More than 100 children report being detained by U.S. occupation forces in Iraq, according to recent information gleaned from the International Red Cross, including detainment in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
According to Report Mainz, a German television investigative magazine, 107 children were registered held in custody between January and May of this year, in at least six different Iraqi internment centres, Florian Westphal, speaking for the International Red Cross, told the magazine.
“The number of imprisoned children held could be higher,” Westphal said.
The TV magazine reported testimonies in which U.S. soldiers in Iraqi prisons had abused children. Samuel Provance, an NCO stationed in Abu Ghraib prison said specialists harrassed a 15- to 16-year-old girl in her cell.
Military police intervened only when she was already half undressed. Another time a sixteen-year-old was driven into water in cold weather and afterwards covered with mud. The child welfare organization of the United Nations (Unicef) confirms the capture of Iraqi children by coalition forces.
According to an internal U.N. document, written in June 2004, “Children from Basra and Karbala had been arrested because of alleged activities directed against the coalition … (these children) were routinely transferred into internment in Umm Kasr. Concern was expressed as to the classification of children as legitimate detainees, their indefinite internment without contact of family members, and their denial of due process.”
The German arm of the human rights organization Amnesty International demanded the clearing-up of the reproaches and a statement from the U.S.
As a reaction to the alleged torture of children, Norwegian authorities state they will address the U.S. both politically and diplomatically and clearly state that such activities by the U.S. occupation forces would not be tolerated.
Further, based on published reports, the International organization, Save The Children, called on the Danish government to mediate immediately with the coalition forces in Iraq in order to release children detained in Iraqi jails.
