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Lawyers representing terror suspects at the U.S. Guantanamo Bay military prison
in Cuba claim there may be six minors being held there.
Lawyer Clive Stafford Smith of London said in an interview with the New York
Times one prisoner he represents said he was seized by local authorities in
Pakistan about Oct. 21, 2001, a few months before his 15th birthday, and taken
to Guantanamo at the beginning of 2002.
Barbara Olshansky of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, which
is matching volunteer lawyers with detainees, said she believes he may be one
of six current detainees who were imprisoned at Guantanamo before their 18th
birthdays.
Military authorities say the only juveniles at the detention center were three
who were kept in a separate facility from the main prison and released in January
2004.
They don't come with birth certificates, said Col. Brad Blackner, the chief
public affairs officer at the detention camp. Col. David McWilliams, the chief
spokesman for the U.S. Southern Command in Miami, said bone scans were used
in some cases and age was determined by medical evidence as best we could.
