| Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld
noted at a Pentagon (news - web sites) news conference that it was ``four
months to the day'' since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon.
Security was extraordinarily
high for the transfer of the al-Qaida and Taliban members to prevent any
bloody uprising. Rumsfeld said one of them was sedated during the course
of the flight.
Shortly before 1:55 p.m.
EST, reporters saw a military C141 cargo plane circle over the Guantanamo
Bay and touch down on the airstrip inside the base on the eastern tip of
Cuba.
The landing was seen by about
two dozen journalists on hill overlooking the strip about a mile away on
the Cuban side. Two nearby Cuban soldiers, at their closest post to the
fence of the U.S. base, watched the plane's landing with binoculars.
The plane was one of several
that arrived at the base Friday but was the first met by American troops
- about 20 of them - and several light armored vehicles. They were waiting
on the tarmac for the plane to arrive.
About a half hour after the
plane stopped, two white buses pulled up alongside it, one on either side.
In Afghanistan, al-Qaida
and Taliban prisoners have risen up against their captors several times
in bloody revolts. One of them, outside the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif,
left a CIA agent dead. Officials were taking no chances with the move to
Guantanamo.
The prisoners left the Marine
base at Kandahar airport in Afghanistan wearing shackles and hoods.
At Guantanamo, the detainees
were to be taken to another side of the camp, where they would be photographed,
fingerprinted and issued orange jumpsuits, Navy spokesman Lt. Bill Salvin
said.
At their detention camp,
known as Camp X-ray, the prisoners will be isolated in temporary, individual
cells with walls of chain-link fence and metal roofs, where they will sleep
on mats under halogen floodlights. The camp is surrounded by barbed wire
and watchtowers.
The Pentagon barred journalists
from taking pictures of the prisoners on their arrival in Cuba. Authorities
gave no reason, but the Geneva Convention says prisoners of war must be
protected ``against insults and public curiosity.''
Military officials told reporters
they wouldn't even be allowed to bring tape recorders to capture the sound
of the plane landing.
The departure of the 20 leaves
361 prisoners at the base in Kandahar - 30 more were brought there after
Thursday's flight - and 19 at the air base in Bagram, north of Kabul. One
prisoner - American John Walker Lindh, found fighting alongside the Taliban
- remained on the USS Bataan in the Arabian Sea
SOURCE has gone away 18-02-2002
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