Age
See also: Juveniles held at the Guantanamo Bay detention campLike many Afghans, Mohamed Jawad has no official record of his birth, and doesn't know his exact age. Human rights workers trying to more clearly establish a reliable estimate of his birth date were told by his mother that he was born six months after his father was killed during a battle near Khost in 1991. In an English language Al Jazeera broadcast, one of his uncles said he was born four months after the battle where his father was killed, which he said occurred in 1990.
Guantanamo spokesman Jeffrey D. Gordon disputed the human rights workers' claims, referring to bone scans performed when Jawad arrived at Guantanamo, which he asserted established he was eighteen when he arrived at Guantanamo. A report about juveniles held at Guantanamo stated that military records show Jawad to have been either 17 or 18 at the time of his arrival.
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Famous quotes containing the word age:
“In particular I may mention Sophocles the poet, who was once asked in my presence, “How do you feel about love, Sophocles? are you still capable of it?” to which he replied, “Hush! if you please: to my great delight I have escaped from it, and feel as if I had escaped from a frantic and savage master.” I thought then, as I do now, that he spoke wisely. For unquestionably old age brings us profound repose and freedom from this and other passions.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
“When you get to my age life seems little more than one long march to and from the lavatory.”
—John Mortimer (b. 1923)
“When life has been well spent, age is a loss of what it can well spare,—muscular strength, organic instincts, gross bulk, and works that belong to these. But the central wisdom, which was old in infancy, is young in fourscore years, and dropping off obstructions, leaves in happy subjects the mind purified and wise.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)