News accounts from 2002, 2003, and 2004 indicate that the U.S. had adopted a new strategy for its "war on terror": kidnapping and detaining noncombatant children in intelligence and combat operations overseas, interrogating the children, and using them as leverage in getting their parents to surrender and/or be more cooperative in their interrogations.
The tactic was apparently quite successful with its first known use in 2002, when the 7- and 9-year old sons of Al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were taken into U.S. custody. The strategy was imported to Iraq in the early months of the U.S. invasion and occupation there.
What happened to those children? Where are they, who kept them, and who gave permission to kidnap children and keep details of the practice a well-kept secret over the years?
* Two young sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,
the suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks, were used by the CIA to force their father to talk.
Yousef al-Khalid, 9, and his brother, Abed al-Khalid, 7, were taken into custody in Pakistan in September when intelligence officers raided a flat in Karachi where their father had been hiding.
Mohammed fled just hours before the raid but his sons and another senior al-Qaeda member were found cowering behind a wardrobe in the apartment.
The boys have been held by the Pakistani authorities but this weekend they were flown to America where they will be questioned about their father. CIA interrogators confirmed that the boys were staying at a secret address where they were being encouraged to talk about their father's activities.
"We are handling them with kid gloves," said one official [note: apparently missing the irony of the statement]. "After all, they are only little children, but we need to know as much about their father's recent activities as possible. We have child psychologists on hand at all times and they are given the best of care."
[...] He has been told that his sons are being held and is being urged to divulge future attacks against the West and reveal the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.
"He has said very little so far," a CIA official said on Saturday. "He sits in a trance-like state and recites verses from the Koran. But while he may claim to be a devout Muslim, we know he is fond of the Western-style fast life. His sons are important to him. The promise of their release and their return to Pakistan may be the psychological lever we need to break him."
* Originally published in the
Wall Street Journal: Other than torture or truth serum, American authorities have an array of options in extracting information from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
JESS BRAVIN and GARY FIELDS, The Wall Street Journal
Tuesday, March 4, 2003
[...] U.S. authorities have an additional inducement to make Mr. Mohammed talk, even if he shares the suicidal commitment of the Sept. 11 hijackers: The Americans have access to two of his elementary-school-age children, the top law-enforcement official says. The children were captured in a September raid that netted one of Mr. Mohammed's top comrades, Ramzi Binalshibh.
* The kidnapping of children to force their parents to talk was a strategy that worked so well in the case of Mohammed (and how many others?) that
it was adopted in the war on Iraq later in 2003.
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 28, 2003; Page A01
BAGHDAD -- Over the past six weeks a small but intense war has been conducted in the mud-hut villages and lush palm groves along the Tigris River valley, fought with far different methods than those used in the campaign that toppled president Saddam Hussein.
[...] Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. On Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: "If you want your family released, turn yourself in." Such tactics are justified, he said, because, "It's an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info."
They would have been released in due course, he added later.
The tactic worked. On Friday, Hogg said, the lieutenant general appeared at the front gate of the U.S. base and surrendered.
* Several children (including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's sons) were listed among the "ghost prisoners" named in a
2007 Human Rights Watch report.
* Here's what I learned when I
initially investigated and wrote about this practice back in 2003 and 2004:
Aaron Mullins, a legislative aide in Sen. Dole's office, talked with officials at the U.S. Department of Defense in July 2003 and confirmed that, yes, the United States was indeed using this tactic, and that it was considered both "safe and effective" -- that the children are not harmed, and that "if they were cleared of wrongdoing" they are "usually released."
Wall Street Journal correspondents Jess Bravin and Gary Fields, who have written extensively about U.S. interrogation practices and broke the story of the use of children as leverage in interrogation of a senior al-Qaeda suspect, stand by their story, which has never been refuted by the Defense Department or the White House.
Correspondence with U.S. Central Command likewise elicited no denial of the reports, only a statement that commanders have the discretion to do what they believe is necessary.
Over the years, we've heard a lot about high-value detainees such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. But not a word about his children. Not a single word.
Now that the U.S. has paraded its most fearsome prisoners in front of the television cameras, isn't it about time we knew about its most innocent prisoners?
Investigate.