*EPF402 04/04/2002
Defense Department Report, April 4: Afghanistan, U.S. Detainee
(U.S. continues to watch al-Qaida, Taliban in Afghanistan) (400)

U.S., COALITION FORCES STILL SEEING ENEMY MOVEMENTS IN GARDEZ-KHOST AREA

U.S. forces doing monitoring and surveillance in eastern Afghanistan are continuing to see small pockets of Taliban or al-Qaida forces, a defense official says.

"We are still seeing small pockets of folks," Brigadier General John Rosa said April 4 at a Pentagon briefing. "It's difficult to know whether they're al-Qaida or Taliban."

Rosa said the effort is still focused in the Gardez-Khost area, where Operation Anaconda took place. Forces on the ground there continue to do reconnaissance and surveillance, he said.

The small pockets of enemy forces are so far not coalescing into larger concentrations, Rosa said. Asked whether that indicated the enemy had changed tactics toward more of a classic guerrilla-style campaign, Rosa answered, "I'm not sure what that means." He said common sense would indicate that by grouping openly en masse, they would be "a lot more vulnerable.... So the fact that they're staying, from what we see, in smaller pockets, doesn't surprise us."

ONE GUANTANAMO DETAINEE IS PROABABLY A U.S. CITIZEN, SPOKESWOMAN SAYS

One of the 300 terrorist detainees being held at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is likely an American citizen, according to Defense Department spokeswoman Victoria Clarke.

The detainee, Yasser Esam Hamdi, 22, claims to have been born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Clarke said at the Pentagon briefing. The U.S. Department of Justice has a birth certificate indicating U.S. origin for Hamdi, she said.

Clarke said the Defense Department's understanding is that his parents are Saudi Arabian, and returned to that country shortly after his birth in the United States. Hamdi was "among the people who were gathered up after the uprising at Mazar-I-Sharif," she said.

Asked why it has taken so long to confirm Hamdi's U.S. citizenship, Clarke said "It's been very hard with a lot of these detainees to determine their actual identification. Many of these people who were with the Taliban and the al-Qaida were trained to resist interrogation.... [Identification] is a very slow, methodical process."

Clarke added that more information about Hamdi could be forthcoming from the Department of Justice later on April 4. If his U.S. citizenship is confirmed, she said, it would mean Hamdi is not eligible to be tried by a U.S. military commission.

(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

Return to Public File Main Page

Return to Public Table of Contents