U.S. says videos show al-Qaida training boys
BAGHDAD – The three boys in black hoods and green T-shirts hold Kalashnikovs as the youngest shouts to the camera in a pre-pubescent voice, “Fight them and God will torture them through your hands.”
The videotape, found during a U.S. military raid Dec. 4 in Iraq’s Diyala province, also shows about 20 boys in dark blue sports jerseys jumping walls and storming houses. One scene has them pulling a man from a car at gunpoint, making him kneel on the ground and pressing the barrel of a black pistol against his neck.
The U.S. military describes the footage shown at a news conference Wednesday as a training video also meant to recruit the next generations of al-Qaida in Iraq. It was one of five videos found at the site in Khan Bani Sad showing boys, most believed to be younger than 11, being trained in how to carry out kidnappings and killings, the military said. Three suspected al-Qaida in Iraq fighters were detained and two others slain in the raid, it added.
“We believe the purpose of these videos was to produce training films to be promulgated throughout Iraq encouraging other youth, and presumably their parents, to begin the necessary training and indoctrination toward becoming al-Qaida terrorists proficient at carrying out violence against fellow Iraqis,” Rear Adm. Gregory Smith told reporters in Baghdad. “Al-Qaida often refers to the children as the ‘new generation of the mujahedeen,’ ” or holy warriors.
Smith said they did not know when the video shown Wednesday was filmed and speculated the children featured were probably from clans that belonged to al-Qaida in Iraq. He said the military did not know if the video proved that the children shown were being used as combatants.
He noted that recently two teenage boys blew themselves up in suicide attacks. Children have long been used as lookouts for fighters and incidents of teenagers engaging in attacks have taken place in the past, the military has said.
In another raid in Diyala province, which remains a haven for al-Qaida in Iraq, U.S. soldiers discovered a script outlining scenes in which children question and execute hostages, plant bombs and fire sniper rifles, Smith said. The second raid was carried out Dec. 8 in the town of Muqdadiyah.
Smith also showed an image of a young boy wearing a vest that the military believed was a suicide belt.
The U.S. military says it has 600 children in custody and that militants were using children more and more as fighters.
Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed Askari said that he suspected militants were abducting more children for ransoms and also to use as foot soldiers. He showed video at the news conference taken of a raid last week in Kirkuk, where Iraqi soldiers rescued an 11-year-old boy who had been kidnapped.