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Twenty more suspected al-Qaeda fighters sent to U.S. Marine base
12/27/2001
WASHINGTON - Twenty suspected al-Qaeda fighters who fled the area of eastern
Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden may have been hiding have been transferred to
a U.S. Marine detention center, a Pentagon spokeswoman said today. Meantime, a spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry said bin Laden is
believed to be in a border area of Pakistan with friends of a Pakistani
religious party leader. A party spokesman said the report was baseless. The new prisoners at the Marine base in Kandahar were captured in Pakistan,
where dozens of al-Qaeda members fled amid heavy fighting in Afghanistan's Tora
Bora region earlier this month. American officials say the prisoners could have
useful information in the hunt for bin Laden and the rest of the anti-terrorism
campaign, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said. "We want to talk to them pretty thoroughly," Clarke said, adding that the
interrogations would be performed by "a variety of U.S. officials, including
military." The new prisoners bring to 45 the number of detainees held by U.S. forces.
Eight, including American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh, are being held on
the USS Peleliu in the Arabian Sea. The rest are at the Marine base at
Kandahar's airport in a facility built to hold up to several hundred people.
The military is considering several sites to hold prisoners captured during
the war in Afghanistan, Clarke said. She said the Defense Department has not
decided whether to use the base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to hold some of the
prisoners. The Defense Department does not have a copy of a newly aired videotape of bin
Laden, Clarke said. The tape does not offer any obvious clues to bin Laden's
whereabouts – or even whether he is alive or dead. The Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman, Mohammad Abeel, said bin Laden is
believed to be in Pakistan with associates of Maulana Fazal-ur Rehman, leader of
the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party. Abeel did not divulge the source of his
information. The party, which is sympathetic to Afghanistan's deposed Taliban militia, is
supported in parts of Pakistan's North West Frontier and Baluchistan provinces,
both of which border Afghanistan. Riaz Durrani, central information secretary for Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam,
dismissed the report. "We support the Taliban, but never had any connection with
Osama bin Laden," he said. "Maulana Fazal-ur Rehman is under detention for the
last three months. How can he or his party do this?" U.S. intelligence hasn't reported picking up any credible signs of bin
Laden's location in about two weeks, and his statements on the tape suggest it
may have been made just before he disappeared. In excerpts from the tape aired on the Arabic TV network al-Jazeera
Wednesday, bin Laden said he was speaking three months after the Sept. 11
attacks and two months after the United States started striking Afghanistan,
which was Oct. 7. He also mentioned a Nov. 16 U.S. airstrike in Khost,
Afghanistan, as having occurred several days before. Bin Laden hails the Sept. 11 hijackings as a "blessed attack against the
international infidels." White House spokesman Scott McClellan dismissed the tape. "This is nothing
more than the same kind of terrorist propaganda we've heard before." He and
Clarke said they did not know whether government analysts had determined when
the tape was made. The videotape surfaced amid increasing speculation about bin Laden's possible
death. The terrorist leader appears gaunt, pale and uncomfortable on the tape
and does not move his left hand, even though he is left-handed. The ruler of neighboring Pakistan said this week that bin Laden is probably
dead. Gen. Pervez Musharraf said he is reasonably sure bin Laden did not cross
the border into Pakistan, adding "there is a great possibility that he lost his
life" in Tora Bora. U.S. officials have intercepted no transmissions from bin Laden's followers
saying whether he is dead or alive. If bin Laden had been killed, someone probably would have talked about it by
now over communications channels monitored by military and intelligence
agencies. In November, U.S. officials initially learned from eavesdropped
communications that top bin Laden lieutenant Mohammed Atef was killed. U.S. intelligence sources – from electronic intercepts to trusted human
reporting – have been silent on bin Laden's whereabouts since the height of U.S.
bombing in the Tora Bora region about two weeks ago. Back then, U.S. forces
picked up a short-range radio broadcast of a voice believed to be bin Laden's,
giving orders to his troops in the Tora Bora area. The transmission was not recorded, and officials acknowledge it may have been
a ruse, but it was seen as a major clue to his whereabouts. Although U.S. officials said last week that Marines would help search caves
in the Tora Bora area, those plans have been put on hold. U.S. special forces
soldiers are searching the caves with help from anti-Taliban Afghan forces. The war's commander, Army Gen. Tommy Franks, said Tuesday that American
forces would continue searching the rubble for bin Laden. "(We will) go through each of these areas until we satisfy ourselves that he
is there and dead," Franks said. "We'll find out about it."