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Reuters (with additional material by AP). 2 December 2001. American Taliban Fighter in U.S. Custody - Report. NEW YORK and TASHKENT -- A 20-year-old American who fought with the Taliban and survived a bloody prison uprising near Mazar-i-Sharif last week has been taken into custody by U.S. special forces troops, Newsweek magazine said on its Web site on Sunday. A spokesman for U.S. Central Command, which is running the military campaign on Afghanistan, confirmed that a man claiming to be an American was in the control of U.S. military forces. "Military forces in Afghanistan do have in their control a man who calls himself a U.S. citizen," Marine Maj. Brad Lowell, a Central Command spokesman, said. "He was among the al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners; he was held by the Northern Alliance in Mazar-i-Sharif. He is injured and is being given medical assistance by U.S. forces," he told Reuters. The man, described by Newsweek as "a white, educated-sounding, apparently middle-class American," who identified himself only as Abdul Hamid, was taken into custody on Saturday at a hospital where he had been taken for treatment of minor gunshot and shrapnel wounds. The special forces soldiers who detained Hamid took him aside for treatment and later left with him, doctors told the magazine. A Northern Alliance military source said the U.S. soldiers had taken Hamid to Mazar-i-Sharif, Newsweek said, adding that U.S. forces refused to comment on his whereabouts. Hamid told Newsweek earlier he was a Washington, D.C., native but indicated he grew up elsewhere in the United States. He said he converted to Islam at age 16 and later went to Pakistan to study the Koran, Newsweek said. Hamid said he came into contact with Taliban teachings while studying in Pakistan and traveled to Afghanistan six months ago to help "because the Taliban are the only government that actually provides Islamic law," the magazine reported. He fought with the Taliban at the siege of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan and surrendered along with hundreds of other fighters after the two sides negotiated a deal. Hamid later was transferred along with hundreds of other prisoners to Qala-i-Jhangi fortress west of Mazar-i-Sharif, where a revolt ensued a week ago. The uprising was violently put down by U.S. warplanes and Northern Alliance ground forces. Several hundred prisoners were believed to have been killed. Many of the prisoners who emerged from the basement were injured, Dr. Arif Salimi, head of the local health office in the nearby city of Mazar-e-Sharif, said. Some were being treated in hospitals and others imprisoned again. Video tape from the fortress Saturday and acquired by Associated Press Television News showed the prisoners, many of them visibly weak and thin after days without food or water. One man, who appeared to be near death, was carried on a stretcher into a truck for transport along with the weakest prisoners. Others appeared to be in pain. Two of the prisoners said they were from Yemen, and when one was asked what he was doing in Afghanistan, he answered "jihad," or holy war. "The conditions (of the prisoners) are what you can expect from people who have been without food or drinking water for six days, in a basement, traumatized, shocked," Olivier Martin, of the International Committee for the Red Cross, said in an interview on the APTN video from the scene. In Geneva, the Red Cross said it had begun registering some of the Taliban prisoners. "Registering for us is a key thing," spokeswoman Kim Gordon-Bates said. "Once a person exists, they can't disappear." . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barry Stoller http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
