[JURIST] The British prisoners rights group Reprieve [advocacy website] has claimed that over 60 of the foreign detainees imprisoned by the US at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] were juveniles under 18 years of age when captured, and that some were as young as 14. Reprieve told the Independent newspaper that 17 detainees on the latest US list [JURIST report] were under eighteen when seized, and that another seven were probably juveniles. Reprieve founder Clive Stafford Smith [Wikipedia profile], a British lawyer acting for several Guantanamo detainees who has previously pressed the US on the status of children at the camp [2005 article], added that according to information from inmates and the Red Cross, another 37 inmates were under 18 when they were taken into custody.

The US says that there are currently no juveniles held at the prison. Three Afghan youths who were at one point held there in a separate facility called Camp Iguana [Wikipedia backgrounder] were released in 2004 [JURIST report]. The Independent has more.

[JURIST] Over 1000 UK service personnel have deserted since the beginning of the war in Iraq, the BBC reported Sunday. A total of 134 deserted in 2003, 229 in 2004, 377 in 2005, and 189 so far in 2006, up from 86 in 2001, and 118 in 2002. The UK Ministry of Defence [official website] disputes the figures, saying that levels of personnel "absent without leave" have remained fairly constant. An increase in Iraq-related desertions is nonetheless supported by anecdotal evidence from Iraq war resisters in the UK and their associates, including the lawyer for former Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith [JURIST news archive], recently dismissed from the military and sentenced to eight months in prison [JURIST report] for refusing to return to service in Iraq, and former SAS member Ben Griffin [JURIST report], who told the BBC that "There's a lot of dissent in the Army about the legality of war and concerns that they're spending too much time there."

The desertions issue is all the more critical as a military justice reform bill [bill summary] now moving through Parliament intended to modernize and merge the process for military prosecutions in the British Army, the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force includes a controversial provision [advocacy against] in section 8 specifically extending the definition of desertion to include avoiding "military occupation of a foreign country or territory." BBC News has more. A Labour Party backbencher's amendment to drop the maximum penalty for desertion under the Armed Services Bill [text] from life imprisonment to two years was roundly defeated [BBC report] last week.

[JURIST] Iran has delivered a "bill of indictment" against former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein to the Iraqi Foreign Ministry, which will submit it to Iraq's High Criminal Court, according to a joint statement [text] issued Saturday by the governments of Iran and Iraq on the visit of Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki to Baghdad. The statement said the two countries "referred to the crimes perpetrated by the regime of Saddam Hussein and its aggressions against the peoples of Iraq, Iran and Kuwait...[and] affirmed that leaders of the bygone Iraqi regime should be tried." It is not clear how the indictment mentioned in the statement compares with an indictment against Saddam that Iranian Justice Minister Jamal Karimirad said Iran sent to the Iraqi government [JURIST report] in October charging the former dictator with atrocities allegedly committed during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war [JURIST report] of the 1980s which resulted in over 500,000 casualties on each side. Iran first announced its plan to charge Hussein with crimes [JURIST report] stemming from the war in July 2005.

[JURIST] US Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), a former US Marine now senior Democrat on the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee, said [recorded video] Sunday on ABC's This Week that Marine killings of up to 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha [JURIST report] in November after a comrade was killed by a roadside bomb [DOD casualty report] had been committed "in cold blood", that the initial military investigation into them had been stifled, that officers up the military chain of command knew what happened and had covered up, and that the incident could do even more damage to US efforts than the Abu Ghraib prison scandal [JURIST news archive]. Murtha, who has received high-level military briefings on the evidence, said "I will not excuse murder, and this is what happened...This investigation should have been over two or three weeks afterward and it should have been made public and people should have been held responsible for it." On the same program Sunday Senator John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he would hold hearings into the episode so long as those did not interfere with a new military inquiry [JURIST report] by the Naval Criminal Investigation Service [official website] which is expected to be completed within 30 days.

Marine Commandant General Michael W. Hagee [official profile] said Wednesday that the Marines involved in the incident will face charges [JURIST report], and on Thursday he took the unusual step of flying out to Iraq to stress to his troops the importance of avoiding war crimes [USMC release]. ABC News has more. TIME magazine has additional coverage.

[JURIST] The US Department of Justice late Friday filed for dismissal [redacted brief in support of motion, PDF] of two lawsuits [JURIST report] brought over the National Security Agency's domestic wiretapping program [JURIST news archive], saying that defending them would require disclosure of state secrets and would be contrary to national security interests. The first suit [CCR press release; complaint, PDF], brought in New York by the Center for Constitutional Rights [official website] in January on its own behalf and on behalf of CCR attorneys and legal staff representing clients who fit the government's criteria for targeting, asks the federal courts to block the program as an abuse of presidential power without judicial approval or statutory authorization in breach of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Article II of the US Constitution, and the First and Fourth Amendments. The second suit [ACLU press release; complaint, PDF] brought in Michigan by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of journalists, scholars, attorneys and national nonprofit organizations similarly having "a well-founded belief that their communications are being intercepted by the NSA" also charges that the NSA program violates the First and Fourth Amendments.

Shayana Khadidl, a staff attorney on the CCR litigation, responded [CCR statement] to the dismissal motion by saying:

The Bush Administration is trying to crush a very strong case against domestic spying without any evidence or argument. This is a mysterious and undemocratic request, since the administration says the reason the court is being asked to drop the case is a secret. I think it's a clear choice: can the President tell the courts which cases they can rule on? If so, the courts will never be able to hold the President accountable for breaking the law.