Boy, 11, among Iraq captives

A BOY no older than 11 was among the children held by the US army at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, the former US commander of the facility told a general investigating abuses at the prison.

Brigadier General Janis Karpinski did not say what happened to the boy or why he was imprisoned, according to a transcript of her interview with Major General George Fay that was released by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The transcript of the May 2004 interview was among documents about Iraq prisoner abuses the group made public after getting them under the Freedom of Information Act.

Karpinski, who was in charge of Abu Ghraib from July to November 2003, said she often visited the prison’s youngest inmates.

Military officials have acknowledged that some juvenile prisoners had been held at Abu Ghraib, a massive prison built by Saddam Hussein’s government outside Baghdad. But the transcript is the first documented evidence of a child no older than 11 being held prisoner.