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Monday, January 14, 2002 - Web posted at 3:02:57 pm GMT

WASHINGTON - The U.S. military shipped 30 more Taliban and al Qaeda detainees to its naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Sunday, bringing to 50 the number sent there so far for interrogation before possible military tribunals on terrorism charges.

Two U.S. military personnel guarded each detainee as they left Kandahar, Afghanistan, aboard a giant C-17 transport for the 8,000-mile (12,800-km) journey, the U.S. Central Command said.

The detainees were shackled and wearing taped-over ski goggles and two-piece orange jump suits, as were the initial 20 who arrived on Friday, said Air Force Lt. Col. Martin Compton, a spokesman for the Tampa, Florida-based command running the war in Afghanistan.

"The situation was exactly the same as before -- the uniforms, the shackles, the whole bit, and the number of escorts," he said. In addition, the detainees wore surgical masks over their mouths and noses, apparently because some had tested positive for tuberculosis, Compton said.

They were captured in the U.S.-led military campaign that ousted Afghanistan's Taliban rulers for hosting Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden, prime suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks that killed more than 3,000 people in the United States.

In London, the British Foreign Office said Saturday it had been informed by U.S. authorities that an unidentified British national was among the first batch delivered to six-by-eight foot (1.8-2.4 metre) open-air cells after a 27-hour journey from the war zone. The latest group was expected to land at Guantanamo on Monday.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, Nancy Beck, said she had no idea whether Britain and other countries were being told the identities of detained citizens.

On Friday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld referred to the detainees as "unlawful combatants" and said the United States did not consider them prisoners of war, a status that would give them more rights under Geneva protocols.

BAD GUYS FIRST

Those being sent to Guantanamo in the early groups represented "the worst elements of al Qaeda and the Taliban," according to Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Michael Lehnert, commander of a joint military task force brought together last week to oversee incarceration of the enemy fighters.

"We asked for the bad guys first," he said on Friday.

Rumsfeld has called the base at Guantanamo Bay "the least worst place" to interrogate the detainees before military tribunals planned by President George W. Bush for foreign terror suspects. The United States has controlled the site since the Spanish-American War of 1898, despite demands by Cuban President Fidel Castro that it be handed back.

Tom Ridge, director of U.S. Homeland Security, said a spate of deadly anthrax mailings late last year was being investigated chiefly as possible U.S. domestic terrorism, rather than a foreign plot.

"I think our natural inclination was to look to external terrorists, but the primary direction of the investigation is turned inward," he said on the CNN program "Late Edition."

U.S. warplanes returned over the weekend to try to close off a cave complex in eastern Afghanistan believed to have been used as a regrouping point by fleeing forces loyal to bin Laden, the Central Command said on Sunday.

Two Air Force B-52s and a B1-B bomber pounded tunnel entrances Saturday in Zhawar Kili, an area about 30 miles southwest of Khost, close to the border with Pakistan, said the command, which is running the war in Afghanistan.

"The idea is to completely render this infrastructure unusable," said Compton, "It is a large facility."

He said the complex, bombed repeatedly since late last week, had been used as a transit point for those apparently fleeing to Pakistan. They were mainly bin Laden's al Qaeda guerrillas but included some Taliban militia driven from power by U.S.-backed forces.

Compton said the body of a sixth U.S. Marine was recovered Saturday from the wreckage of a KC-130 refueling plane that crashed on Wednesday on a remote hill in southwestern Pakistan. The search was continuing for remains of the seventh crew member, Compton said.

A C-5 Galaxy transport plane carrying the remains of five Marines killed in the crash arrived at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware late on Sunday, said Maj. Jon Anderson, a spokesman for the base.

With the 30 shipped to Camp X-Ray, as the detention facility at Guantanamo is known, the number of prisoners in U.S. hands in Afghanistan and on a ship at sea stood at 414. Compton said 361 were being held at Kandahar, 52 at Bagram and one -- American John Walker Lindh -- aboard the Navy warship USS Bataan in the Arabian Sea. Nampa-Reuters

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