Military
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Pentagon builds Afghan jail, expecting valuable prisoners
12/11/01By PAULINE JELINEK
Associated Press
 Marines sit by fire AP/Dave Martin |
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday that the United States won't let any coalition members' objections to the death penalty get in the way of punishing al-Qaida or Taliban members.
Afghan tribal forces, backed by intense U.S. airstrikes, overran some al-Qaida cave hide-outs at Tora Bora on Tuesday and trapped a group of Osama bin Laden's foreign fighters, who said they wanted to surrender.
``As the campaign proceeds, we can expect that more of the enemy forces will be detained, and we want to bring more transparency as to how we handle detainees in this war,'' said Rumsfeld. He would oversee the creation of a military tribunal that might try suspects.
``We want to fashion a system that is as open as possible so that the American people can have a good comfort level about the process itself.''
Marines at Camp Rhino, a makeshift desert base in southern Afghanistan, began building a detention center over the weekend.
As of Tuesday they said they were holding only one person — American John Walker, who was found among Taliban fighters at a northern prison.
The Camp Rhino facility will be used to interrogate prisoners captured by American or Afghan forces as well as temporarily hold prisoners who will be transferred elsewhere to be judged.
``We're working with knowledgeable people in and out of government to make sure that we handle detainees properly and in a manner that reflects our country's values, but also in a manner that reflects the seriousness of their situation and of our situation,'' Rumsfeld said.
He said the only place in Afghanistan where the United States has enough people to control prisoners while managing their other tasks is at Bagram in the north.
Thousands have fled the city of Kandahar since Friday, and Marines have been blocking roads to catch Taliban or al-Qaida members fleeing the one-time Taliban stronghold. But Marines have detained no one, defense officials said Tuesday, because they haven't come across anyone of great value to them.
Rumsfeld said the people the Pentagon wants to capture fall into a few categories. They are any Taliban members who have useful information on terrorists in Afghanistan or elsewhere; senior Taliban, because they should be punished for harboring al-Qaida; and all members of the al-Qaida terrorist network, blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on America.
The Pentagon is leaving rank-and-file Taliban to be dealt with by fellow Afghans.
Asked if coalition forces from countries without the death penalty might capture, then refuse to hand over, people wanted by the United States, Rumsfeld said he doesn't expect that to happen.
``If a country has a sensitivity or a sensibility with respect to the death penalty, that's their privilege,'' he said. ``We just don't want it to get in our way'' of punishing senior Taliban and al-Qaida.
British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon has said that if his country's troops captured bin Laden, they would hand him over only on the condition he would not face the death penalty. Rumsfeld said that, when he heard the issue raised, ``I checked, and the response we've received is 'Not to worry.'''
He also said the United States will not send anyone home to a third country unless it is convinced the country will properly punish the suspect.
``We would only send them back to a country where we felt that the country had a similar attitude to ours about the undesirability of people running around engaging in mass murder,'' he said.
His comments came as the International Red Cross said it was investigating reports that dozens of Taliban captured by rebel forces suffocated in shipping containers while being taken to prison in northern Afghanistan.