baghdad have continued to see low-level clashes for weeks amid arrests of Shiite fighters.
Monday's bombing killed Lt. Col. Farhan Qassim, chief of police in Suq al-Shiyoukh, an area outside Nasiriyah, 200 miles southeast of Baghdad. The blast went off inside Qassim's office as he entered it in the morning, police in Nasiriyah said. The police officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared becoming targets themselves.
Suq al-Shiyoukh was the scene of heavy fighting on April 19 between police and members of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army that left 22 people dead.
The area has also seen apparent infiltration of Shiite militiamen. A week ago, a bomb detonated in the province's main police command in Nasiriyah, wounding two officers. Four policemen were arrested soon after.
Farther south, Iraqi solders and police launched pre-dawn raids in four neighborhoods of Basra, including two Shiite militia enclaves, arresting several suspects, Basra's operations command Maj. Gen. Mohammed Jawad Huwaidi said, without giving a precise number of arrests.
The sweep was targeting gunmen believed to be behind Sunday's attack on a police checkpoint in the center of the city that killed a policeman and wounded three others, Huwaidi said.
Baghdad's Sadr City saw skirmishes over the weekend between U.S. forces and Shiite militiamen - including fighting Saturday night in which the military said three militants were killed. During the clashes, mortars struck the Maamil district to the northeast, killing six people - five of them children - according to the victims' families and Iraqi medical officials.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki launched crackdowns in Basra and Sadr City in late March and early April aimed at putting down Shiite militiamen. Last week, a similar sweep began in the northern city of Mosul to break the hold of Sunni al Qaeda in Iraq fighters.
On Sunday, the U.S. military said it removed from Iraq an American sniper after he used a copy of the Quran for target practice. A U.S. commander held a formal ceremony Saturday apologizing to Sunni tribal leaders in Radwaniyah, a town west of Baghdad.
The elaborate ceremony - in which one U.S. officer kissed a new copy of Islam's holy book before giving it to the tribal leaders - reflected the military's eagerness to stave off anger among Sunni Arabs it has been cultivating as allies.
The tribesmen have become key in the fight against al Qaeda in Iraq militants, who depict the American forces as anti-Islamic occupiers. One anti-U.S. Iraqi Sunni group condemned the Quran shooting, calling it "a hideous act." Similar perceived insults to Islam have triggered protests throughout the Muslim world.
Iraqi police found the bullet-riddled Quran with graffiti inside the cover on May 11 on a firing range near a police station in a former insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, U.S. military spokesman Col. Bill Buckner said.
American commanders launched an inquiry that led to disciplinary action against the unidentified soldier, who has been removed from Iraq, Buckner said.
Members of the local U.S.-allied group said the Quran was found with 14 bullet holes in a field after U.S. troops withdrew from a base in the area.
At a ceremony reported by CNN, the top American commander in Baghdad apologized to Radwaniyah tribal chiefs. "I come before you here seeking your forgiveness," Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond was quoted as saying at the ceremony. "In the most humble manner I look in your eyes today and I say please forgive me and my soldiers."
The commander also read a letter of apology by the shooter while another military official kissed a Quran and presented it to the tribal leaders, according to CNN.
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