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U.S. Interrogating 150 al Qaeda, Taliban Captives
Monday, December 31, 2001
(15:00 JT)
Reuters

WASHINGTON
The number of suspected Taliban and al Qaeda fighters being held by the U.S. military for questioning has risen to 150, the Pentagon said Sunday.

Of the total, 139 were being detained at a makeshift jail built by U.S. Marines at Kandahar airport in southern Afghanistan, including 14 brought Saturday from Shiburghan, west of Mazar-i-Sharif, said Marine Lt Col Michael Humm, a Pentagon spokesman.

Two others were being held at Bagram and one in Mazar-i-Sharif, the spokesman said. Eight more, including American John Walker Lindh, were being held on the amphibious assault ship USS Peleliu in the Arabian Sea, the Pentagon said.

Military officers said the prisoners were being finger-printed and interrogated for information that could lead to Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, suspected in the Sept 11 airliner hijack attacks that killed more than 3,000 people in the United States.

The United States has begun preparations to bring al Qaeda and Taliban detainees to the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba's southeast tip for further interrogation. Some may be candidates for U.S. military tribunals.

Friday, President Bush said the United States had not yet decided how to structure such tribunals in its declared war on terrorism. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that as of last week there were no plans to conduct any tribunals at the 116-sq-km Guantanamo base.

A senior U.S. military official told Reuters that ultimately hundreds of prisoners could be brought to the century-old base. Thousands of other prisoners were being held in Afghanistan by forces that seized power as the Taliban crumbled under U.S. bombing that began on Oct 7.
(JapanToday.com News Source)
2001 © Reuters, Ltd.

Dan