| http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/11/29/whunt29.xml&sSheet=/news/2001/11/29/ixhome.html
Al-Qa'eda fighters 'flown to island' By David Graves and Ben Fenton in Washington (Filed: 29/11/2001) AMERICA has flown 13 suspected al-Qa'eda fighters to a military base in the Pacific, possibly the remote US territory of Wake Island, it was claimed yesterday. The news came as criticism mounted of the planned use of military tribunals to try suspected terrorists. There was uproar on Guam, another American Pacific territory when the island was named as a possible venue for tribunals. Detainees on Guam would enjoy the same protection as they would in any American state, but that does not apply to Wake Island, a tiny atoll halfway between Hawaii and Guam. It is directly administered by the US air force and has only 123 inhabitants, all of them employed by the US government. The Pentagon confirmed last week that Wake and Guam were among the possible sites being considered for the military tribunals. The claims that 13 al-Qa'eda activists were already on their way to American territory came from a London-based Arab academic. The group was said to include Ahmed Abdel Rahman, 35, son of the blind Egyptian cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who was jailed for life in America in 1996 for conspiring to bomb the World Trade Centre in New York in 1993. Others among the group were suspected of being leading members of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network captured during the Northern Alliance's rapid advance across northern Afghanistan. Hani al-Sabai, of the London-based al-Maqrizi Centre for Historical Studies, said an American military aircraft flew the 13 men to an unidentified American base in the Pacific from Bagram air base, near Kabul. They were all said to be "Afghan Arabs", fanatical Islamic fighters who had gone from the Middle East to join the Taliban or al-Qa'eda. The academic said sources in Egypt told him of the transfer of the men, some of whom, he claimed, had been tortured by the alliance in an attempt to establish the whereabouts of bin Laden. Rahman's father is regarded as the spiritual leader of the Gama'a Islamiya terror group in Egypt, which has been blamed for most of the violence in the country's Islamic rebellion aimed at ousting President Hosni Mubarak's secular government and turning Egypt into an Islamic state. The Pentagon denied that any detainees from Afghanistan had been flown from Kabul to Guam as speculation grew in America that trials of captured Taliban and al-Qa'eda members would not be held on the mainland because of fears of revenge attacks. Democrats in Washington have begun to raise the first serious concerns about the process, and it is thought likely that civil liberties advocates will begin a legal challenge if the tribunals are set up in the jurisdiction of American civil courts. Robert Underwood, who represents Guam in the House of Representatives, said: "Anyone on trial in Guam would have the same legal rights and constitutional protections as they would if they went on trial in Washington DC. The Pentagon and the White House have told me today that uppermost in their minds was avoiding any kind of legal challenge to the tribunals, so that makes it most unlikely that Guam would be chosen." John Ashcroft, the attorney-general, acknowledged yesterday that America was detaining 603 people as part of its investigation into the September 11 attacks. Lt Monica Richardson, a spokesman for the US navy, said no detainees from Afghanistan were being held on Guam, where the huge Anderson air force base is sited. The other US military bases in the Pacific are on Okinawa, part of Japan, and Kwajalein, part of the Marshall Islands. Other US territories include American Samoa, which has only a small military post, Johnston Atoll and Wake Island. |
