New detainees due in Cuba

New detainees from Afghanistan are today due to arrive at the US naval base detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where troops have built new chain-link cells to double the occupancy, military officials said.

Camp commander Colonel Terry Carrico said yesterday that Camp X-Ray, the high-security compound where 158 suspected al-Qaida and Taliban fighters are held in open-air cells with walls of chain-link fence, now has 320 cells.

A plane carrying detainees took off late yesterday from the US military base in Kandahar, the first such flight in more than two weeks. A Pentagon official said that the next group of prisoners was due to arrive today.

Brigadier General Mike Lehnert, the Marine in charge of the entire detention mission, refused to confirm that. ‘‘It is a very prudent thing not to announce to the world when aircraft are landing,’’ he said.

The new arrivals would be the first since authorities began interrogations at the base in eastern Cuba on January 23.

The flight suspensions coincided with an international outcry over the conditions and status of the Guantanamo detainees, with several countries demanding they be treated as prisoners of war and be returned to face trial at home.

US officials insist the detainees are being treated humanely and refuse to grant them formal prisoner of war status, saying that as part of a terrorist network they fall outside protections under the Geneva Conventions.

Yesterday, reporters watched as some detainees were carried from their cells, one at a time, on a stretcher set on two bicycle wheels and carted over ruts and gravel to three wooden interrogation buildings.

Gen Lehnert said that putting the detainees on the stretchers helps prevent the prisoners from trying to escape or attacking their guards. He said their hands and ankles are manacled, but they are not chained to the stretcher.

The military says the prisoners are among the most dangerous fighters of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network and the deposed Taliban regime that harboured it in Afghanistan.

Only a handful of countries, including Britain, Australia, France, Kuwait, Sweden and Yemen, have said their citizens are among the detainees.

Yesterday, Saudi Arabia finally admitted that there were 15 Saudis among the 18 aeroplane hijackers who crash-bombed the World Trade Centre towers and the Pentagon on September 11.

Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef also said that more than 50 of the Guantanamo detainees are Saudis. His country, like some others, has asked that its citizens be handed over so it can interrogate them.

Yemen said the US had agreed to allow its investigators to join US civilian and military interrogators questioning 21 Yemenis among the Guantanamo detainees.

Military officials have reported only a few incidents, such as one detainee who threatened to kill an American on arrival, an incident in which a prisoner bit a guard, and the discovery of stones in the cells - easily accessible through the chain fence.

Yesterday, officials told NBC News that there have been cases of detainees throwing at their guards faeces and urine that they collected in buckets in their cells.

But On the whole, the prisoners have been ‘‘relatively well behaved’’, Gen Lehnert

As of Tuesday, the number of detainees held by US forces in the Afghan region stood at 324, officials said.