Yahoo! January 14, 2002.
Interpol head visits Cuba
HAVANA (AP) - The head of the international police agency Interpol arrived
here at the invitation of the Cuban government, but no one is saying why.
Secretary General Ronald Noble arrived Sunday. Most of his itinerary was not
released. He will, however, attend an awards ceremony and news conference
Wednesday.
Noble, an American citizen, was scheduled to leave Cuba on Thursday.
Two visiting U.S. senators said earlier this month that President Fidel
Castro was interested in cooperating with the United States in drug
interdiction programs and efforts to eliminate international terrorism.
Interpol and the United States government are creating a database of people
and organizations suspected of financing terrorist activities.
Noble has asked each of Interpol's 179-member countries, including Cuba, to
share intelligence with law enforcement groups worldwide.
Hemingway's Boat Captain Dies
HAVANA, 13 (AP) - Gregorio Fuentes, who was Ernest Hemingway's boat captain
when the late writer lived in Cuba, died Sunday at age 104, his family said.
Fuentes had suffered from cancer.
For nearly 30 years, Fuentes was captain, cook and friend to the American
writer. Many say he was the inspiration for the protagonist in Hemingway's
classic "The Old Man and the Sea.''
"He died in the house he had always lived in,'' his grandson Rafael
Fuentes, 48, told The Associated Press. He was buried Sunday afternoon.
Fuentes had lived in Cojimar, a coastal city about 10 miles east of Havana
since arriving in Cuba as an orphan at age 6.
Born on July 11, 1897 in Lanzarote, in the Canary Islands, Fuentes was
traveling to Cuba when his father, the ship's cook, died on board. The young
orphan was taken in by other Canary Island immigrants who cared for him until he
reached adolescence.
Hemingway and Fuentes met in 1928, and in the 1930s the writer hired the
mariner for $250 a month to care for his boat, El Pilar. Before returning to the
United States in 1960, Hemingway stopped by Fuentes' Cojimar home to say
goodbye.
"Take care of yourself as you have known how,'' Fuentes once remembered
Hemingway as telling him. Fuentes later inherited El Pilar and donated it to the
Cuban government, which displays it outside Hemingway's former home, now a
museum on the outskirts of Havana.
Fuentes is survived by four daughters, seven grandchildren and eight
great-grandchildren.
More Afghan Prisoners Leave for Cuba
By Ellen Knickmeyer, Associated Press Writer
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan 13 (AP) - Guarded by U.S. troops and attack dogs, a
second group of suspected Osama bin Laden supporters departed Sunday for a U.S.
prison camp in Cuba as U.S. bombers flew their most punishing raids in weeks on
caves near the Pakistani border.
The 30 prisoners, shackled and with their faces covered, shuffled in the
darkness onto a C-17 transport plane for the flight to the Guantanamo Bay Naval
Station in Cuba.
The men were among nearly 400 Taliban and al-Qaida suspects interned at
Kandahar. A U.S. military official said one of them had identified Richard Reid,
accused of trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with explosives hidden in
his sneakers, as someone he had trained with at camp run by bin Laden's al-Qaida
network.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Reid was identified
from a photograph, but had no further details.
The 30 detainees flown to Cuba will join 20 others who arrived from Kandahar
on Friday. Hundreds are to be eventually flown to Guantanamo Bay.
Lights at the Kandahar base were shut off except for low-intensity red and
green lighting as the men were marched onto the plane. Security was tight, with
attack dogs and Humvees with 50-caliber machine guns patrolling the area.
In Kabul, state-run television reported that Afghanistan's interim
government had ordered provincial officials to recruit 6,000 men to become the
backbone of a professional military free of the ethnic and territorial divisions
that have led to years of conflict.
In Pakistan, ahead of his departure for Kabul, Fazal Hadi Shinwari,
Afghanistan's newly appointed chief justice, vowed to sentence bin Laden and
fallen Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar to death if they were brought before
him.
The war remained very much alive in the rugged hills of Paktia province
along the Pakistani border. Daylight bombing that began in the morning over
Zawar, the site of a suspected underground hide-out of al-Qaida and Taliban
members, continued throughout the day and intensified at night into what
appeared to be the heaviest attack since last month's strikes on the Tora Bora
cave complex.
Buried beneath the slate gray mountains on the border with Pakistan, the
Zawar camp has been hit by U.S. bombs over the past 10 days. It was the base of
one of the Taliban's senior commanders, Jalaluddin Haqqani.
Sur Gul, security chief of Khost, 20 miles to the southeast, said the
underground passages continue to shelter Islamic militants - mostly Pakistanis
belonging to the now-banned Jaish-e-Mohammed group, Chechens and some of bin
Laden's Arab warriors. Locals say Omar and other Taliban figures may be in the
area.
