Yahoo! News
January 16, 2002.
Coast Guard unit leaves for Guantanamo
By R.W. Rogers. January 16, 2002.
Late last year, Fort Eustis-based Port Security Unit 305 spent a month
guarding New York Harbor after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Today, the unit
leaves for Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to guard the very people suspected of
supporting that attack.
The 125 Coast Guardsmen in the unit, equipped with six armed high-powered
boats, primarily will guard vessels entering and leaving the bay. Due to
security concerns, Coast Guard officials won't discuss specifics of what Port
Security Unit 305 will be doing at Guantanamo Bay.
Fifty al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners are being held at Guantanamo's Camp
X-Ray, and that number is expected to rise as more detainees are flown out of
Afghanistan (news - web sites).
PSU 305 members, most of them reservists, were notified Friday that they'd
be leaving today. It was a much longer lead time than when the unit was called
up in September, said Lt. Cmdr. Karl Leonard, the operations officer.
Full
story at The Daily Press
More al-Qaida, Taliban Land in Cuba
By Susanne M. Schafer, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - A U.S. military plane carrying 30 al-Qaida and Taliban
prisoners arrived at the U.S. Navy (news - web sites) base at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, on Monday. They joined 20 other prisoners who arrived last week.
The arrival of the second group of prisoners from Kandahar, Afghanistan
(news - web sites), was announced by a Pentagon (news - web sites) spokesman,
Marine Corps Capt. Riccoh Player.
Meanwhile, the bodies of six Marines have been returned to the United States
as the search continues for the seventh lost in last week's air crash in
Pakistan, a Pentagon spokeswoman said Monday.
"Six sets of remains were recovered. They have arrived at Dover'' Air
Force Base in Delaware, Victoria Clarke told reporters at the Pentagon.
The bodies were flown first to Germany on Sunday, then on to Dover later in
the day.
Clarke said military officials in a mountainous area of southwest Pakistan
were pressing ahead with the search for the seventh Marine, lost in the
Wednesday crash of a KC-130 refueling plane.
"The search will continue,'' Lt. Col. Martin Compton of the U.S.
Central Command said Sunday. "The Marines will leave no one behind.''
Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations for the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, said U.S. warplanes bombed the Zawar Kili complex in eastern
Afghanistan over the weekend. He said this largely concluded a series of almost
daily airstrikes there, where al-Qaida fighters once had operated.
Stufflebeem said about 60 buildings were destroyed in the bombing and 50
caves had been closed.
"It's now time to go look elsewhere,'' he said, referring to the search
for intelligence on al-Qaida and its leader, Osama bin Laden (news - web sites).
The Pentagon says the area was used as an underground hide-out by al-Qaida
and Taliban members. After more than a week of strikes, Sunday's bombing
appeared to be the heaviest attack since last month's strikes on the al-Qaida
cave complex at Tora Bora farther northeast.
At Dover Air Force Base, the base chaplain, Lt. Col. Jim Barlow, led a short
prayer before the flag-draped coffins were taken to the base mortuary. Clarke
said she did not know when the bodies would be flown to their final destination.
All were based at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego.
At a Pentagon news conference with Stufflebeem, Clarke said the 20 al-Qaida
prisoners who arrived at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, last week
are being given three "culturally appropriate'' meals a day, and an
opportunity to exercise daily.
"They are receiving very humane treatment,'' she said.
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 armed with .50-caliber machine guns patrolling the area.
The base at the Kandahar airport is the site of the main detention center
for al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners from the war. Officials said 464 were in U.S.
custody altogether - 413 in Afghanistan, the 20 in Cuba, the 30 in transit and
American John Walker Lindh on the USS Bataan in the Arabian Sea.
In Cuba, the operation involving the detainees "is going as expected,''
Clarke said. "There have been no reports of any untoward incidents.''
Clarke said the individuals being kept at the base are "extremely dangerous
people.''
In Wednesday's crash, the seven were killed when their Marine KC-130 tanker
plane slammed into a mountainside and exploded while approaching an air base
Americans have been using at Shamsi in southwestern Pakistan. Although U.S.
forces in Pakistan have occasionally faced gunfire and other hostile actions,
military officials say they have no evidence that hostile fire brought down the
plane.
Officials also have said they have no indication that bad weather caused the
crash, which caused an explosion that was seen and heard 20 miles away.
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