Tweet
Here’s one of the stories the news media is assiduously avoiding this week, preferring instead to focus on and demonize innocent and clean Tweets from a Congressman:
In November 2008, the UC Davis Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas published a report, “Guantánamo’s Children: Military and Diplomatic Testimonies,” presenting evidence that 12 juveniles had been held, and this was then officially acknowledged by the Pentagon.
The next week, however, I produced another report, “The Pentagon Can’t Count: 22 Juveniles Held at Guantánamo,” providing evidence that at least 22 juvenile prisoners had been held, and drawing on the Pentagon’s own documents, or on additional statements made by the Pentagon, to confirm my claims.
Two and a half years later, I stand by that report, and am only prepared to concede that up to three of the prisoners I identified as juveniles may have been 18 at the time of their capture. In the meantime, I have identified three more juvenile prisoners, and possibly three others, bringing the total back to 22, and possibly as many as 28.
My new research coincides with a new report by the UC Davis Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas, “Guantánamo’s Children: The WikiLeaked Testimonies,” drawing on the recent release, by WikiLeaks, of classified military documents shedding new light on the prisoners, identifying 15 juveniles, and suggesting that six others, born in 1984 or 1985, and arriving at Guantánamo in 2002 or 2003, may have been under 18, depending on when exactly they were born (which is unknown, as it is in the cases of numerous Guantánamo prisoners).
And what happened to these juveniles, these minor kids kidnapped from their homelands? UC Davis’ Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas has data for some of them:
Thirteen of the individuals mentioned in this table have now been released. Of the other two, one is the first child
in History to have been convicted of war crimes (Omar Ahmed Khadr); the other allegedly killed himself in his Guantánamo cell at age 21 (Yasser Talal al Zahrani). Information about them and many other prisoners can be found elsewhere in this website; pictures of some of them can be found below.
So regardless of whether one uses the 15 or the 22 figure for the total number of kids held at Gitmo, it’s clear that the majority were found to be innocent of alleged terrorism and released, and should never have been kidnapped in the first place.
Call me evil, but I think that holding innocent kids for months and years without charge (and getting off scot-free for it) is far more of a crime than an innocuous Twitter exchange.
(Crossposted to Renaissance Post and Mercury Rising.)
21 Comments
“Call me evil, but I think that holding innocent kids for months and years without charge (and getting off scot-free for it) is far more of a crime than an innocuous Twitter exchange.”
You and most here at FDL seem to be the exceptions, not the rule. Yes, the corporate media does a hell of a job omitting
stories like your post, MSNBC at the top of that list. One can hope that when Keith Olberman returns (June 20th) on current TV he will be somewhere between Democracy Now and Cable News and cover real news such as the subject of your post?
Call me cynical, but your average flag waving, beer drink, Jesus licking American could give less than a rats rear end what happens to these children once they have been labeled “Terrorist!” We are a country that spoke of “Terrorist Babies”, and let us not forget the “Vietnamese Abortions”
preformed by our brave boys in the field! So, doing this to the children of the “other” is perfectly normal for us.
Recommended.
The USG is a human rights violation running around abducting children from their homes in foreign lands, disappearing them into US-run prisons, doing who-knows-what-else to them and possibly releasing them … some day.
Everything about Guantanamo is wrong. Especially weird about that place is that it is located in Cuba–a country that we have not had diplomatic relations with for over 50 years because of our Communism phobia. One would think they would be concerned about the U.S military stationed to close to communism that they might come down with a bad case of it.
As for caring about children? Please, we are a nation who murder our own children if they get too uppity with their political an social dissent. What makes anyone think we would care about the children of other countries? Just ask the parents of children at Kent State in 1968 or the parents of those kids who were murdered in Mississippi during the civil rights unrest.
If you think that Obama or Hillary give a damn about children, you would be wrong. THEY ALLOW US AID TO BE GIVEN TO NATIONS THAT USE CHILD SOLDIERS.
