KANDAHAR, Afghanistan?American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh will probably be flown Tuesday from the Navy ship where he is being held to an undisclosed location, U.S. military officials said.
On Monday, the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, declined to divulge Lindh’s ultimate destination or other details, saying only that he would transit through the U.S. military base at Kandahar airport.
U.S. government officials have said he would be handed over to the U.S. Department of Justice and the same federal court district in northern Virginia where Zacarias Moussaoui is awaiting trial for alleged complicity in the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Sunday said Lindh would arrive “sometime in the days ahead.”
Military spokesmen have said Lindh is the last detainee on the USS Bataan, the amphibious attack ship in the Arabian Sea initially used to hold some of the higher-level Taliban and al Qaeda suspects.
Attorney General John Ashcroft said last week that the 20-year-old Californian who fought with the Taliban and is alleged to have trained at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan will be charged with conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens and could face life in prison if convicted.
In Kandahar, the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division said there have been suspicious incidents around the base the last three nights, with people seen watching U.S. positions from outside the fence-line.
In one case, Cpl. Stephen Roberts, 23, of Springfield, Tenn., was watching through night-vision goggles Saturday when he saw two vehicles moving outside the perimeter. Six or seven people got out and started heading toward the airfield.
Roberts said he called in the information and helicopters, military vehicles and soldiers arrived on the scene quickly. They were unable to find the intruders.
The area around the base is filled with ravines, ditches and abandoned mud houses. After the base came under fire Jan. 10, Marine patrols found tunnels and hidden munitions they believed were being used to stage attacks.
The 101st Airborne took over command of the base from Marines on Saturday. By midday Monday, there were 1,000 members of the famed paratrooper division at Kandahar?close to half the full deployment of between 2,000 and 2,500, Army spokesmen said.
The paratroopers prepared for a memorial service scheduled for Tuesday for the latest American casualties of the Afghan campaign?two Marines killed in a chopper crash.
Five other Marines were injured when their CH-53E Super Stallion came down about 40 miles south of Bagram air base after taking off from the former Soviet base outside the capital, Kabul. It was flying with another helicopter to resupply American forces, military officials said.
Marine spokesman 1st Lt. James Jarvis said there was no initial indication of hostile fire. Rumsfeld said the cause of the crash appeared to be a mechanical failure.
In Washington, the Pentagon identified the dead Marines as Staff Sgt. Walter F. Cohee III, 26, from Mardela Springs, Md., a communications navigations systems technician, and Sgt. Dwight J. Morgan, 24, from Mendocino, Calif., a helicopter mechanic. Their remains were expected to arrive at Ramstein Air Base in Germany later Monday.
The worst single casualty toll for U.S. forces in the Afghanistan campaign was Jan. 9, when all seven Marines aboard a refueling tanker died in a fiery crash in the mountains of southwestern Pakistan. The cause remains under investigation.