Afghan prisoners to be held in Cuba

12/28/2001

By MATT KELLEY
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON — Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners will be held at the U.S. naval base in Cuba as the Pentagon considers whether to use military tribunals to try terrorist suspects, U.S. officials say.

The Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is the ``least worst'' place to hold some of the prisoners after they are removed from Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday.

Although President Bush has authorized military tribunals to try terrorist suspects from other countries, Rumsfeld said the military has made no plans to hold such tribunals at Guantanamo. Defense officials said Thursday that Rumsfeld has not decided how, where or even if those tribunals would take place.

But officials already were considering how such tribunals would be conducted. A draft of proposed Bush administration rules for the tribunals states that a unanimous vote of a tribunal's military officers would be required to impose a death sentence on a foreign terror suspect, The Washington Post and The New York Times reported in Friday's editions.

The draft rules also would allow conviction by a two-thirds vote of the panel, the newspapers said.

In addition, the draft regulations stipulate that a defendant is presumed innocent and that the panel may find guilt only after presentation of proof beyond reasonable doubt. That is the same test applied in U.S. civilian courts.

The newspapers said the proposed rules also would allow some type of appeals process, an apparent concession to concerns voiced by civil rights groups and some members of Congress about the fairness and openness of the tribunal process.

Asked about the newspaper reports, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke called any draft irrelevant without Rumsfeld's approval, which she said no current draft has.

The Guantanamo base, which the United States has held since 1903, is near the U.S. mainland and highly secure. The Cuban military prohibits access to areas around the base, and the U.S. military patrols its side from behind tall fences topped with razor wire.

Guantanamo Bay has drawbacks, too, including its location, surrounded on three sides by an island governed by Fidel Castro, an anti-American communist who has criticized the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan. But ``we don't anticipate any trouble with Mr. Castro in that regard,'' Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news conference.

Rumsfeld said it will take weeks to get the Guantanamo Bay base ready to house the detainees. Although the base has been used in the past to hold Cuban and Haitian refugees, its main purpose in recent years has been to refuel and maintain Navy vessels in the Caribbean.

Chief Petty Officer Richard Evans, a base spokesman, said it now has space for about 100 prisoners.

Rumsfeld said, ``I would characterize Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as the least worst place we could have selected.''

The United States is holding 45 prisoners in and near Afghanistan, interrogating them about terrorist leader Osama bin Laden's whereabouts and trying to determine which ones should be brought to trial.

Twenty suspected al-Qaida fighters were transferred Thursday to a U.S. Marine detention center in Kandahar, Afghanistan. They were apprehended in Pakistan after fleeing the area of eastern Afghanistan where bin Laden was believed to have been hiding this month.

The Marines were already holding 17 prisoners at Kandahar and another eight, including American John Walker Lindh, were being held on the amphibious assault ship USS Peleliu in the Arabian Sea.

U.S. warplanes hit a suspected Taliban leadership compound early Thursday morning, defense officials said. The compound was near Ghazni, on the main road between the capital, Kabul, and the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar.

The U.S. military still has no proof of whether bin Laden is alive or dead, in Afghanistan or elsewhere, Rumsfeld said. He said the Pentagon could not confirm a claim by Afghanistan's defense ministry that bin Laden was alive in neighboring Pakistan, being sheltered by Muslim radicals.

Rumsfeld said he had not seen a videotape of bin Laden aired Thursday. But he said he hoped people watching the video would not believe what bin Laden says.

``Here's a man who has killed thousands of innocent people, so using him as the oracle of all truth clearly would be a mistake,'' Rumsfeld said. ``He has lied repeatedly over and over again. He has hijacked a religion. He has hidden and cowered in caves and tunnels while sending people off to die.''

Rumsfeld said he was worried that rising tensions between Pakistan and India could hamper the U.S. effort against al-Qaida. India has accused Pakistan of supporting terrorists who attacked India's parliament earlier this month, and the nuclear-armed countries traded tit-for-tat economic sanctions Thursday.

Rumsfeld said he was encouraged that Pakistan had not pulled troops away from its border with Afghanistan. He said other possible problems for the United States would be if Pakistan stopped allowing American warplanes to fly over the country on their way to targets in Afghanistan or if U.S. soldiers at Pakistani bases would require more security.