The Washington Post
With hoods over their heads and shackles on their arms and feet, 20 al-Qaida and Taliban detainees were flown out of Afghanistan on a U.S. military aircraft Thursday, the first of hundreds of prisoners from the war expected to be sent to the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for interrogation and possible trial.
The U.S. Marine base at the Kandahar airport was hit by small arms fire around the time the Air Force C-17 cargo plane carrying the detainees took off around 9 p.m. local time (8 a.m. PST). Marines returned fire, and no one was injured, officials said.
Pentagon officials said a large contingent of military police – outnumbering the prisoners two to one – was on the flight armed with stun guns and authorized to sedate any prisoners if necessary. The detainees will be chained to their seats for the entire flight, they said.
“After Sept. 11, a little paranoia is a good thing,” said Steve Lucas, a spokesman for the U.S. Southern Command in Miami, which oversees Guantanamo Bay.
Concerned about the possibility of attack, defense officials refused to disclose many details of the detainees’ movement, which will include a stop at a military base in Europe for transfer to an Air Force C-141 before continuing to Cuba. The detainees are expected to arrive in Cuba today.
“If our intelligence is correct, there are people with suicidal-murderous intentions still at large,” Lucas said. “I don’t want them to know when that aircraft will be passing through Caribbean airspace.”
The 20 prisoners, whose identities haven’t been made public, are among 371 al-Qaida and Taliban detainees in U.S. custody who are expected to be brought to Guantanamo Bay, where they’ll be housed in rudimentary cells being built at the base. John Walker, an American captured in November while fighting for the Taliban, remains aboard the USS Bataan in the Arabian Sea, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command said Thursday night.
At Guantanamo Bay Thursday, where a block of open-air cells at “Camp X-Ray” await the detainees, military police from Fort Hood, Texas, were rehearsing the “route of march” for transferring the prisoners from the base airfield to the camp.
The detainees may arrive by plane at the base’s single airstrip, and unless helicopters are provided may have to take a ferry ride across the bay to Camp X-Ray.
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