news - web sites ) agents have arrived in southern Afghanistan to interrogate al Qaeda prisoners and collect intelligence to prevent future attacks by the extremists, agents said Tuesday.
"It's the first time we've been in a foreign country while bombs are falling since looking for Nazis in South America in the 1940s," FBI agent Thomas C. Knowles told reporters at the U.S. Marine base at Kandahar airport.
Eight FBI agents investigating the Sept. 11 suicide airliner attacks on New York and Washington arrived late on Monday to help establish a detention camp for prisoners at the airport near the southern city that was the Taliban power base.
No prisoners have yet arrived, although dozens are scattered across the rugged land.
"We're trying to ascertain if there is any evidence about future terrorist acts against America or American facilities," said Knowles, unit chief for the violent criminal apprehension program based in Quantico, Virginia.
"The second objective is to collect any information available on past attacks against Americans," he said.
These could include not just the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon ( news - web sites ) but also the USS Cole ( news - web sites ) in Yemen last year and the embassies in Africa in 1998, he said.
Captain Thomas Schmidt, the Marine officer in charge of the detention facility, said the Marines have learned a lesson from the prison uprising in Mazar-i-Sharif last month in which hundreds of prisoners and a Central Intelligence Agency ( news - web sites ) agent were killed.
U.S. planes bombed the prison while Northern Alliance troops put down the rebellion by mainly foreign al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners.
The Kandahar detention center is "probably the most secure place in Afghanistan," Schmidt told reporters outside the entrance to the facility surrounded by concertina wire. "There's overwhelming force opposing any uprising."
Major Ian D. Brasure, a Marine legal adviser, said measures to prevent an uprising included searching prisoners thoroughly, identifying them with tags and segregating troublesome prisoners.
Up to 120 prisoners will be held in a corrugated steel building, a former airport equipment storage area. Inside, they will be surrounded by several layers of concertina wire and be under 24-hour guard with the lights constantly on. Outside, there will be armed Marines, a mud brick wall, another layer of wire, outside of which is the airport compound, used now by U.S. military planes.
When they first arrive, they will be blindfolded and bound at the ankles and hands, linked to each other in a human chain, Schmidt said. They will be given local clothing to wear, printed with identification numbers.
Their personal effects will be cataloged and kept at the facility, he added.
They will be given medical care, shelter, food and clothing and the right to practice their religion, officers said.
Brasure said the International Committee of the Red Cross will have complete access to the prisoners, who will be treated as prisoners of war until determination on their status is made.
Another detention facility was built at Camp Rhino, the desert base south of Kandahar that the Marines first established on November 25 and which will be phased out when Kandahar becomes operational.
Briefly held at Camp Rhino was John Walker, an American who fought with the Taliban and was handed over to the US authorities following the Mazar-i-Sharif uprising.
He was interrogated by an FBI team before he was taken to the USS Peleliu Friday, Knowles said.