Author: James Gordon Meek
Publication: Daily News Washington
Date: February 13, 2004
URL: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_report/story/164037p-143797c.html
Terrorists freed from the U.S. prison
at Guantanamo Bay have rejoined Taliban and Al Qaeda cells in Afghanistan,
sources tell the Daily News.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
is expected to make the bombshell admission today in a speech in Miami,
military and political sources said yesterday.
But Rumsfeld's revelation about
the few prisoners in Cuba who shouldn't have been let go will be used as
justification for indefinitely detaining approximately 650 terror suspects
still held there, said one defense official.
The Pentagon chief will argue for
greater scrutiny of each detainee, but he'll also "talk about the intent
to release more" than the 87 freed to date, the official said.
Pentagon officials have refused
to discuss one reported case of a Taliban commander, Mullah Shehzada, who
rejoined comrades in Afghanistan after his release from the Guantanamo
prison camp in Cuba last October.
Shehzada convinced his interrogators
he was an innocent civilian captured by Northern Alliance troops and turned
over to the U.S., Time magazine reported late last year.
"[Shehzada] is not the only one,"
said a source briefed on the speech yesterday. "They're about to be a lot
less tight-lipped about it."
Rumsfeld is also expected to reveal
that detainees have provided intelligence about human smuggling rings in
Latin America aimed at sneaking Al Qaeda thugs into the U.S.
Other officials are skeptical that
Osama Bin Laden's terror network is active there. A senior diplomatic source
in the region told The News that reports of Al Qaeda operations south of
the border have been touted by Army brass without hard proof.
The other sources said Rumsfeld
is making the speech, which comes as the U.S. Supreme Court weighs whether
courts have jurisdiction over the U.S. naval base in Cuba, to "educate"
the public about why the U.S. operates Camp Delta, where terror detainees
have no access to lawyers.
