The fact that has struck me hardest about Guantanamo Bay is the number of juveniles who were brought there, as many as sixty in a total population of some 780. And not just “juveniles”—but kids.
These kids include Mohammed el Gharani from Chad, one of Reprieve’s clients, who had never even been to Afghanistan until the US paid a bounty to his captors and took him there. US Intelligence thought Mohammed was in his mid-twenties: despite years of interrogation, it had not been discovered that he was only fourteen years old and had gone to Pakistan simply to learn about computers. US District Judge Richard Leon later determined that he was innocent of any wrongdoing, and he was released after more than seven years in captivity.
Mohammed was innocent and should have been in school. Yet he learned the lessons of adolescence in a maximum security prison, in cells with those reputed to be the most dangerous of terrorists.