GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - The United States is still holding juveniles at its prison for terrorist suspects in Guantanamo Bay despite this week´s release of the three youngest detainees, officials said Friday. Human Rights Watch said the United States is violating an international treaty that obligates it to rehabilitate child soldiers. On Thursday the United States freed three boys, believed to be between 13 and 15. The International Committee of the Red Cross said Friday it helped reunite them with their families in Afghanistan.

Two of the boys were captured during raids on Taliban camps and were imprisoned at Guantanamo in January 2002, while the third was captured trying to obtain weapons for the Taliban and taken to Guantanamo in February 2003, military officials said in November. However, officials said Thursday that all three arrived in February 2003. It wasn´t immediately possibly to clarify the discrepancy. ilitary officials said the boys were kept apart from adult detainees, and were given lessons, including in English, and allowed to play soccer and to watch videos.

But other juveniles aged 16 and 17 are being held among the approximately 650 other detainees from about 40 countries whose exercise periods are limited and whose only diversion are books. "There is still a small group of juveniles under 18 at Guantanamo," said Amanda Williamson of the ICRC´s office in Washington, D.C. The Department of Defense has confirmed that an unspecified number of 16- and 17-year-olds are still in detention, and Jo Becker of Human Rights Watch said the Pentagon had said there are "a handful." "Guantanamo is not really an appropriate place to detain juveniles because they´re taken so far from their culture and are unable to benefit from the support of their families," said Williamson. His ICRC organization is the only independent group allowed to visit the detainees.

Pressure has been mounting on U.S. officials to release the juveniles or transfer them to another facility. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who is in charge of the detention mission, recommended in August that the three youngest boys be sent home, saying they "were kidnapped into terrorism (by) despicable people who are using juveniles as a part of this scourge of terrorism." The United States turned its naval base on Cuba´s eastern tip into a prison during the war in Afghanistan, when soldiers arrested hundreds of suspected al-Qaida and Taliban fighters in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Military officials said the boys had provided viable intelligence but had no further value and were no longer a threat to the United States. Human Rights Watch asked when the other juveniles would be freed. Becker said that the United States was violating the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of Children, which it ratified in December 2002. The treaty establishes 18 as the minimum age for participation in armed conflict and obligates governments to demobilize and rehabilitate former child soldiers, Becker said.