The U.S. military has released three teenage Taliban conscripts from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and flown them to their Afghan homeland, where resettlement workers are trying to reunite them with relatives or family friends, Pentagon officials said yesterday. The detention of the three youths had generated protests from international human rights activists, who contended that imprisoning children, especially for significant lengths of time, is inhumane. But Pentagon officials said the trio, who ranged in age from 13 to 15, were “juvenile enemy combatants” who posed a threat to U.S. troops in Afghanistan before their capture. The imprisonment of the young Taliban foot soldiers has been a particularly troublesome issue for the U.S. government, involving not just the controversy over the indefinite detention of about 675 terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay but also the delicate issue of their age. Full Story
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