Ishmael Khabr Child Soldier

Think for a moment and remember your least favorite childhood memory. Was it being yelled at, scraping your knee? For some children it’s killing family members to become a child soldier, by force or by choice. In 2012 it was estimated 300,000 children were taken to be child soldiers who spread horror and kill people. They are drugged and have to see horrific killings and massacres so they will become numb when they do it in real life. Child Soldiers can be rehabilitated to live in society, but it is hard work for the victim and for the nurses and others helping. The real question is, should they be prosecuted as criminals or victims?
Ishmael Beah was a child soldier in Sierra Leone during the 1990’s to fight in there civil war. After being rescued he was rehabilitated and is now a husband, author, and lives in New York. He says that he still gets nightmares about what he did. His village was attacked when Ishmael was away, he went to the military in Sierra Leone for help and were recruited for the military as well as the other boys who were with him. When he was 16 he was rescued by UNICEF, United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund, he was put into rehabilitation center. It took him 8 months to rehabilitate, but still had to learn how to deal with the guilt and aftermath of being a child …show more content…
All the evidence given to the jury was incomplete evidence, evidence against him, and no evidence showed what Khabr was like. He knows multiple languages, memorized the Qur’an, he has a natural charm, and he was placed in compliant detainees while in prison. He was highly medicated and was recovering from a surgery when he was ‘interrogated’. Interrogation was torture in the Guantanamo. While he was highly medicated he had said that killing Americans was the best days of his life. They used this evidence against him, but didn’t mention that he was high or that he was being tortured, they just said