William Fisher, People's Weekly World Newspaper - English Translation www.resistenze.org for by the Documentation Centre of Culture and Popular
NEW YORK, February 5, 2009 - Legal experts and human rights activists have appealed to the public to remember "child soldiers" of Guantanamo detainees in the prison where they are "the worst of the worst".
Since the symbolic detention center in Cuba opened in 2002, about 22 children were imprisoned there. Contrary to the Protocol on the Rights of the Child United Nations, all except three, were housed with adult prisoners, despite the obligation to promote "the physical and psycho-social rehabilitation and social reintegration of children who are victims of armed conflict. "
Former Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and many other senior officials of the George W. Bush repeatedly has described all the Guantanamo detainees as "the worst of the worst."
human rights advocates insist on two particular cases of child soldiers.
Mohammed el-Gharani, a resident citizen of Chad in Saudi Arabia, was only 14 when he was captured by Pakistani forces in October 2001 during a raid on a mosque in Karachi, Pakistan, 1,200 kilometers away from the battlefield Afghanistan.
lawyers who defend El-Gharani said that the boy was treated with appalling brutality. They say that after being tortured while in Pakistani custody, was sold to the U.S. military who have flown to a prison at Kandahar where he witnessed the boy, one of the soldiers "held my penis with scissors and told me that he would amputee."
The lawyers argue that arrived at Guantanamo, his treatment has not improved. Continually subjected to racist abuse because of the color of his skin, was hanged by the wrists on several occasions, and was also subjected to a regime of "enhanced investigation techniques" [American expression that means torture] to prepare him for interrogation. These included prolonged sleep deprivation, prolonged isolation and difficulties in maintaining long painful positions: that clearly constitute torture.
As a result of these and other forms of abuse, including regular beatings by the guards responsible for suppressing even the most minor infractions, el-Gharani fell into a deep depression and has repeatedly tried to commit suicide.
But last month, just days before the inauguration of President Barack Obama, a federal judge, Richard Leon, ruled that it is claimed that the government had failed to establish the status of enemy combatant and el-Gharani decided that the boy should have been released and repatriated "without delay". Judge Leon said the government had relied primarily on information from by two other prisoners at Guantanamo, whose credibility and reliability were questionable. However, it is unlikely that el-Gharani be released soon because it is not clear whether the government of Chad will accept it.
In the last month, federal judges in Washington, as requested by defense lawyers, reviewed on a case by case basis, the charges against about 200 detainees. The review by civil courts of the territory of the United States, continues through June 2006 issued a ruling of the Supreme Court, which granted to persons suspected of terrorism to challenge their detention before a federal court.
The Bush administration had said that el-Gharani was housed in Afghanistan in a house belonging to al Qaeda, who had participated in the battle of Tora Bora - Osama bin Laden where he fled in late 2001 - and has been rolling for senior al Qaeda. He was also accused of being a member of an al Qaeda cell based in London.
The other "child soldiers" still detained at "Gitmo" is Omar Khadr. He was arrested in Afghanistan at age 15 and his trial was under way when, with one of his first presidential decrees, Obama has suspended for 120 days all the proceedings of the Military Commission, pending an examination of individual cases and has also provided a team of experts from various government agencies to examine the system used by the Military Commission and to suggest possible alternatives for use in prosecutions.
Khadr was born in Toronto and is the only citizen of a western country currently imprisoned in Cuba by U.S. authorities. He was captured after a battle with fire in the village of Ayub Kheyl, Afghanistan, which lasted four hours, and has spent the last six years at Guantanamo. He is charged with war crimes, supporting terrorism and throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier.
But according to lawyers present at the hearing, the charges against him were unfounded. From U.S. military documents came to light inadvertently revealed that the first reports Khadr did not indicate how the person who had thrown the grenade and that further testimony of witnesses for the government proved "unreliable."
One of the lawyers said: "There was little hope that the impossibility of proving the allegations would put difficulties in the prosecution. A guilty verdict was almost predictable.
Gabor Rona, legal director for the international organization Human Rights First, told our correspondent that the case against Khadr "must be rejected in toto." It noted that Khadr was 15 when he was arrested.
"If the process continues - and no matter in what capacity - will the first example of a child soldier brought to trial in a U.S. court for actions taken in time of war. This would be contrary to the principles of international law, which invite us to protect and rehabilitate, but to punish the child soldiers, "said Rona.
He added:" What he is accused - defense against an attack by U.S. soldiers - is not a crime under the laws of war. Bringing a person prosecuted for actions that do not violate any legal standard when they were made is instead defined as a war crime in international law and is also a violation of the U.S. Constitution. "
The Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has refused to intervene if Khadr and refused to seek extradition in Canada, while the process was underway. But Rona told our reporter that Canada and the United States is talking about a possible return to Canada of the young.
"It is not clear whether this will happen, and if so, under what conditions," said Rona. According
reliable surveys, 64 percent of Canadians expressed a favorable opinion on the return of Khadr to Canada, and national and international organizations such as Amnesty International and the dawn of the Canadian Lawyers have appealed to the conservative government to bring Khadr home .
Rona maintained that: "The issue of child soldiers is particularly noted when the sensitivity Western societies are offenses of enrollment of teenagers to fight in civil wars. The outrage curiously subsides when the child is one of ours, 'enrolled' in this case by her father, a known supporter of al Qaeda. Prime Minister Harper, however, seems deaf to the prayers of UNICEF and other defenders of children. "
He added:" Americans witnessed a decade of abuse of their Constitution is an increasingly urgent demand that Bush and his accomplices accountable for illegal actions committed at home and abroad, Canadians should also think Mr. Harper guilty of trampling on the rights of one of his countrymen. "
Original article :
www.pww.org/article/articleview/14428/
