US ships first batch of al-Qaida prisoners to base in Cuba
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US ships first batch of al-Qaida prisoners to base in Cuba
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) - U.S. Marines began an extraordinary
security mission - flying the first 20 of hundreds of al-Qaida and
Taliban prisoners to a U.S. base on Cuba, where they are to be held for
questioning and possible trial.
Gunfire broke out Thursday night near the heavily guarded Marine base at
Kandahar airport as the U.S. Air Force C-17 took off - a sign of how the
area around the city that was once a stronghold of the Taliban remains
insecure.
Shortly after the aircraft left the runway, the base received small arms
fire, and Marines responded with heavy outgoing fire, Marine Lt. James
Jarvis told The Associated Press.
He said he knew of no U.S. casualties in the firefight, which witnesses
said lasted about a half-hour.
The prisoners are being taken to the American base at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba - and the U.S. military is taking no chances with them, since other
al-Qaida and Taliban fighters captured in the Afghan conflict have
staged bloody uprisings against their captors.
"These are dangerous individuals,'' Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld
said in Washington on Thursday.
"There are among these prisoners people who are perfectly willing to
kill themselves and kill other people.''
He said those overseeing the transfer have been told to use "appropriate
restraint.''
During the flights to Cuba, prisoners were to be chained to their seats
- and possibly be sedated, forced to use portable urinals and be fed by
their guards - according to USA Today and television reports.
The Pentagon subsequently barred news organizations from transmitting
pictures taken as the prisoners board the plane, citing Red Cross
objections.
The Red Cross denied it had raised the issue with the U.S. military.
The exchange of fire at the base brought U.S. warplanes out hours later
patrolling around Kandahar, a rare event since U.S. bombing ended in the
area.
To the north of the base lies a highway running parallel to the
east-west runway.
Mud houses on the other side of the road provide some of the only cover
in the area; the rest of the base is surrounded by bare fields, a few
houses, and an old mine field.
Although the Taliban lost control of Kandahar and other major Afghan
cities under the combined assault of U.S. airstrikes and offensives by
Afghan fighters, security in the country is tentative at best.
Many of the deposed militia's fighters have disappeared into
Afghanistan's rugged terrain or have blended into civilian populations.
In the capital, Kabul, British peacekeeping forces and newly deputized
Afghan police on Thursday formally launched joint patrols of the city in
an effort to restore security and civilians' trust.
The new Afghan government has ordered men with guns off the city streets.
There were fewer weapons seen in Kabul on Thursday, but occasional
pickup trucks crammed with men with rocket launchers and automatic
rifles still roared through the streets.
Men in camouflage uniforms, apparently soldiers, still were out despite
being ordered to return to their barracks.
Meanwhile, Pakistani and U.S. recovery teams converged on the crash site
of a Marine KC-130 refueling tanker that struck a mountain near a remote
base in Pakistan near the Afghan border and exploded in flames Wednesday.
Seven Marines were killed, the worst American casualty toll of the
Afghan war.
The base - in the southwestern Baluchistan province of vast deserts and
rugged mountains - has been used by the U.S. military as a forward
staging point. U.S. officials said there was no indication the plane was
hit by hostile fire.
In other developments:
- U.S. warplanes struck again early Thursday at the huge cave, tunnel
and building complex used as an al-Qaida training camp in the Khost
region of eastern Afghanistan.
- Britain said it would lead the international peacekeeping force in
Afghanistan for only the first three months, with Turkey a candidate to
take over after that.
While the U.S. forces began the shipment of prisoners to Cuba, U.S. and
Afghan officials were distressed that some top Taliban officials were
captured and then set free - among them Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, who led
the campaign to destroy two giant sandstone statues of Buddha.
Turabi and six other senior Taliban figures surrendered to Gul Agha, the
governor of Kandahar. Agha took Turabi's vehicles and weapons and then
let him go without informing either the Kabul government or the United
States.
"A leader like Turabi shouldn't have been released. It's not for a local
leader to decide this issue,'' Foreign Minister Abdullah, who uses one
name, told AP on Thursday.
"We want any of the high-ranking Taliban or al-Qaida,'' said Jarvis, the
Marines spokesman. "We want to have them in custody.''
Anti-Taliban Afghan forces have steadily been turning over captured
al-Qaida members to the Marines, and more have come from Pakistani
troops intercepting fugitives trying to flee across the border from the
bombed-out mountain hide-outs at Tora Bora and Khost in eastern
Afghanistan.
Jarvis said Thursday that 45 new prisoners arrived at Kandahar airport
overnight, bringing the total there to 351. U.S. officials have not said
the total number of prisoners that will be taken to Guantanamo.
The U.S. Central Command said the departure of 20 detainees Thursday
left 331 prisoners at the base in Kandahar and 19 at the air base in
Bagram, north of Kabul. One prisoner - American Taliban John Walker
Lindh - remained on the USS Bataan in the Arabian Sea.
At Guantanamo Bay, a temporary detention area called Camp X-Ray has room
for 100 prisoners and soon could house 220.
A more permanent site under construction is expected to house up to 2,000.
There, prisoners will be isolated in individual, open-air fenced cells
with metal roofs.
They will sleep on mats under halogen floodlights.
They could get wet from rain, but officials say they will be treated
humanely. The Red Cross and other organizations will monitor conditions.
The name of the camp where the detainees are to be held, Camp X-ray,
dates from the 1990s, when Haitian and Cuban migrants were held at the
base, said base spokesman Chief Petty Officer Richard Evans.
The name's precise origin is unclear, although other camps also set up
during that time had call-sign names such as Alpha, Beta and Charlie,
Evans said.
Employees still use such names for areas of the base, even though the
tent cities that housed the Haitians and Cubans have disappeared. - AP