July 17, 2002	Wednesday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 6, 1423

DUBAI, July 16: Two men suspected of terror links are in the custody of US authorities after they were detained by Canadian forces in the Arabian Sea over the weekend, spokesmen for the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet said Tuesday.

The suspects were aboard a small boat whose passengers were Pakistani or Afghan, he said, but could not say what the two men’s nationalities are.

The pair were apprehended “in the northern operating area of the Arabian Sea during a leadership interdiction operation (LIO) by Canadian forces Saturday night”, Lieutenant Garrett Kasper of the Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet said.

The two detainees were transferred on Sunday to the aircraft carrier, USS John F. Kennedy, on orders from the US Department of Defence. On Monday, “they were taken to a facility ashore”, Kasper said, declining to specify where the two men were being held.

The men, who were detained by forces operating on Canada’s HMCS Algonquin, “were arrested based on suspicion of being associated with terrorism. There was enough evidence to detain those two individuals on that basis”, Kasper said.

“They are in the custody of the US Department of Defense” on suspicion of links with either Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network or the Taliban, said Lieutenant Chris Davis, another Fifth Fleet spokesman.—AFP