Intelligence reports said al-Qaida fighters had been using the area to
regroup and move out of Afghanistan, the Pentagon has said.
Villagers say the bombing has been relentless and deadly. One of them, Noorz
Ali, said 15 people were killed and most of the 35 homes destroyed in his
village, less than two miles from the military camp.
Special forces, sighted several days ago in the Khost area, remained in the
region Sunday, apparently seeking Taliban and al-Qaida holdouts but refusing to
discuss their mission. Seven soldiers, weighed down with weapons and
communications equipment and accompanied by heavily armed local guards, were
sighted meeting with Bacha Khan, the governor of Paktia province.
Also Sunday, military investigators continued to search the crash site of a
U.S. KC-130 aircraft that went down Wednesday in the rugged mountains of
southwest Pakistan. They were looking for the last last of the seven victims and
clues to what caused the crash.
"The search will continue,'' said Lt. Col. Martin Compton of the U.S.
Central Command. "The Marines will leave no one behind.''
A plane carrying the remains of the six arrived Sunday at the U.S.
Rhine-Main Air Base in Germany, adjacent to Frankfurt's international airport.
From there, they were to be taken to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
At Kandahar, troops repaired two bomb craters at the airport, which was
becoming more active. Two C-130 transport planes and seven helicopters,
including several CH-54 Skycranes landed within the space of an hour.
One of the C-130s had a mural of the New York City skyline on its fuselage,
complete with the World Trade Center towers and the slogan: "Never
Forget.''
A Marine spokesman, Lt. James Jarvis, said questioning of the detained
suspects at the base has gathered "lots of information ... some of it
actionable.''
"It helps us understand the organization of the Taliban and the
al-Qaida network,'' he said. "Some of this might effect future operations
in other countries and some of it might effect operations in the United
States.''
30 Prisoners Leave for Guantanamo Bay
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan 13 (AP) - Another 30 Taliban and al-Qaida detainees
departed by plane for Guantanamo Bay in Cuba late Sunday, three days after the
first group of prisoners was transferred to the high security facility.
The prisoners, shackled and with white caps covering their faces, shuffled
in the darkness into a C-17 transport plane for the flight to eastern Cuba. Two
U.S. troops flanked each of the detainees as they walked across the tarmac to
the aircraft.
Lights at the U.S. base at the Kandahar airport were shut off except for red
low intensity lights and green chemical lighting. Security was tight with attack
dogs and Humvees with 50-caliber machine guns patrolling the area.
The first group of 20 detainees left here Thursday and arrived in Guantanamo
Bay the following day.
Cuba gets latest U.S. food shipments
HAVANA, 12 (AP) - A ship carrying the latest commercial deliveries of U.S.
food purchased directly by Cuba under the first such contracts in nearly 40
years arrived here on Saturday.
The Turkish vessel Ismael Kaptanoglu, which left Texas on Wednesday, arrived
in Havana shortly before noon with 33,000 tons of American wheat that the
communist government purchased from Farmland Industries, based in Kansas City,
and Archer Daniels Midland, of Illinois.
A shipment of 17,600 tons of soy and 5,500 tons of rice purchased from
Archer Daniels Midland was expected here on Sunday aboard a Mexican vessel that
embarked from Louisiana, according to the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council.
The first shipment of 26,400 tons of American corn sold to the Cuban
government's food import company arrived here on Dec. 16 - the first of eight
such grain shipments over two months.
Anti-communist Cuban exiles in the United States object to the direct sale
of American food, claiming it could erode the trade embargo imposed to punish
Cuba for its one-party political system.
Representatives of American agribusiness and some U.S. officials hope the
shipments will lead to increased trade with the island.
President Fidel Castro has said the food will replenish reserves depleted
since early November, when Hurricane Michelle barreled across the island,
destroying tens of thousands of homes and severely damaging crops.
Nearly all trade between the two nations is banned under the U.S. embargo.
Congress, however, passed a law last year that permitted the direct commercial
sale of American food to Cuba.
Terror Prisoners Get Settled in Cuba
By Tony Winton, Associated Press Writer
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL STATION, Cuba 12 (AP) - Al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners
were allowed an exercise walk Saturday - with their hands bound and a U.S.
soldier on each side - and given medical exams on their first full day under
tight security at this remote U.S. military outpost, U.S. officials said.
The head of security at Camp X-Ray, the base's detention area, said he was
confident in the "layered'' security measures, with backup guards in place
for the 20 prisoners, considered some of the toughest of the fighters captured
in Afghanistan .
