The U.S. military yesterday admitted children younger than 16 are being held as enemy combatants in the U.S. detention camp at Guantánamo Bay. A U.S. military official told the London Guardian the U.S. is holding three boys aged between 13 and 15. The official spoke on condition of anonymity. He would not disclose the children’s nationalities but said they had been brought from Afghanistan this year on suspicion of terrorism. A spokesperson at the base, Lieutenant Corporal Barry Johnson, said the children were moved to a “dedicated juvenile facility” at the camp, where they can socialize with each other and are given “specialist mental health care, in recognition of the difficult circumstances that child combatants go through.” But Johnson said the children will still be held indefinitely without access to lawyers. Amnesty International spokesperson Angela Wright said holding the children is “wholly repugnant and contrary to basic principles of human rights” and violated nearly universally accepted U.N. rules. The United States and Somalia are the only member states of the United Nations that have not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child.