KABUL, 24 March 2003 — The US military has released 19 prisoners held as Al-Qaeda or Taleban suspects in its detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and returned them to Afghanistan, an Afghan government official said yesterday.
Fazel Akbar, a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai, said the 19 arrived in Afghanistan on Saturday after more than a year in custody.
“The United States says it has completed investigations on them and they have been released because they are not a big threat any more,” Akbar told AFP.
He said the men were flown into Bagram air base near Kabul, the US military’s headquarters in Afghanistan, and were now with the Afghan interior ministry, which was securing their return to locations across the country.
He said he had no information regarding their identities or the circumstances under which they were arrested but said they would face no investigation or charges in Afghanistan.
Akbar confirmed the 19 were first detainees to be returned from Guantanamo since last October when three men, two of them elderly, were sent home after it was decided they had no links to the Taleban .
The United States regards about 600 other captives from assorted countries as unlawful combatants who can be held without trial for the duration of its self-declared war on terrorism.
Many of them have been seized during the 17-month-old US-led coalition military campaign in pursuit of fighters loyal to the Al-Qaeda terror network and the Taleban militia.
