American Talib in U.S. Jail Awaiting Conspiracy Trial

As John Walker Lindh returned to U.S. soil to face conspiracy charges, the Pentagon on Wednesday abruptly suspended all future transfers of Al Qaeda suspects from Afghanistan to the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, saying that U.S. intelligence officials need more time to prepare for interrogations.

Walker, the 20-year-old Northern Californian captured in Afghanistan while fighting for the Taliban, arrived in shackles Wednesday night at Dulles International Airport outside Washington and was taken to the Alexandria, Va., city jail.

He is to make his first appearance in U.S. District Court in Alexandria at 9 a.m. EST today on charges of conspiracy to aid the American enemy. Walker faces a possible sentence of life in prison with no parole.

Pentagon officials said they halted the transfers to Guantanamo Bay until intelligence agents can assemble there and organize their efforts to question the suspects about the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes and whether any more attacks might be in the works.

So far, 158 men are incarcerated in makeshift wire cages at the naval base, and 270 more are being held in the Afghanistan region awaiting U.S. military flights to Cuba.

Military officials sharply denied that the transfer postponement was due to rising criticism of treatment of the detainees in Cuba, and President Bush said that the American public “should be proud” of what is being done to demobilize the terrorist groups.

Steve Lucas, a spokesman for the Pentagon’s Southern Command in Florida, which has helped coordinate the flights to Cuba, predicted that the air transfers to Cuba will resume once intelligence officials are ready to start interrogating detainees.

“We are taking a pause while we ensure that a joint interagency intelligence apparatus is fully up and functional so they can start gathering information at Guantanamo Bay,” Lucas said. “But our military base is ready to continue accepting the flow. We have a hospital in place now, and we’ve expanded the temporary facilities for detainees.”

He said the federal agencies that will interrogate the detainees first need “to make sure everything is in place so they can get to work. It’s a very important function, and some of it will undoubtedly be valuable and productive.”

Lucas said the postponement also will grant workers at the Cuban base more time to continue building holding facilities. Initial plans had called for as many as 2,000 detainees to be held there.

Although the detainees now are housed in outdoor cages, he said, work will soon begin on permanent cells with roofs and three walls. He said that configuration will make the cells safe for the detainees and also permit guards to watch the inmates closely.

The new base field hospital, Lucas said, will be similar to an Army MASH unit with triage facilities, an operating room and other accouterments.

Officials also announced that a Muslim Navy chaplain is in Cuba to minister to the detainees. He was identified as Lt. Abuhena Saif-ul-Islam, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Bangladesh. Saif-ul-Islam, the first Muslim chaplain to serve the Marine Corps, most recently was assigned to Camp Pendleton in Southern California.

The new developments at Guantanamo come as the military was hit with a round of criticism by clergy, lawyers and civil liberties groups complaining that detainees were being mishandled.

The critics were upset after seeing photographs released by the Pentagon showing detainees in leg shackles and hand manacles, with surgical masks over their mouths and goggles covering their eyes.

One of the criticisms came from the International Committee of the Red Cross, which in Geneva issued an “advisory” that the U.S. may have unintentionally violated the Geneva Convention over the treatment of war prisoners by releasing the photos. The Pentagon released the photos after news media complaints about lack of access to and information about the prisoners.

“You are not allowed to submit prisoners to public humiliation,” said Kim Gordon-Bates, a Washington spokesman for the international committee.

He added that it “was just basically a soft advisory” to alert the United States of the potential problem and that the committee was unlikely to officially challenge the United States over the matter.

President Bush, in a meeting with Washington lawmakers, stressed that the detainees are being treated humanely, a theme he has sounded for several days as the criticism has heated up.

Later, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush is “perfectly satisfied” with the arrangement in Cuba, adding that if the detainees had not been scooped up, “they would engage in murder once again.”

In Afghanistan, FBI Director Robert Mueller, who was meeting with FBI agents and Afghan officials in Kandahar, said the FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies have already gleaned critical information from war prisoners that has prevented some attacks against U.S. targets worldwide.

Other U.S. officials have made similar comments, including that information from detainees helped foil a terrorist plot in Singapore.

“Information we have picked up since the war has prevented additional attacks around the world,” Mueller said. “Interrogations from Al Qaeda members detained here in Afghanistan as well as documents . . . [have] prevented additional attacks against U.S. facilities around the world.”

Mueller declined to be specific.

Meanwhile, attorney James Brosnahan of San Francisco, who was hired by Walker’s parents but has yet to meet with him, said the parents were given a letter Wednesday from their son dated Jan. 8.

In a statement, Brosnahan quoted Walker as writing to his parents: “It is comforting to know that you have found a lawyer” and mentioning Brosnahan by name.

U.S. officials have said that John Walker, as he is named in court documents, has waived his right to an attorney several times in the weeks since his arrest in early December. He spent most of that time aboard the warship Bataan in the Arabian Sea.

In a telephone interview late Wednesday, Brosnahan criticized Bush administration officials for suggesting that Walker did not know his parents had hired a team of lawyers to represent him.

“As far back as Jan. 8, John has acknowledged he was glad his family found lawyers for him,” the attorney said. “I don’t know what this white noise from the mahogany foxholes of the Defense Department is all about.”

Brosnahan said: “His family is desperate to meet with their son. We want to try and see him. But we’re not going to confront anybody.”

Brosnahan told Associated Press that he escorted Walker’s parents, Frank Lindh and Marilyn Walker, to the jail where their son is being held, but they were unable to meet with him.

U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said Wednesday that the investigation of the young man continues.

“Terrorists did not compel John Walker Lindh to join them,” Ashcroft said. “John Walker Lindh chose terrorists. Our American system of justice will allow Walker the rights and due process that the terrorists he fought side by side with sought, and still seek, to destroy.”

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Times staff writer John M. Glionna in San Francisco contributed to this report.