"This was sort of our test run. It went extremely well,'' Army Col.
Terry Carrico told reporters. "There's going to be no break out. I'm very
confident.''
The 20 are the first of hundreds of al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners expected
to be brought from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay, on the eastern tip of Cuba.
Here they will face intense interrogation, especially concerning the whereabouts
of terror suspect Osama bin Laden . Officials have not said when the next group
of prisoners will be brought here.
The prisoners' identities have not been released. The British Foreign Office
said it had been informed by the Americans that a British citizen was among the
20 prisoners. British officials were trying to determine who he is.
The U.S. military has clamped down with heavy security, saying the fighters
have shown they're willing to kill themselves and their captors. In November, a
prison mutiny in northern Afghanistan took three days to put down, left as many
as 450 fighters dead and cost the life of a CIA agent.
The captives were being detained outside the view of reporters in a camp
behind coils of barbed wire, guarded by heavily armed military police.
After their arrival Friday afternoon, the group's first night in Cuba "was
peaceful,'' Carrico said.
There was some conversation among prisoners, and he said he saw several put
their "mats down on the deck and pray'' before going to sleep. "They
were very fatigued.''
They slept under the glare of halogen floodlights in individual outdoor
cells made of chain-link fence - measures aimed at keeping them visible to their
guards. It rained overnight, but the prisoners were sheltered by their cells'
metal roofs, Carrico said.
On Saturday, the prisoners were to be given meals and showers, and be
allowed to walk around outside their cells. But during the exercise walk, each
was to have his hands bound and a military police guard at each side, Carrico
said.
Camp medics were also examining the prisoners. Carrico said some arrived
wearing surgical masks after initial tests suggested the presence of
tuberculosis. Those prisoners were to undergo chest X-rays to confirm whether
they were infected, he said.
Each prisoner will be given a Quran as a "comfort item'' if he doesn't
have one, Carrico said. Each also receives two bath towels - one for a prayer
mat and the other for showering - a washcloth, toothpaste, toothbrush, soap and
shampoo.
An Air Force C-141 cargo plane touched down with the prisoners Friday
afternoon. The shackled men were led off the plane and into buses by more than
50 Marines. Several detainees appeared to struggle with the Marines, and two
were forced to their knees on the tarmac before being allowed to stand again and
walk to the buses. At least one prisoner had been sedated on the flight from
Afghanistan.
The buses took the men to a ferry, which carried them across Guantanamo Bay
to Camp X-Ray.
The camp has room for 100 prisoners now and soon could house 220. A more
permanent site under construction is expected to house up to 2,000.
The Red Cross and other groups are to monitor conditions, amid worries by
some human rights groups that the heavy security measures violate the prisoners'
rights and that U.S. officials plan military tribunals for the prisoners with
lowered standards of due process.
U.S. officials insist conditions do not violate human rights.
The United States is reserving the right to try al-Qaida and Taliban
captives on its own terms and is not calling them "prisoners of war,'' a
designation that would invoke the Geneva Convention.
The Guantanamo base is one of America's oldest overseas outposts. The U.S.
military first seized Guantanamo Bay in 1898 during the Spanish-American War.
Red Cross Preparing to Visit Cuba
By Clare Nullis, Associated Press Writer
GENEVA, 11 (AP) - The International Committee of the Red Cross said Friday
it is preparing to visit accused al-Qaida and Taliban fighters detained at
Guantanamo Bay Naval Station.
The neutral, Swiss-run humanitarian agency is negotiating with the Bush
administration about the timing and conditions for the visits, ICRC spokeswoman
Macarena Aguilar said.
Twenty prisoners arrived Friday at Guantanamo Bay, leaving behind 361
captives at the base in Kandahar and 19 at the air base in Bagram, north of
Kabul. One prisoner - American John Walker Lindh - remained on the USS Bataan in
the Arabian Sea.
U.S. authorities allowed the Red Cross to visit the men earlier at U.S.
Marine headquarters in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan .
There were no incidents during those visits, Aguilar said.
The ICRC is the guardian of the Geneva conventions on international
humanitarian law. As part of its mandate, it visits detainees and prisoners of
war around the world, always insisting on being given full and repeated access
to detention centers, and requiring that the visits be held in private.
Aguilar said the ICRC regarded the Taliban and al-Qaida fighters as "prisoners
of war,'' a term U.S. authorities have refused to use. Despite the extraordinary
risk U.S. authorities say the men pose, Aguilar said the ICRC would treat them
as it does any other prisoner.
"It's something we do everywhere in the world,'' she said. | 
