http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=4052Punishment Without Trial
by Jonathan Steele
The Guardian (UK)
August 16, 2003
It was a warm spring evening in a Baghdad suburb when American troops stopped the car in which 11-year-old Sufian Abd al-Ghani was riding close to his home with his uncle and a neighbour. They were ordered out and told to lie face down on the road. Sufian's father heard the commotion and rushed out to find the soldiers pointing their rifles at his son and the others. Claiming the uncle had fired at them, they started beating the three captives with their rifle butts, according to the father.
A neighbour confirms that a shot had been fired, but it was part of a row between the Ghanis and another family. "In Iraq this is normal. Almost every household in Baghdad owns a weapon. One man was drunk.
.....The American soldiers searched the Ghanis' house, but found nothing. For three hours Sufian was kept on the ground with the two adults. Then the Americans put hoods over their heads, tied their hands with tight plastic bracelets, and drove them away. "Why are you taking my son?" a desperate Abdullah Ghani pleaded. "Don't worry. As he's a child, we'll send him back in a couple of days," a Sergeant Stark assured him. ..........Sufian spent eight days in a tent with around 20 adults..........
It was now June 17, almost three weeks after his arrest on May 28.
They brought the boy food and clean clothes, and four days later obtained an order from Mohammed Latif al- Duleimi, a US-approved investigating judge, for Sufian's immediate release. Sufian's father took it to the US military police who run the detention centre. But they told him that orders by Iraqi judges had no legal authority.
Ghani turned for help to the new US-founded police academy. He met a Captain Crusoe, who took up the case and rang a US army lawyer at the airport. The lawyer ordered the boy's release on June 21 - but still the military police refused to act.
more.................
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