THE US military has detained more than 200 Afghan teenagers who were captured in the war for about a year at a time at a military prison next to Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, the United States has told the UN.
The US State Department characterised the detainees held since 2008 as "enemy combatants" in a report sent every four years to the UN in Geneva updating US compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The US military had held them "to prevent a combatant from returning to the battlefield", the report said.
A few teenagers are still confined at the detention facility in Parwan, which will be turned over to the Afghan government, it said.
"Many of them have been released or transferred to the Afghan government," said the report, which was distributed this week.
Most of the juvenile Afghan detainees were about 16 years old, but their age was not usually determined until after capture, the US report said.
If the average age is 16, "this means it is highly likely that some children were as young as 14 or 13 years old when they were detained by US forces," Jamil Dakwar, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's human rights program, said on Friday.
Tina M Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network, which represents adult and juvenile Bagram detainees, questioned the report's figures.
"I question the number of 200, because there are thousands of detainees at Parwan."
The US State Department was called for comment on the criticism, and a representative said they were seeking an officer to reply.
The report said "the purpose of detention is not punitive but preventative: to prevent a combatant from returning to the battlefield".
However, Foster said the teens seized are not in uniform or even typically taken in combat.
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