WASHINGTON, 29 December — The Pentagon is readying the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to hold captured Taleban and Al-Qaeda fighters, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday.
Rumsfeld suggested that there are few options for imprisoning the militants once they are in US custody. Other, more remote sites mentioned have included Guam and Wake Island in the Pacific.
"I would characterize Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as the least worst place we could have selected," Rumsfeld told reporters at a Pentagon briefing. "Its disadvantages ... seem to be modest relative to the alternatives."
The Guantanamo decision represents another step toward the prosecution of fighters in Afghanistan who are suspected of being terrorists. Many are expected to face military tribunals, although Rumsfeld said no decision has been made to hold tribunals at Guantanamo.
Guantanamo, which has long been resented by Cuban President Fidel Castro as a symbol of US incursion on the island, has figured repeatedly in American history in Latin America. Today, it is home to Navy and Coast Guard vessels that patrol the Caribbean in counternarcotics and immigration investigations. In recent years, it has housed thousands of Haitian and Cuban refugees.
The naval station won’t be ready to accept prisoners for several weeks, Rumsfeld said. The base now has detention facilities for about 100 people. So far, 45 detainees are in US custody in Afghanistan and at sea.
On Thursday, 20 suspected Al-Qaeda fighters who had been captured in Pakistan after fleeing the Tora Bora area of eastern Afghanistan were transferred to a US Marine detention center in Kandahar, the former Taleban stronghold in Afghanistan’s south.
The prisoners could have useful information in the hunt for terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden and for the rest of the United States’ anti-terrorism campaign, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said.
"We want to talk to them pretty thoroughly," Clarke said, adding that the interrogations will be performed by "a variety of US officials, including military." CIA and FBI agents have already been involved in such questioning.
The prisoners join 17 already held in Kandahar. Eight others, including the American John Walker Lindh, are being held on the Peleliu in the Arabian Sea.
Military intelligence agents are working with Afghan tribal groups to identify hundreds more Taleban and Al-Qaeda prisoners in the custody of the Afghans, US officials said.
Guantanamo, on Cuba’s southeastern tip, was established when Cuba was briefly a US protectorate. In recent years, after it became a magnet for Cubans fleeing their country, the Cuban government substituted minefields for guards near the base, and declared an area 15 miles wide around its perimeter a Cuban military zone with restricted access. (LAT-WP)
