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"American Taliban" to Face Arraignment on Charges of Helping Al-Qaeda
Wednesday, January 23, 2002
By S.M. Khalid
Islam Online Correspondent

"These people are committed terrorists," Rumsfeld said of the prisoners, mostly suspected al-Qaida fighters flown to Cuba after being captured in Afghanistan. "We are keeping them off the street and out of the airlines and out of nuclear power plants and out of ports across this country and across other countries, and it seems to me a perfectly reasonable thing to do."

WASHINGTON -- IslamOnline & News Agencies
John Walker Lindh was sent to the United States aboard a military plane and under high-security to face charges he conspired with Afghanistan's former ruling Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network to kill fellow Americans.

Officials said the 20-year-old Lindh was transported from the USS Bataan warship in the Arabian Sea by helicopter and transferred to a C-17 military transport at the airport at the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, officials said.

Lindh was expected to arrive in suburban Washington - where he will be tried in federal court -- sometime Wednesday.

The Pentagon officially was not confirming the transfer, saying it would be dangerous to release any information about his movements. And journalists were kept away from the area at Kandahar where Lindh boarded the plane.

A person resembling Lindh was seen by reporters being escorted from an aircraft. But U.S. military officials at the Kandahar air base refused to confirm his arrival, which was later confirmed by defense officials in Washington.

Photographers and cameramen at the airbase were ordered back inside the terminal and told that any film taken could not be used. The official line at Kandahar had previously been that no arriving or departing prisoners could be filmed or photographed.
(More: Islam-Online.com News Source)
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