Children among 39 secret US detainees

US: Amnesty International and five other human rights groups have identified 39 people who are believed to have been held in secret US custody and whose current whereabouts remain unknown. The list also names relatives of suspects who were themselves detained in secret prisons, including children as young as seven.

Amnesty International and five other human rights groups have identified 39 people who are believed to have been held in secret US custody and whose current whereabouts remain unknown. The list also names relatives of suspects who were themselves detained in secret prisons, including children as young as seven.

The 21-page report, Off the Record: US Responsibility for Enforced Disappearances in the War on Terror, includes the names of four people named as "disappeared" prisoners for the first time. The full list includes nationals from countries including Egypt, Kenya, Libya, Morocco, Pakistan and Spain. The men are believed to have been arrested in countries including Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia and Sudan, and transferred to secret US detention centres.

The US has acknowledged that three of the people on the list have been detained, and the report says there is "strong evidence" that a further 18 were detained in secret prisons.

The report documents the detention of family members of suspected terrorists, apparently in an effort to obtain information about the suspects.

In September 2002, Yusuf al-Khalid (then nine years old) and Abed al-Khalid (then seven years old) were reportedly apprehended by Pakistani security forces during the attempted capture of their father, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He was successfully apprehended several months later, and the US government has acknowledged that he was held in a secret prison before being transferred to Guantánamo Bay.

In an April 16th, 2007, statement, Ali Khan, the father of another prisoner the US has acknowledged was held in secret detention, indicated that Yusef and Abed al-Khalid had been held in the same location as his son.

"The Pakistani guards told my son that the boys were kept in a separate area upstairs, and were denied food and water by other guards. They were also mentally tortured by having ants or other creatures put on their legs to scare them and get them to say where their father was hiding," Mr Khan said.

After Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's arrest in March 2003, Yusuf and Abed al-Khalid were reportedly transferred out of Pakistan for questioning about their father's activities and to be used by the US as leverage to force their father to co-operate.

A Daily Telegraph report on March 10th, 2003, confirmed that CIA interrogators had detained the children and that one official explained that: "We are handling them with kid gloves. 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."

Immigration: crucial vote fails:

A plan to reform immigration laws that would allow most undocumented immigrants, including thousands of Irish people, to remain in the US legally, hung in the balance last night after it failed a crucial vote in the Senate. A move to limit debate on the Bill, which was drafted jointly by Democrats and moderate Republicans, fell 27 votes short of the 60 needed.

This followed a series of amendments that upset the delicately balanced compromise negotiated by senators and the White House and makes it less likely that the controversial changes can be enacted before President Bush leaves office.

Democratic leader of the Senate Harry Reid set another vote for later yesterday in a bid to rescue the Bill, but Republicans were seeking assurances they would get chances to add several conservative-backed changes that would toughen up the measure.

A "grand bargain" between Democrats and Republicans started to unravel early yesterday when the Senate agreed by 49 votes to 48 to phase out the Bill's temporary worker programme after five years. Business interests and their congressional allies were already angry that the programme had been cut in half from its original target.

Senator Edward Kennedy said politicians would work to patch it up in hopes of eventually passing the Bill but Mr Reid yesterday floated a possible exit argument in case no agreement is reached.

"This is the president's Bill," he said, adding that "a vast majority of Democrats want this legislation to go forward."