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"American Taliban" to Face Arraignment on Charges of Helping
Al-Qaeda
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facility in Alexandria, Virginia, where Lindh is to held. |
By S.M. Khalid, IOL Washington Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - John Walker Lindh was sent to the United States aboard a military plane and under high-security to face charges he conspired with Afghanistan's former ruling Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network to kill fellow Americans.
Officials said the 20-year-old Lindh was transported from the USS Bataan warship in the Arabian Sea by helicopter and transferred to a C-17 military transport at the airport at the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, officials said.
Lindh was expected to arrive in suburban Washington - where he will be tried in federal court - sometime Wednesday.
The Pentagon officially was not confirming the transfer, saying it would be dangerous to release any information about his movements. And journalists were kept away from the area at Kandahar where Lindh boarded the plane.
A person resembling Lindh was seen by reporters being escorted from an aircraft. But U.S. military officials at the Kandahar air base refused to confirm his arrival, which was later confirmed by defense officials in Washington.
Photographers and cameramen at the airbase were ordered back inside the terminal and told that any film taken could not be used. The official line at Kandahar had previously been that no arriving or departing prisoners could be filmed or photographed.
Lindh's transfer was the first time the rule had been extended to cover images of the aircraft transporting prisoners, a reporter said.
Another official said Wednesday that Lindh was moved in restraints but gave no details.
The Californian converted to Islam four years ago and took up the cause of the Taliban, fighting alongside the militia in Afghanistan and even meeting with Osama bin Laden at an al-Qaeda training camp, his federal indictment says.
Held by the military since shortly after his capture in Afghanistan, Lindh was turned over to the U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday and will not be sent to the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, base where more than 150 other prisoners from the Afghan conflict are being held.
Lindh was coming to the United States because he is a U.S. citizen.
U.S. President George W. Bush's order allowing terrorism suspects to be tried by military tribunals does not apply to U.S. citizens.
Lindh was charged January 16 with conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals overseas and with supporting al-Qaeda, the group headed by bin Laden accused of the deadly September 11 attacks on the United States. About 3,000 people perished in the attacks that destroyed New York's World Trade Center and severely damaged the Pentagon near Washington, D.C.
Lindh was captured in November in the siege of Kunduz and survived a prison uprising near Mazar-e-Sharif. The conspiracy charge against him can carry a life sentence.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Lindh would be brought into the federal courts' Northern District of Virginia, which covers the Pentagon and most of Washington's Virginia suburbs.
Rumsfeld's comment came during an hour-long news conference he devoted largely to defending U.S. treatment of foreign fighters held in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Naval Base.
"The concern that the Department of Defense has had ... has been to do everything humanely possible to stop terrorists from killing people and to gather as much intelligence information as we can," he said. "And that is pure, simple self-defense of the United States of America."
Rumsfeld said repeatedly that the prisoners were being treated humanely and in accordance with international rules.
"These people are committed terrorists," Rumsfeld said of the prisoners, mostly suspected al-Qaida fighters flown to Cuba after being captured in Afghanistan.
"We are keeping them off the street and out of the airlines and out of nuclear power plants and out of ports across this country and across other countries, and it seems to me a perfectly reasonable thing to do."
Pentagon officials said Wednesday that the transfer of detainees to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo was being suspended because of logistical concerns, specifically a lack of space and the need to build additional cells and other facilities. There is no word on when transfers might resume. There are 158 detainees at the camp in Cuba and 270 in U.S. custody in Kandahar.
Meanwhile, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Robert Mueller said Wednesday that information obtained through the questioning of detainees in Afghanistan has helped prevent additional terrorist attacks against U.S. interests.
"The information that has been obtained from interrogations of al-Qaeda members who have been detained here in Afghanistan, as well as information gleaned from documents found in Afghanistan, has prevented additional attacks against United States facilities around the world," Mueller said during a visit to a U.S. base in Kandahar, Afghanistan. He did not give any details.
A senior al-Qaeda leader detained in Afghanistan provided U.S. officials with information about an alleged plot to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Yemen, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
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