Children held by the United States army at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison included one boy who appeared to be only about eight years old, the former commander of the prison has told investigators, according to a transcript.
"He told me he was almost 12," Brigadier General Janis Karpinski told officials investigating prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. "He told me his brother was there with him, but he really wanted to see his mother, could he please call his mother. He was crying."
Karpinski's statement is among hundreds of pages of army records about Abu Ghraib released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Thursday.
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The ACLU got the documents under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking records about abuse of detainees in Iraq.
Karpinski did not say what had happened to the boy in her interview with Major General George Fay.
Military officials have previously acknowledged that some juvenile prisoners had been held at Abu Ghraib, a massive prison built by Saddam Hussein's government outside Baghdad.
The ACLU sued Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld earlier this month on behalf of four Iraqis and four Afghans who say they were tortured at US military facilities.
Rumsfeld and his spokesmen have repeatedly said that the defence secretary and his aides had never authorised or condoned the abuse of prisoners. - Sapa-AP
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This article was originally published on page 4 of Cape Argus on March 11, 2005
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