Security heightened at US base after escape

Security has been tightened at a massive US military detention facility in Afghanistan, a US official said today, a day after the military revealed that one of four men who escaped in July was a suspected al-Qaida leader in Southeast Asia.

The escape of Omar al-Farouq and three others, whom the military earlier described as a “threat to the global war on terrorism,” was the first from the jail, where more than 500 suspected militants are held.

Al-Farouq was considered one of Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenants until Indonesian authorities captured him in 2002 and turned him over to the US. It was not immediately clear how long he had been held in Afghanistan before he escaped.

Although the escape was widely reported at the time, al-Farouq was identified by an alias and the US military only confirmed yesterday that he was among those who fled.

“There were shortcomings identified in the physical security of the facility that have been corrected,” military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jerry O’Hara said, reading from a statement about an investigation into the breakout.

“Physical security upgrades include improvements to an external door and holding cells.”

The detention facility is a plain-looking building of about three stories in the heart of Bagram, the main US base in Afghanistan, next to the runways and the command centre.

Several razor-wire fences surround the base and areas outside the perimeter remain mined from Afghanistan’s civil war and Soviet occupation. Military teams patrol constantly and the main entrance is a series of heavily guarded checkpoints.

A US military statement issued in August about the breakout said an inquiry had found that “the guards and supervisors did not follow standard operating procedures” on the night it occurred.

“These failures led to the escape of the four detainees on 10 July,” it said, adding that “action has either been taken or is in the process of being taken” to fix the problems.

Military officials have declined to elaborate on how the men escaped.

A massive manhunt was launched after the breakout. US troops, backed by Afghan police and soldiers, searched houses, manned roadblocks and zigzagged in helicopters across a dusty plain around the base.

Kabir Ahmed, the government leader in the area, said the American investigators had found where the men escaped from the base and fled through a field of wild grapevines.

“The soldiers found the escapees’ footprints still in the mud,” he said. “It was an amazing breakout. How they did it exactly I still don’t know.”