The Defense Department statement said the release was motivated by the fact that the three “have no further intelligence value” and “no longer pose a threat to our nation.” Washington has come under fire for its indefinite imprisonment of the three minors, who, like their fellow inmates, have been denied access to lawyers, and subjected to regular interrogation and harsh prison conditions—often bordering on torture.

The Pentagon defended its practice of holding minors in its prison camp stating that “age is not a determining factor in detention.”

The U.S. military did not specify the nationalities of the three youths. A Pentagon statement said only that, “they have been released to their home country.” Other press reports indicated the boys have been flown to Afghanistan. Feigning concern for the well-being of their ex-prisoners, the Pentagon gave as justification for its refusal to release the names of the three youths that “Al Qaeda or Taliban sympathizers may threaten the safety of these juveniles.”

One of the teenagers thought to be held at the camp is Omar Kadr, a Toronto native who Washington had blamed for the killing of a U.S. Special Forces soldier in Afghanistan. It was not reported whether the 16-year-old Canadian, who was 15 at the time of his capture, was among those released.

Washington’s provocative use of Cuban soil as a concentration camp was roundly condemned in a December 23 statement from Cuba’s National Assembly.

“In the territory illegally occupied by the Guantánamo Naval Base,” the statement reads, “hundreds of foreign prisoners are subjected to indescribable abuses, in complete isolation, without the possibility of communicating with their families or arranging an adequate defense. Some of the very few who have been released have told of the horrors of this concentration camp.”

The statement condemned Washington for the hundreds rounded up and detained following September 11, “under the pretext of a supposed fight against terrorism.”

The indefinite detentions and the military tribunal—which Washington is planning to put in place in order to try, convict, and possibly execute some of the prisoners—have also been contested in U.S. courts. Last November, the Supreme Court ruled that it would consider appeals on behalf of Guantánamo inmates.

A month later the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Guantánamo detainee Falen Gherebi, a Libyan citizen, should have the right to see a lawyer and have access to U.S. civilian courts. On January 28, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who has jurisdiction over appeals from the San Francisco-based court, prevented this ruling from being carried out after a request by the Bush administration.

White House officials asked the high court judge to block implementation of the ruling on the grounds that any outside communication with a prisoner would “interfere with the military’s efforts to obtain intelligence from Gherebi and other Guantánamo detainees related to the ongoing war against terrorism.”

This isn’t the first time the high court has come to the defense of antidemocratic moves by Washington carried out in the name of “fighting terrorism.” On January 12, the Supreme Court let stand a lower court ruling that the U.S. government was correct in withholding the names of the hundreds of Muslim and other men detained in the weeks and months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Disclosing the names, the ruling asserted, “would give terrorist organizations a composite picture of the government investigation.” It further stated that, “the judiciary owes some measure of deference to the executive in cases implicating national security.”

The high court is expected to rule on the legal rights of those held at Guantánamo later this year. It will also review the case of Yasser Esam Hamdi, a U.S. citizen also labeled an “enemy combatant,” who is currently held incommunicado in a Navy brig in South Carolina.  
 
 
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