Taliban, al-Qaida prisoners number about 7,000

By Deborah Hastings

Associated Press

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – About 7,000 Taliban and al-Qaida detainees are being held in Afghanistan, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition against terrorism said today.

“The situation changes almost by the hour, but I believe the latest number of prisoners to be around 7,000 in total,” Kenton Keith, a former U.S. ambassador to Qatar, told a news conference.

The coalition had not previously provided numbers. Pentagon officials have said there were 5,000 or 6,000 in Afghan custody in early December. That was before the battle at the last al-Qaida stronghold in the Tora Bora region, when hundreds more were taken and hundreds fled. Many were later captured in Pakistan.

No details were immediately available on where the detainees were being held, or how many top officials they may include. But it does include prisoners the Marine base at Kandahar airport, where a detention camp has been hastily constructed in recent days.

“We just got the information this morning from Afghanistan sources and we felt we should pass it on,” said coalition spokesman Jack Twiss, stressing that the figure was an estimate. “It is the first time we’ve mentioned a number.”

The prisoners are being guarded by anti-Taliban fighters, Twiss said, as well as U.S forces in places like Kandahar.

Keith said coalition forces were screening the detainees to see which of them were of interest for prosecution outside Afghanistan.

“It is essential to find out who was who within the al-Qaida network. To separate those who were the executives, the ones that gave orders, the sympathizers, the late-joiners, and the true believers, but without executive powers,” Keith said.

“This is a process that takes time.”

As anti-Taliban forces swept through Afghanistan over the past two months, they have taken many prisoners they believe to be members of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terrorist network or militants of the former Taliban rulers.

In neighboring Pakistan, more than 200 foreign fighters, most of them Arabs, are in custody and being interrogated to get information to trace bin Laden, who is missing since the Taliban’s fall.