-Caveat Lector- http://apnews.excite.com/article/20020112/D7GVPU180.html
WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! Cuba Sees First Afghan Prisoners 01/11/2002 9:27 PM EST By TONY WINTON (AP) An unidentified military personnel wearing protective clothing removes trash from a U.S. military... Full Image GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL STATION, Cuba (AP) - Shackled and surrounded by Marines, the first 20 prisoners from Afghanistan - the most dangerous of the al-Qaida and Taliban captives - arrived Friday at this remote U.S. military outpost on Cuba. The prisoners face intense interrogation, especially about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden whom the United States holds responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. "These represent the worst elements of the al-Qaida and the Taliban," said Marine Brig. Gen. Mike Lehnert, commander of Joint Task Force 160, which is overseeing the operation. "We asked for the bad guys first." The prisoners - all shackled and wearing turquoise facemasks - were taken off the Air Force C-141 cargo plane about an hour after it touched down at 1:55 p.m. EST following the 8,000-mile journey. The first prisoner off the plane, who appeared to have a bandaged knee, limped as he walked to one of two waiting white school buses. Several of the detainees appeared to struggle with the 50-plus Marines who led them to the buses. At least one prisoner was sedated on the trip to the base and two were forced to their knees on the tarmac before being allowed to stand again and walk to the buses. Some of the detaines continued resisting the troops - armed with machine guns and automatic assault rifles - as they were put on the buses. "These are people who would gnaw through hydraulic lines in the back of a C-17 to bring it down," Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon press conference with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Lehnert said the prisoners treatment would be "humane but not comfortable," and U.S. officials said the Red Cross and other groups will monitor conditions. Rumsfeld dismissed complaints by some human rights groups that the heavy security represented a violation of the prisoners' rights. "It simply isn't," Rumsfeld said. "When prisoners are being moved between locations they're frequently restrained in some way, with handcuffs or some sort of restraints. That is not new." The international human rights group Amnesty International expressed concern, saying the plan to house detainees in "cages" would "fall below minimum standards for humane treatment." The size of the temporary cells - 6 feet by 8 feet - also is smaller than "that considered acceptable under U.S. standards for ordinary prisoners," the London-based group said. Reporters, who watched the arrival about 300 yards distant, said they heard shouting from the tarmac. Journalists were not allowed to bring still or video cameras. The military, however, photographed the arrival. The Pentagon cited the Geneva Convention when it barred photography, saying prisoners of war must be protected "against insults and public curiosity." The prisoners were all frisked, patted down, many of them had their shoes removed. After all of the prisoners were put onto two white school buses, a convoy of vehicles accompanying the buses left for a Navy ferry to take the prisoners to the windward side of the base. A U.S. Navy patrol boat stood off shore of the cactus-studded portion of the island. Black vultures wheeled above the base on rising thermal updrafts in the 88 degree heat. Security was extraordinarily tight for the prisoner transfer given recent history in Afghanistan when al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners have risen up against their captors several times in bloody revolts. In one of them, outside the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, a CIA agent died, and officials were taking no chances with the move to Guantanamo. As many as 450 al-Qaida and Taliban fighters were estimated to have died in the November uprising that was put down after three days and with the help of U.S. bombing. The prisoners left the Marine base at Kandahar airport in Afghanistan wearing shackles and hoods. At Guantanamo, the detainees were to be photographed and fingerprinted, Navy spokesman Lt. Bill Salvin said. At their detention camp, known as Camp X-ray, the prisoners were to be isolated in temporary, individual cells with walls of chain-link fence and metal roofs, where they were to sleep on mats under halogen floodlights. The camp is surrounded by barbed wire and watchtowers. The arrival at Guantanamo Bay of the 20 leaves 361 prisoners at the base in Kandahar - 30 more were brought there after Thursday's flight - and 19 at the air base in Bagram, north of Kabul. One prisoner - American John Walker Lindh, found fighting alongside the Taliban - remained on the USS Bataan in the Arabian Sea. The United States is reserving the right to try al-Qaida and Taliban captives on its own terms and is not calling them "prisoners of war," a designation that would invoke the Geneva Convention. Rumsfeld said the prisoners would be considered "unlawful combatants." Some human rights activists are concerned that U.S. officials plan military tribunals and lowered standards of due process. POW status would guarantee any captive facing trial a court-martial, forcing prosecutors to meet tough standards. The camp has room for 100 prisoners now and soon could house 220. A more permanent site under construction is expected to house up to 2,000. The Guantanamo base is one of America's oldest overseas outposts. The U.S. military first seized Guantanamo Bay in 1898 during the Spanish-American War. The name of the detainees' camp, Camp X-ray, dates from the 1990s, when tens of thousands of Haitian and Cuban migrants were held at the base, said spokesman Chief Petty Officer Richard Evans. 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