Source: Al-Manar, 20-4-2007
A UN envoy said Thursday "Israeli" occupation detention of Palestinian children and denial of proper trials are "a problem" that feeds the violence in the region. The UN`s special representative for children and armed conflicts, Radhika Coomaraswamy, said she visited the Hasharon prison in central
`Israel`, where she said more than 150 minors are held for security and criminal offenses.
She said she urged "Israeli" officials to consider rehabilitation instead of detention for children detained on minor charges. Some 398 children 12 years or older are held in "Israeli" jails, she said. This week the "Israeli" Prisons Authority said 371 Palestinian children under 18 are in prisons.
"The process they are subject to is a military process ... and not a judicial process. That is something that we feel is a problem," she said. "I think children are getting very hard and bitter through this experience."
Coomaraswamy also said she asked "Israeli" foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, to hand over to the UN technical teams' computer-generated data for cluster bomblets used during the Lebanon war.
She said general data for the cluster bombs were passed on, but that was not enough to locate them. The UN and human rights groups say that "Israeli" occupation dropped about 4 million cluster bomblets on Lebanon during the war, and up to 1 million failed to explode.
Since the "Israeli" aggression ended on August 14, cluster bombs have killed 29 people and injured another 215 - 90 of them children, according to the UN.