http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/05/03/hersh/index.html<snip>HERSH: Well, that's what the Taguba report says. And one of the findings he makes is not only that were the civilians in charge -- and he makes it clear, as awful and dumb as the kids were, the six or seven kids that are going to be charged for photographing it -- they were not -- they were being directed. They were being told what do and told it was OK.
He also says in the report that this problem originated in {the} prison system in Afghanistan. So, the Army has known since the Afghanistan war in late '91 and early 2001 or 2002, they've known that the prisons, which are supposed to be run by the military police -- and by the way, let me just say, prison is a funny word.
The people in these facilities -- they are prisons -- are civilians. And according to the Taguba report, more than 60 percent of them had nothing to do with the insurgency or any trouble against Americans. They were just people picked up in sweeps.
And Taguba is really very incensed that the inability of the Army's system to weed out those who are dangerous from those who are not. They just simply weren't doing it. So, people would get into the system, picked up at a roadblock for example, thrown in there.
They had a separate wing for women -- the juveniles and children and women. It's just an amazing sort of collapse of an institution. That is the Army prison system. And it goes far beyond these six children who have been charged.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article620704.eceThe children of Guantanamo Bay
The 'IoS' reveals today that more than 60 of the detainees of the US camp were under 18 at the time of their capture, some as young as 14
By Severin Carrell
Published: 28 May 2006
The notorious US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay has been hit by fresh allegations of human rights abuses, with claims that dozens of children were sent there - some as young as 14 years old.
Lawyers in London estimate that more than 60 detainees held at the terrorists' prison camp were boys under 18 when they were captured.
They include at least 10 detainees still held at the US base in Cuba who were 14 or 15 when they were seized - including child soldiers who were held in solitary confinement, repeatedly interrogated and allegedly tortured.
The disclosures threaten to plunge the Bush administration into a fresh row with Britain, its closest ally in the war on terror, only days after the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, repeated his demands for the closure of the detention facility. It was, he said, a "symbol of injustice".
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