Camp Iguana (Guantanamo Bay) - Used To Hold Child Detainees

Used To Hold Child Detainees

Elaine Chao the U.S. Secretary of Labor has spoken about the responsibility to give child soldiers special treatment, to provide help for them to re-integrate into society.

The Geneva Conventions would have entitled them to a prompt, open tribunal to make a fair determination of their status—whether they should have been afforded the protection of being civilians, or POWs. If the Americans had applied the Geneva Conventions the children would not have left Afghanistan. The executive branch of the American government claimed at the time that the constitution did not allow for judicial review of the detentions, but the judicial branch overruled that claim, and forced the executive branch to conduct reviews.

In a BBC interview a young Afghan teenager named Naqibullah described being treated humanely, and receiving an education, while in Camp Iguana.

A February 2, 2004 memo, summarizing a meeting between General Geoffrey Miller and his staff and Vincent Cassard of the ICRC, Geoffrey Miller said:

"Also, CDR Timby is in the process of finishing the report from the arrival and departure of the juveniles, they showed exceptional progress. 2 of the 3 came here with psychological problems and left here with none. They are looking forward to starting a life again. They were very excited to return home and were in good spirits."

In the spring of 2005 the presence of other detainees who had been held, while children, became known. A New York Times article published on June 13, 2005, said there were at least six other teenagers kept within the general population.

...Further, the ages of the detainees brought to Guantánamo as enemy combatants cannot be determined with certainty, leaving officials to make estimates.

"They don't come with birth certificates," said Col. Brad K. Blackner, the chief public affairs officer at the detention camp. Col. David McWilliams, the chief spokesman for the United States Southern Command in Miami, which runs the prison operation, said that the authorities were fairly confident of their estimates. "We used bone scans in some cases and age was determined by medical evidence as best we could," he said.

However, in at least one case, that of Canadian detainee Omar Khadr 15 when imprisoned, American Intelligence was aware of his age, and identity. A Washington Post article from October 29, 2002 reports:

One particularly talkative prisoner there is Omar Khadr, who at sixteen is one of the youngest prisoners in U.S. custody. U.S. officials allege that on July 27 he killed a U.S. Special Forces medic, Sgt. Christopher Speer, during a four-hour, house-to-house battle in the village of Ayub Kheyl. The wounded youth was captured, taken to Bagram, treated for his wounds and interrogated.

Khadr was captured on July 27, 2002, at the age of fifteen. Abdul Salam Mureef Ghaithan Al Shehri, a Saudi citizen who was fifteen when he was captured, celebrated his eighteenth birthday in Guantanamo Bay, in late April 2005.

In an interview broadcast on the BBC on September 9, 2005, Clive Stafford Smith, a prominent British human rights lawyer who represents thirty seven Guantanamo detainees, reported that the continued incarceration of children between 16 and 18 at Guantanamo Bay was one of the triggers for the hunger strikes that had taken place during the summer of 2005. The United Nations determined that to forcefeed the strikers amounts to torture. Smith said that as many as twenty teenagers remained imprisoned at Guantanamo, some of whom were being kept in long term solitary confinement.

In May 2009 Afghan human rights workers challenged the American bone-scan estimate of Mohammed Jawad's age, asserting he had been as young 12 or 13 when he was captured in December 2002.