[News] US detained children in Abu Ghraib

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US detained children in Abu Ghraib

Thursday 10 March 2005 11:52 PM GMT


An 8-year-old was among the children detained by US soldiers at Iraq's 
infamous Abu Ghraib jail, a former prison commander has said.

Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski told officials investigating prisoner 
abuse at Abu Ghraib that the child was crying and wanted to see his mother.

Karpinski's statement is among hundreds of pages of US Army records about 
Abu Ghraib the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released on Thursday.

The ACLU got the documents under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit 
seeking records about abuse of detainees in Iraq.

Karpinski did not say what happened to the boy in her interview with 
Major-General George Fay. Military officials have previously acknowledged 
that some juvenile prisoners had been held at Abu Ghraib, a massive prison 
built by Saddam Hussein's government outside Baghdad.

More dirt

On another subject, Karpinski said she had seen written orders to hold a 
prisoner that the CIA had captured without keeping records. The records 
also quote an unnamed army officer at Abu Ghraib as saying military 
intelligence officers and the CIA worked out a written agreement on how to 
handle unreported detainees, known as "ghosts".

A US Army report issued last September said investigators could not find 
any copies of any such written agreements.

The Pentagon has acknowledged holding up to 100 "ghost detainees", keeping 
the prisoners off the books and away from humanitarian investigators from 
the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has defended the practice, saying he 
authorised it because the prisoners were enemy combatants not entitled to 
prisoner of war protections.

Rumsfeld suit

The ACLU sued Rumsfeld earlier this month on behalf of four Iraqis and four 
Afghans who say they were tortured at US military facilities. Rumsfeld and 
his spokesmen have repeatedly said he and his aides never authorised or 
condoned any abuses.

Six enlisted soldiers have pleaded guilty to military charges for their 
roles in abuses at Abu Ghraib, and Private Charles Graner Jr was convicted 
at a court martial earlier this year and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Karpinski, one of the few generals to be criticised in army detainee 
reports for poor leadership, quoted several senior generals in Iraq as 
making callous statements about prisoners.

Karpinski said Major-General Walter Wodjakowski, then the second highest 
ranking army general in Iraq, told her in the summer of 2003 not to release 
more prisoners, even if they were innocent.

"I don't care if we're holding 15,000 innocent civilians. We're winning the 
war," Karpinski said Wodjakowski told her.

Agencies
By

You can find this article at:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/F766CBA2-FAF7-43EE-AEDC-44FB55781ACC.htm 




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