US NAVAL BASE, GUANTANAMO BAY (Cuba), Jan 12: A group of 20 Al Qaeda and Taliban “bad guy” prisoners from Afghanistan, their hands manacled and unable to see through taped goggles, were led one by one from a US air force transport plane under heavy guard and taken away for an indefinite incarceration at a prison camp in this US Navy base in Cuba on Friday.

After a plane journey that brought them across the world from the Afghanistan war front to the sweltering Caribbean, they were spending their first night in small cages, open to the elements, in a prison camp dubbed “Camp X-Ray”.

They were the first captives to be shipped away from the war theatre. The operation took place four months to the day from the Sept 11 attacks.

“They represent the worst elements of Al Qaeda and the Taliban,” Marine Brigadier General Michael Lehnert, commander of the Joint Task Force running the prison operation, said before their arrival. “We asked for the bad guys first.”

A military spokesman said the operation went without any trouble from the detainees.

The detainees were clad in two-piece orange jump suits and white footwear as they were led off the plane. They also wore knitted orange caps, surgical masks and goggles covered with tape. All of them had their hands tied in front of them. Several were in leg shackles.

A group of military-escorted reporters watched the operation from a hill 400 metres from the runway.

Marines stood guard around the C-141 Starlifter after it landed on the runway with the Caribbean on one side, parched scrubland on the other, and Cuban hills in the distance.

Four Humvee vehicles mounted with machine guns also took up defensive positions. A Navy helicopter mounted with a door gunner circled over head. A phalanx of about 40 Marine Military Police in riot gear huddled behind a truck on the other side of two white buses pulled up by the back ramp of the plane.

An ambulance and firetruck were on standby. When the detainees were led off by military policemen, they were frisked then put onto the buses. The first limped, his left leg bandaged. Six appeared to resist and two were pushed to their knees then brought up again. However, a task force spokesman said it was possible they were merely disorientated after journey across the globe.

“I don’t know that any of these folks had been on an airplane before,” said Army Lieutenant Colonel Bill Costello.

Shouting could be heard on the scene. Task Force spokesman Marine Major Steve Cox explained this was from translators giving loud orders because the detainees were wearing ear muffs to protect them from the din inside the C-141 cargo plane.

The goggles were masked for security reasons, the surgical masks for protection as some had tested positive for tuberculosis, and the knit hats for warmth against the cold inside the plane, he said.

Unloading took about half-an-hour from first detainee to last and the two buses, their windows blacked out but for a gap at the top, pulled away from the plane less than two hours from the time it first touched down.—Reuters