- British forces are arresting children in Iraq and handing
them to US forces who interrogate and detain them indefinitely in prisons
including the notorious Abu Ghraib.
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- A Sunday Herald investigation has uncovered an internal
Unicef report written in June that reveals that children in Basra, which
is controlled by UK forces, are being ìarrested for alleged activities
targeting the occupying forcesî.
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- The investigation has also established that at least
100 children, some as young as 10, are being detained.
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- Iraqi TV reporter Suhaib Badr-Addin Al-Baz says he saw
the childrenís wing in Abu Ghraib when he was arbitrarily arrested
by US soldiers while making a documentary.
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- He said there were boys under the age of puberty in the
jail and 'certainly hundreds of children'.
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- He said he heard the cries of a 12-year-old girl who
had been beaten. She was calling out: 'They have undressed me.'
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- He also told of a 15-year-old boy being soaked repeatedly
with hoses and then being taken to look at his father, who was also in
jail and had been hooded.
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- A US soldier, Sergeant Samuel Provance, who served at
Abu Ghraib, has also blown the whistle on child prisoners being abused.
He told how interrogators soaked a 16-year-old prisoner, covered him in
mud and then used his suffering to break his father, who was also a prisoner,
during interrogation.
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- Unicef has been denied access to jails holding children
with the coalition powers citing ìpoor securityî as the reason.
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- Between January and May this year the International Committee
for the Red Cross registered 107 juveniles being held in six different
coalition jails.
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- A Sunday Herald investigation has discovered that coalition
forces are holding more than 100 children in jails such as Abu Ghraib.
Witnesses claim that the detainees some as young as 10 are
also being subjected to rape and torture
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- 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".
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- 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."
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- 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.
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- 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.
A key section on child protection, headed "Children in Conflict with
the Law or with Coalition Forces", reads: "In July and August
2003, several meetings were conducted with CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority)
and Ministry of Justice to address issues related to juvenile justice
and the situation of children detained by the coalition forces Unicef
is working through a variety of channels to try and learn more about conditions
for children who are imprisoned or detained, and to ensure that their rights
are respected."
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- Another section reads: "Information on the number,
age, gender and conditions of incarceration is limited. In Basra and Karbala
children arrested for alleged activities targeting the occupying forces
are reported to be routinely transferred to an internee facility in Um
Qasr. The categorisation of these children as 'internees' is worrying since
it implies indefinite holding without contact with family, expectation
of trial or due process."
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- The report also states: "A detention centre for
children was established in Baghdad, where according to ICRC (International
Committee of the Red Cross) a significant number of children were detained.
Unicef was informed that the coalition forces were planning to transfer
all children in adult facilities to this 'specialised' child detention
centre. In July 2003, Unicef requested a visit to the centre but access
was denied. Poor security in the area of the detention centre has prevented
visits by independent observers like the ICRC since last December.
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- "The perceived unjust detention of Iraqi males,
including youths, for suspected activities against the occupying forces
has become one of the leading causes for the mounting frustration among
Iraqi youths and the potential for radicalisation of this population group."
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- 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.
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- "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.
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- "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."
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- 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.
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- "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.'"
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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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- The organisation's leaders have called on the coalition
governments to give concrete information on how old the children are, how
many are detained, why and where they are being held, and in what circumstances
they are being detained. They also want to know if the children have been
tortured.
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- Alistair Hodgett, media director of Amnesty International
USA, said the coalition forces needed to be "transparent" about
their policy of child detentions, adding: "Secrecy is one thing that
rings alarm bells." Amnesty was given brief access to one jail in
Mosul, he said, but has been repeatedly turned away from all others. He
pointed out that even countries "which don't have good records",
such as Libya, gave Amnesty access to prisons. "Denying access just
fuels the rumour mill," he said.
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- Hodgett added that British and US troops should not be
detaining any Iraqis let alone children following the recent
handover of power. "They should all be held by Iraqi authorities,"
he said. "When the coalition handed over Saddam they should have handed
over the other 3000 detainees."
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- The British Ministry of Defence confirmed UK forces had
handed over prisoners to US troops, but a spokes man said he did not know
the ages of any detainees given to the Americans.
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- The MoD also admitted it was currently holding one prisoner
aged under 18 at Shaibah prison near Um Qasr. Since the invasion Britain
has detained, and later released, 65 under-18s. The MoD claimed the ICRC
had access to British jails and detainee lists.
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- High-placed officials in the Pentagon and Centcom told
the Sunday Herald that children as young as 14 were being held by US forces.
"We do have juveniles detained," a source said. "They have
been detained as they are deemed to be a threat or because they have acted
against the coalition or Iraqis."
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- Officially, the Pentagon says it is holding "around
60 juvenile detainees primarily aged 16 and 17", although when it
was pointed out that the Red Cross estimate is substantially higher, a
source admitted "numbers may have gone up, we might have detained
more kids".
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- Officials would not comment about children under the
age of 16 being held prisoner. Sources said: "It's a real challenge
ascertaining their ages. Unlike the UK or the US, they don't have IDs or
birth certificates." The Sunday Herald has been told, however, that
at least five children aged under 16 are being kept at Abu Ghraib and Camp
Bucca.
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- A highly placed source in the Pentagon said: "We
have done investigations into accusations of juveniles being abused and
raped and can't find anything that resembles that."
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- The Pentagon's official policy is to segregate juvenile
prisoners from the rest of the prison population, and allow young inmates
to join family members also being detained. "Our main concern is that
they are not abused or harassed by older detainees. We know they need special
treatment," an official said.
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- Pentagon sources said they were unaware how long child
prisoners were kept in jail but said their cases were reviewed every 90
days. The last review was early last month. The sources confirmed the children
had been questioned and interrogated when initially detained, but could
not say whether this was "an adult-style interrogation".
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- The Norwegian government, which is part of the "coalition
of the willing", has already said it will tell the US that the alleged
torture of children is intolerable. Odd Jostein Sæter, parliamentary
secretary at the Norwegian prime minister's office, said: "Such assaults
are unacceptable. It is against international laws and it is also unacceptable
from a moral point of view. This is why we react strongly We are addressing
this in a very severe and direct way and present concrete demands. This
is damaging the struggle for democracy and human rights in Iraq."
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- In Denmark, which is also in the coalition, Save the
Children called on its government to tell the occupying forces to order
the immediate release of child detainees. Neals Hurdal, head of the Danish
Save the Children, said the y had heard rumours of children in Basra being
maltreated in custody since May.
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- Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it was "extremely
disturbed" that the coalition was holding children for long periods
in jails notorious for torture. HRW also criticised the policy of categorising
children as "security detainees", saying this did not give carte
blanche for them to be held indefinitely. HRW said if there was evidence
the children had committed crimes then they should be tried in Iraqi courts,
otherwise they should be returned to their families.
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- Unicef is "profoundly disturbed" by reports
of children being abused in coalition jails. Alexandra Yuster, Unicef's
senior adviser on child detention, said that under international law children
should be detained only as a last resort and only then for the shortest
possible time.
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- They should have access to lawyers and their families,
be kept safe, healthy, educated, well-fed and not be subjected to any form
of mental or physical punishment, she added. Unicef is now "desperately"
trying to get more information on the fate of the children currently detained
in coalition jails.
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