Cuba Detainees Go On Hunger Strike

Feb. 28, 2002 -- Detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are refusing to eat — protesting the treatment of one of their fellow prisoners.

More than a third of the 300 prisoners brought to Cuba from Afghanistan skipped breakfast — usually a culturally sensitive meal like fruit and oatmeal — after one of them was forced to take off a makeshift turban he had fashioned out of a bedsheet on Tuesday. By lunch today, the number of strikers had risen to 194.

Marine Maj. Steven Cox said a detainee observing his Muslim prayers ignored a guard and a translator when asked to remove the turban.

"They don't like being distracted during prayer observance," Cox said.

Guards restrained the prisoner to remove the headdress, Cox said, raising howls of protest from the other prisoners who could see what was happening through the chain-link fence walls of the facility.

"They saw, heard and communicated about what took place," he said.

The turban incident may have triggered the strike, but Cox said officials who interviewed detainees today say that the real cause is the uncertainty of their situation.

"The real issue is the natural tension associated with not knowing what the future holds for them," he said. "They don't know what's going to happen to them, when it's going to happen, or where they're going to end up."

Cox said that the situation in the camp was calm at midday today and that officials were waiting to see whether the prisoners would eat later in the day.

Bin Laden DNA Requested

Meanwhile, the United States has asked the family of Osama bin Laden for DNA samples to help them determine whether the accused terrorist mastermind was among the casualties of a U.S. missile strike earlier this month.

Because one of the men killed in the Feb. 4 attack was unusually tall, there has been some speculation that bin Laden himself — who is reportedly between 6'4" and 6'6" — may have been among the casualties.

However, U.S. officials feel confident bin Laden is still alive — perhaps in Afghanistan near the Pakistani border.

"It was always believed that if we needed to get DNA we could probably do so, so we didn't press the issue. But since the Hellfire missile strike we figured that it was time we got a sample, even though we do not believe it was bin Laden we hit," a senior U.S. official told ABCNEWS.

"Biological material," possibly including human remains, were found at the scene of the missile strike a week later by U.S. forces. They hope to compare that material to saliva or blood samples provided by the bin Laden family.

The ideal sample would come from bin Laden's mother, because that would provide the closest match. He is her only child, but has close to 50 half siblings through his father. If investigators got several of his siblings to provide DNA samples, officials believe they could have a conclusive result.

Bin Laden's father is dead, but his mother is still living in Saudi Arabia and there is a possibility she will cooperate.

New Front in Terror War?

The president of Georgia, Eduard Shevardnadze, said that a U.S. move to help train and equip the former Soviet republic's troops is the result of eight years of talks between the two countries and will boost the Caucasus nation's ability to battle terrorists.

U.S. military officials, saying there is "pretty clear evidence" that some members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network have moved into the Pankisi Gorge — a crime-ridden area near the breakaway Russian province of Chechnya, say the plans for cooperation with Georgia are just one front in the war on terrorism.

"We have been working toward this for eight years. Step by step we have been trying, against the background of greatAmerican assistance, to establish factors of time and trust," Shevardnadze said. He explained that the country had been unable to develop that trust with Russia.

In Moscow, politicians across the ideological spectrum denounced the plan for U.S. training personnel to work with Georgian military, saying that it would only destabilize a volatile region and calling it a move by the United States to expand its sphere of influence.

The chairman of the Duma's defense committee, Andrey Nikolayev, criticized Shevardnadze, saying that his policies have resulted in the "virtual dissolution of ties" between Russia and Georgia, and said the Americans have only "made a first step on their road to expanding their military presence in the Caucasus Mountains region."

Georgy Arbatov of the reform-minded Yabloko party and vice-chairman of the Duma defense committee, said Russia is facing a simple choice in Central Asia and the Caucasus: "either these areas get taken over by Islamic terrorists, or they get an American military and political presence." However, the presence of U.S. troops in Georgia could seriously complicate Russian-American relations, he said.

At the Pentagon, Defense Department spokeswoman Victoria Clarke and the vice chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, refused to offer many specifics about operations in Georgia, other than to say that plans were in place to offer help to the former Soviet republic since before Sept. 11, and that those talks have continued.

"There have been some indications of connections, some connections of al Qaeda in that country," Clarke said. "But, going beyond that — saying there have been some connections — is not appropriate."

Between 100 and 200 American soldiers will be involved, carrying out an operation described as similar to one under way in the Philippines. There, 660 troops are conducting a joint operation with that country's armed forces, including 160 U.S. special forces soldiers who are training the Filipinos to combat terrorism.

Russia had been hoping to be part of a joint operation in the region, where it has been reluctant to allow U.S. forces to operate independently. To assuage Russian concerns, U.S. officials said, the military will make an effort at pursuing "transparency" in the operation.

Mortar Hits School; One Dead, Dozens Injured

In other developments:

At least one child was killed and dozens were injured when a mortar shell hit a school in eastern Afghanistan, relatives told Reuters news agency. The nearest medical help was a two-hour drive from the primary school in the town of Sarobi, about 30 miles east of Kabul. Officials said they did not know whether the school was targeted or if the shell went astray.

If stability in Afghanistan is to be maintained, economic conditions in the war-torn country need to be improved, the United Nation's special envoy said today. The United Nations is asking for $1.18 billion in new relief support for Afghanistan, on top of the $4.5 billion pledged last month by nations around the world during a meeting in Tokyo. Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. envoy, said the funds are needed for food, medicine and other humanitarian aid.

As U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the British-led peacekeeping force to remain in Afghanistan at least through the summer, one of the force's observation posts outside Kabul was fired upon. No one was hurt in the shooting, the third such incident in the last two weeks.