In 2009, the government of Chad conscripted refugee children for unlawful use as guards and combatants in its desert battles against rebel forces; the army of the Democratic Republic of Congo forced children to carry ammunition and supplies through the jungle, and some died under their weight; hundreds of boys and girls were forced into the army of southern Sudan, despite a commitment to release them; and in Yemen, children as young as 14 make up perhaps half the ranks of both the government’s forces and the rebels opposing them.
Despite those findings, in an annual State Department report on human trafficking, the Obama administration is allowing American military aid to continue to the four countries, issuing a waiver this week of a 2008 law, the Child Soldiers Prevention Act.
source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/world/africa/29soldiers.html
But don’t get me started. . . : O
Oh, indeed. As a Tweet on this sez:
Indeed. Let’s not go into how Hillary’s BFF Lanny Davis told Obama through her to lay off the golpistas in Honduras who toppled Zelaya because he dared to raise the country’s minimum wage, which ticked off the US t-shirt companies that employ Honduran kids for slave wages.
Ask Nancy Pelosi what’s more important, grandstanding over innocuous Tweets or actual crimes against kids: http://www.democraticleader.gov/contact
Are these kids charged with anything or maybe they are hostages to get their dads to cooperate?
Most of them were just picked up in dragnets or because somebody wanted to get brownie points (or cash) from the Americans looking for terrorists. That’s why so many have been released.
Are those released going to be compensated for years of lost life/childhood? Will someone represent or speak for the children….the least of these whom we are supposed to care for and protect.
Look forward, not backward.
(Don’t have anything else but cynical snark.)
The Magnificent Mindless ‘Merican Murder Machine will grind up and spit out a few souls tonight that will never see the light of the morrow.
“The Magnificent Mindless ‘Merican Murder Machine will grind up and spit out a few souls tonight that will never see the light of the morrow.”
tjbs:
True, and all the MSNBC, FOX and CNN talking heads have to do is keep us focused on Wiener’s penis and we will never hear their death screams!
Everybody that is a regular reader of this FDL is horrified by Guantanamo’s continued existence.
What do we have to do to get everyone here to agree to getting involved in direct nonviolent action to force the USG to close Guantanamo?
How do we make this happen?
Fire Comcast. It will end all those death screams you are hearing instantly.
There’s lots of ways to get fast internet speed without a cable modem. I’ve gotten mine through my phone company for a long time, I pay less and my DSL is usually faster than friends with Comcast modems. Comcast always oversells their capacity.
Wait a minute, you mean we actually have to get off our God’s Gift to the Planet, Fat American Asses and Save their little third world non-American lives?
Yep. Mine is fatter than most too. Count on some huffin’ and puffin’ the first few days.
No small thing that closing Gitmo. Just look at today’s book salon and you know we will be joining the kids at camp Gitmo.
Shredding the constitution and leaving no room for dissent kinda changes the game. Summer camp at Gitmo wonder if they teach archery? Most likely it’s water skills.
It is so shaming to learn that my native country, which I once thought of with such pride as “Your land, my land,” has imprisoned minors in the manner of the British Crown in the time of Charles Dickens — and likely treated the Guantanao kids even worse. Looking with open eyes at both the history of the Americas and the nature of the contemporary regime in Washington, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that, despite deploying a great deal of skillful propaganda, the U.S. has become an utterly militarized state, exhibiting a total lack of institutional ethics or human rights protections for those whose names and faces have become targets of our own blind jingoistic xenophobia. Our helplessness — against corporate forces entangled with military spending — is more apparent every day.
“Too often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. ” rfk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_Vll-t0H6A
I’m in the Pac NW. I’ve seen it around here first hand.
http://www.judibari.org/bomb-overview-Nov97.html
Take a look at all the people still attending Roman Catholic Mass. It’s kind of a given people who can still go to a Roman Catholic Mass after everything that’s come out, do not give a shit about the well being of children.
“Call me evil, but I think that holding innocent kids for months and years without charge (and getting off scot-free for it) is far more of a crime than an innocuous Twitter exchange.”
Well I guess folks are just going to have to call me evil too because I am right along with you.
I read this post and in my mind you could hear a pin drop. For a good long while.
Recommended and tweeted.