U.S. frees three teens detained at Guantánamo Bay

By Carol Rosenberg
Knight Ridder Newspapers

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The boys were described as being in generally good health, said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Barbara Burfeind, a Pentagon spokeswoman. All had seen doctors, dentists and mental-health experts during their Guantánamo stay, and none suffered long-lasting wounds, although one was treated for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Pentagon officials declined to name the boys or their nationalities, but Amanda Williamson of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Washington said an ICRC team saw them off from Guantánamo and another met them in Kabul, Afghanistan's capital. Williamson said the ICRC had arranged for the boys to be reunited with their families.

The U.S. military had kept the boys segregated from other suspected terrorists at Guantánamo and had made the squat, cement-block building where they were kept a showcase stop for visiting reporters to illustrate the prison's humane treatment.

But their detention drew special complaints from human-rights groups already critical of the continued detention without trial of approximately 650 prisoners at Guantánamo. The boys' release drew praise.

"We've always maintained that, in particular for the young people, because they were so far away from their culture and their families, it wasn't an appropriate place to detain them," Williamson said. "We really welcomed the decision to take them back home."

The Pentagon said the boys were released because "the juvenile detainees no longer posed a threat to our nation," knew nothing of value to intelligence interrogators and were judged not to be subject to trial for any crimes.

In related developments:

• Jaber Elbaneh, the last member of a group of Yemeni Americans from New York sought by U.S. authorities for attending an al-Qaida training camp, is in custody in Yemen, a senior security official said yesterday. In a U.S. court last year, six Yemeni Americans from Lackawanna pleaded guilty to aiding a terrorist organization for training in an al-Qaida camp in Afghanistan in 2001.

• Saudi security forces captured a militant and a number of other suspects yesterday in Riyadh after a firefight in which five policemen were killed. The kingdom is battling a surge in violence believed to be linked to al-Qaida. At least 50 people were killed by suicide bomb attacks on Riyadh housing compounds last year.

• Muslim militant Sarjio, also known as Sawad, was convicted and sentenced yesterday to life in prison for helping plan the Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people Oct. 12, 2002.

Additional information from The Associated Press.

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