U.S. begins moving prisoners from Afghanistan

By Pauline Jelinek

Associated Press

WASHINGTON – The U.S. military today began moving hooded and chained prisoners from the war in Afghanistan to a jail in Cuba.

Taliban and al-Qaida detainees were taken from prisons in and around Afghanistan to Kandahar airport in the south of the country for movement to Guantanamo, Cuba, officials said. Later, a group of some 20 from among more than 300 in U.S. custody were seen on CNN shuffling to an airplane at the airport.

The trans-Atlantic move presents an unprecedented security challenge.

Prisoners were to be chained to their seats – and possibly be sedated, forced to use portable urinals and be fed by their guards – during the flights from Afghanistan to newly constructed jail cells in Guantanamo, according to newspaper and television reports.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld sidestepped comment on that directly, saying troops had been authorized to use “appropriate restraints” and noting other groups of al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners had killed their guards in at least two instances in the war.

“They’re fully aware that these are dangerous individuals,” Rumsfeld said of American troops at a Pentagon press conference.

Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said detainees were being treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention rules on prisoners.

Meanwhile, U.S. warplanes struck again early today Afghan time at the huge cave, tunnel and building complex used as an al-Qaida training camp in eastern Afghanistan.

American-led forces for several days have been detonating ordnance found there and hitting the compound itself, saying intelligence indicated it was recently occupied by al-Qaida fighters preparing to escape the country into Pakistan.

As for the prisoners, Clarke told a press briefing that she was trying to determine what details of the transfer would be released, saying officials would not be talking about schedules or other things that would breach security, but would simply announce when the detainees had reached Guantanamo.

But it was clear their transfer was imminent when prisoners were consolidated – that is brought from other locations to Kandahar.

Eight were brought from the Navy’s USS Bataan in the Arabian Sea and a number from the U.S. detention centers in Bagram and Mazar-e-Sharif, military officials said.

“This thing is being done … with the most expertise that we can bring to bear on it,” said spokesman Steve Lucas at the U.S. Southern Command, the Miami-based command that is helping coordinate the move.

“These suicidally murderous people have compatriots at large,” said Lucas. “We don’t want to provide them any information that could make a big terrorist splash.”

In two separate deadly incidents, prisoners got hold of weapons and staged an uprising while held in a fortress in northern Afghanistan, while others killed Pakistani guards after being apprehended trying to escape into that country. American troops have held the prisoners in much greater security since taking custody of them.

“Nothing like this to my knowledge has been done before (considering) the level of threat and probably the size and distance too,” Lucas said of the imminent transfer. “I’m not sure that anyone has every handled detainees of this type and transferred them 20 hours or whatever it is – around the world.”

The regrouping of prisoners overnight Wednesday Washington time brought the number in Kandahar to 351, said Lt. Col. Martin Compton at the U.S. Central Command’s war command center in Tampa, Fla. A total of 371 are in U.S. custody, with 19 remaining in Bagram, one on the Bataan and none in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, he said.

Preliminary plans were to take them from Kandahar on C-17s to a base in Europe where they could be transferred to C-140 cargo planes for the remainder of the trip to Cuba.

Those in U.S. custody have been selected from among thousands captured by Afghan fighters as they took one city after another from the former Taliban rulers who had been harboring Osama bin Laden and is al-Qaida terrorists.

“These people vowed to win their way into paradise by murdering anybody in American uniform, or for that matter, any civilians,” Lucas said in reference to the terrorists’ radical Islamic beliefs. “The level of threat is probably unique.”