U.S. forces can detain Iraqi children deemed 'security threats'

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Sixteen years old, unshaven fluff on his upper lip and wearing only his underwear, Ali Maitham stood at a Baghdad intersection June 20, holding the bottle of water given to him by one of the American soldiers who was releasing him.

People gathered around the boy. Someone gave him a torn shirt. Ali grabbed a taxi to his home in the Adhamiya neighborhood of Baghdad and told his sobbing mother how he had been held without charge by American soldiers for five days.

It was a horrible story for a mother to hear. Even worse was the realization that her husband, Maitham Ahmed, and son Omar -- at 17 a juvenile like his brother -- were not with Ali. They were still lost in the American detention system.

Last week, after two months of tireless inquiries with U.S. authorities, Omar's mother, Sahira Atti, still had no idea where her younger son was. "I contacted a lawyer," she said in her living room, "but he said it's of no benefit."

The Iraqi lawyer was right. Children who are detained by the American occupation forces for suspected crimes can go in one of two judicial directions. If the detaining officer considers the child to have committed a crime against another Iraqi, the child is usually handed over to Iraqi police and enjoys the rights under Iraqi national law -- laws that U.S. officials and human rights workers say are fair and well-written.

Ali and Omar fell in a different category: If the American soldiers who seize a child decide he is even a potential threat to coalition forces, he is classified as a "security detainee." Authorities said 72 Iraqi children were being held as of last week.

Ignoring international laws

Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, the set of international standards that American authorities in Iraq have decided supersede all other international humanitarian statutes, security detainees can be held indefinitely -- without being charged, without legal counsel and without parental notification. They can appeal only to their captors. Lt. Col. Kirk Warner, a military lawyer known as the deputy judge advocate general, acknowledged that the coalition theoretically could hold a 6-year-old deemed a security threat to the coalition forces without the child's having any of the rights that a 17-year-old suspected of murdering a fellow Iraqi would have.

"We try to recognize all international laws but we have to balance them with the security of the people of Iraq," he said. "The security of the people of Iraq is the trump card."

Human rights organizations have criticized the American decision to effectively ignore other international legal standards for the detention and treatment of children, specifically the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and three U.N. General Assembly resolutions that deal with the administration of juvenile justice.

"They should be held accountable to the international standards," said Jill Clark, who works for the nonprofit Christian Children's Fund. "They're making up their own rules as they arrest people."

Separate interviews with several American soldiers involved in the detention of Iraqi juveniles found a morass of confusion and ignorance about the status and rights of detainees, especially juveniles.

Col. Ted Cox, 55, the administration's policy adviser to the juvenile judicial system, is a cheery man who has spent six years working as an administrator in the juvenile justice system in Shreveport, La. He has considerable influence over the fate of detained Iraqi children.

Of the soldiers interviewed, only Warner spoke with clarity and without contradiction about the way the U.S. forces are treating the juveniles.

"We're crawling, then walking, then running to try to get this working," Warner said. "We know we haven't done great." Sometimes, the breakdowns in the system seem considerable. When reporters first alerted Cox to Omar Maitham's case, he could not find his name on what is meant to be a comprehensive computerized list.

Baath Party members

By Saturday, he had located Omar and his father in Camp Bucca, a detention center in the south of Iraq, and had ordered them brought back to a Baghdad center. He said he had learned only that they were "suspected Baath Party members." Being a member of the Baath Party, which ruled Iraq during the Saddam Hussein years, is not a crime. Sahira Atti said her husband was forced to be a party member.

The boys and their father were asleep on June 15 when American soldiers raided their home, Ali said in an interview last week. One soldier forced him from the house in his underwear. The soldiers took them to the nearby Adhamiya Palace.

"They detained us for five days and made us sit under the heat and sun, handcuffed behind our backs," Ali said. "My brother asked for water and one soldier came and took a blindfold and gagged him and kneed him in the back."

Ali said he and Omar were held together with other adult detainees, a practice denied by several American soldiers involved in juvenile justice. International law states that adults and children must be held separately.

"When we asked anything about why we were being detained they started shouting at us or kicking us or swearing at us," Ali said, acknowledging that he himself was never physically hurt.

Ali said that on the fifth day, the soldiers released him.

His mother has continued her search for her other son and husband. She has nothing but tearful contempt for the way the rest of the American occupying forces have treated her sons and husband.

"This is abnormal behavior," she said, beginning to cry. "They claim democracy. They're supposed to treat mothers the same everywhere. What's the difference between an American mother and an Iraqi mother? This is a crime."