By NNN-Petra,
Washington : The US military is holding about 500 juveniles suspected of being “unlawful enemy combatants” in detention centres in Iraq and has about 10 detained at the US base at Bagram, Afghanistan, the United States has admitted to the UN.
A total of 2,500 youths under the age of 18 have been detained, almost all in Iraq, for periods up to a year or more since 2002, said the US in a report last week to the UN’s Committee on the Rights of the Child.
Civil liberties groups such as the International Justice Network and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) denounced the detentions as abhorrent, and a violation of US treaty obligations.
In the periodic report to the UN on US compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the US confirmed that “As of April 2008, it held about 500 juveniles in Iraq.
” The juveniles that the US has detained have been captured engaging operation against US and coalition forces,” the report said.
The majority are believed to be 16 or 17 years old.
In the United States a 17-year-old can enlist in the US army, with parental consent.
The report said that of the total of 2,500 juveniles jailed since 2002, all but 100 had been picked up in Iraq.
The vast majority of the remainder were swept up in Afghanistan.