4 Fugitives Ditched Prison Garb Before Escape, U.S. Says

Four suspected Al Qaeda members who escaped from an American-controlled air base changed out of their orange prison jumpsuits before making their getaway from the heavily guarded compound, a U.S. military spokesman said Wednesday.

U.S. and Afghan forces early today still had not found the prisoners from Syria, Kuwait, Libya and Saudi Arabia, who were reported missing early Monday from Bagram air base, north of Kabul, the Afghan capital.

“I’m hoping beyond hope that we find those four guys, but right now I can only report that the search is ongoing,” U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Jerry O’Hara said.

There were no known witnesses to the breakout, he said. But it appeared the prisoners had taken off their orange jumpsuit uniforms and put on something less conspicuous before leaving the detention center, O’Hara said. U.S. officials have not said where the men found a change of clothes or whether they received outside help in their escape.

The Army’s Criminal Investigation Division is investigating the breakout, the first from the former Soviet air base that now serves as headquarters for the more than 16,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Bagram’s detention center holds more than 450 inmates under strict security and secrecy. Detainees include suspected members of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network and its allies in the Taliban militia, which appears to be regaining strength almost four years after the fall of the Taliban government.

Afghan workers who have passed through the center’s outermost guard posts say the facility’s floors are thick concrete, which would make tunneling difficult. The outer doors have combination locks.

A prisoner who managed to get out of a cell, avoid guards and open the combination locks would then have to maneuver through numerous checkpoints and find a way past the base walls, which are under 24-hour watch by sentries.

The improbability of the four escapees pulling off that feat on their own has left some Afghans convinced that the men had help from someone familiar with base security.

“The specifics about how they got out, and who helped them -- and who didn’t help them -- that’s what the investigation will determine,” O’Hara said.

He did not rule out the possibility that investigators were checking to see whether any U.S. soldiers were involved in the escape.

“When you launch an investigation about anything, you don’t start narrow,” he said.

“You start broad, and then it drives you down to a narrow focus.”

When the investigation is complete, O’Hara said, the details are unlikely to be made public because the military doesn’t want to tip off the enemy about any possible weaknesses in the layout or security.

“If someone is charged with dereliction of duty, and I don’t even know if that’ll happen, that’s a different matter,” he added.

On Tuesday, U.S. troops backed by helicopters focused their search on the vineyards, thickets and dry scrub of the Shomali plain that surrounds the Bagram air base. O’Hara refused to say whether the search area had been expanded, or whether there were any solid leads.

Militants kept up the pressure elsewhere in Afghanistan with attacks that included a rocket assault Monday on the U.S. airfield at Kandahar, the Taliban’s former spiritual capital in the country’s south.

Two civilian employees of the U.S. contractor KBR, a Halliburton Co. subsidiary formerly known as Kellogg, Brown & Root, were injured when four rockets struck the airfield about 4 a.m. Monday, the U.S. military said in a statement Wednesday.

The wounded, who were not identified by name or nationality, were flown to Germany for treatment and are in stable condition, according to the statement. The attackers escaped.

In an operation in Zabol province, U.S. and Afghan forces killed 17 guerrillas Tuesday, the second day of fighting south of the village of Dai Chopan, the U.S. military said. Six rebels were captured.

After the battle, soldiers found weapons inside a mosque, including 14 grenades, a grenade launcher and 100 machine-gun ammunition belts, the military said.