The Washington Post
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan are holding about 7,000 Taliban and al-Qaida fighters who are being screened for their ability to provide intelligence and for possible prosecution by U.S. authorities, U.S. officials said Friday.
The captives are being held while U.S. investigators, working with the anti-Taliban militias, seek to determine which prisoners have useful information on al-Qaida leaders and scan eparate those who were only "sympathizers" or "late joiners" from those who had positions of responsibility in the Taliban government or al-Qaida and got "blood on their hands," said spokesman Kenton Keith.
Keith, a former U.S. ambassador posted here to speak for the United States and its allies in the war against terrorism, emphasized that 7,000 is only an estimate, gathered from several Afghan militias. But its release provided the first public insight into the scale of U.S. efforts to question Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners on Osama bin Laden and others who may bear responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and at the Pentagon.
"This is a process that takes time," Keith told reporters in Pakistan’s capital.
U.S. Marines have built a temporary prison near Kandahar in southeastern Afghanistan to hold some of the captives deemed worthy of further interrogation by U.S. officials. FBI agents have been dispatched to Kandahar to participate in questioning them. A second such facility is planned at the Bagram air base, 35 miles north of Kabul. Another group of captives, including an American who fought with the Taliban, have been incarcerated aboard a Navy ship in the Arabian Sea.
The Bush administration is particularly eager to get information from the prisoners recently captured in Pakistan, because bin Laden was thought to have been with them in the White Mountains area before he vanished. The thinking is that his captured followers could have clues to his whereabouts and may themselves include senior Al-Qaida leaders.
The failure so far to hunt down bin Laden or Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader, has been a dark cloud in the otherwise bright sky of the administration’s war in Afghanistan. The al-Qaida network has been smashed and Taliban rule in Afghanistan has been dismantled. An interim administration headed by Pashtun royalist Hamid Karzai formally takes over in Kabul today. And a first contingent of British Royal Marines arrived Friday as the vanguard of an international security force set to number up to 6,000.
Associated Press
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