KABUL, 20 July 2003 — Sixteen Afghans detained by the American military at Guantanamo Bay were freed here yesterday following their return from Cuba three days earlier, an Afghan police official said. “Sixteen Afghan prisoners from Guantanamo Bay arrived Thursday night by plane at the Bagram Air Base, 40 kilometers north of Kabul,” said police official Mohammad Khalil Aminzada.
“They were handed over immediately to the Afghan police and brought that evening to Kabul,” he said. The sixteen were interrogated for two days by the police and then freed late yesterday afternoon and handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross, he said.
A Pentagon official said Friday that about 30 detainees, some from Pakistan and Afghanistan, had left Guantanamo Bay to be repatriated to their countries. The released Afghan prisoners were not allowed to talk to journalists. About 680 alleged members of the deposed Taleban regime and suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists are imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay.
Originating from 42 countries, they have been held and interrogated by the United States for up to 18 months at its naval base at Guantanamo Bay. Classified as “illegal combatants” by President George W. Bush, their fate is uncertain. But several groups have already been returned to their countries of origin, where the local authorities decide if they are to be released.
Meanwhile, Afghan authorities confiscated hundreds of copies of a weekly newspaper yesterday after it published an article demanding President Hamid Karzai resign for apologizing to Pakistan over an attack on its embassy. The article in Payam-e-Mujahid, owned by the Northern Alliance faction that dominates Karzai’s government, accused the president of making the apology under pressure from the US ambassador and described it as a dishonor for Afghans.
Defense Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim, the alliance’s military leader, ordered the confiscation, officials of his ministry said, in a move seen as an attempt to distance himself from the article. The officials said several hundred copies had been seized from newsstands. The recent attack on the Pakistani Embassy came after Karzai responded angrily to alleged criticism of his government by Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf and as officials accused Pakistani troops of encroaching into Afghan territory.
Soon afterward, Karzai phoned Musharraf to apologize while the government promised compensation. Payam-e-Mujahid said Karzai should resign. “He who brawls at night and apologizes the next day after chastisement by America’s ambassador and can’t defend the territorial integrity of his country, should kneel before the people and hand back the affairs of government to them,” it said.
The article came as Karzai has been attempting to push through reforms of the Defense Ministry aimed at limiting the power of the Northern Alliance. It charged that the reforms were motivated by the United States and aimed at pleasing Pakistan, telling Karzai: “The army and its structure have always been nationally run in Afghanistan and the colonialists and your foreign friends are endeavoring to make it an Americanized army.”
In another development, one man was killed and another wounded when they set off a land mine while digging a well in a war-battered area of Kabul yesterday, police said.
Kabul police chief Basir Salangi said the blast happened near a police station in Chilstoon in the south of the city. “One has been killed and another injured,” he said. Police at the scene said the men triggered the mine, which was likely left over from factional fighting in the 1990s, while digging a well.
Three US soldiers were wounded when their vehicle was hit by a bomb in northeastern Afghanistan, a US military spokesman said yesterday. “Three coalition soldiers were wounded and one vehicle was damaged when an improvised explosive device detonated in the middle of their convoy approximately eight kilometers south of Asad Abad yesterday (Friday) afternoon,” Lt. Col. Douglas Lefforge told reporters at Bagram Air Base.
“It was a deliberately planted bomb,” he said, adding it was not known who was behind the attack in eastern Kunar province. “The three soldiers were medically evacuated to Bagram Air Base yesterday and are in stable condition,” Lefforge said. He said they could be shifted to Germany for further treatment if the injuries are deemed to be serious. The names of the soldiers are being withheld for privacy, he said.
Eight Afghan soldiers were killed and one seriously wounded Friday in a similar incident in southeastern Khost province which Afghan authorities blamed on al-Qaeda fighters.
A US military base at Spin Boldak, east of Kandahar province, late Friday came under rocket attack but there were no casualties, Lefforge said. “Two rockets impacted in the vicinity of the fire base at Spin Boldak last night,” he said.
