7,000 Taliban, al-Qaida being held

12/22/2001

By DEBORAH HASTINGS
Associated Press Writer

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — About 7,000 people suspected of having ties to the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network are being held and interrogated in Afghanistan, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition against terrorism said Friday.

``The situation changes almost by the hour, but I believe the latest number of prisoners to be around 7,000 in total,'' Kenton Keith, a former U.S. ambassador to Qatar, told a news conference.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said Friday that several senior al-Qaida and Taliban leaders are among the incarcerated, but he refused to identify them.

``We have some people who have been senior in al-Qaida and in Taliban,'' Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon. Asked if he would reveal the names, he said, ``I could, but I haven't decided if I want to.''

He said ``some number of thousands of people'' were being detained, mostly by Afghan fighters and in Pakistan, with a ``small number'' held by U.S. forces.

Work was under way to identify all those detained so U.S. officials can choose who they want to take into American custody for interrogation, Rumsfeld said.

``We're trying to identify all these people ... and get a mugshot on them and get some fingerprints,'' he said.

Pentagon officials said early this month there were 5,000 to 6,000 in Afghan custody. But that was before a major al-Qaida stronghold was routed in the mountainous Tora Bora region earlier this week, when hundreds more were taken and hundreds fled. Many were later captured in Pakistan.

Jack Twiss, a coalition spokesman, said information about the total number of prisoners had just been received.

``We just got the information this morning from Afghanistan sources and we felt we should pass it on,'' Twiss said Friday. He stressed the figure was an estimate. ``It is the first time we've mentioned a number.''

The prisoners include more than 20 held by U.S. Marines at their base in Kandahar's airport in southern Afghanistan, where a detention camp has been hastily constructed.

Marine officials have said those prisoners are blindfolded, bound and hemmed in by razor wire.