By Matt Kelley, Associated Press, 01/11/02

WASHINGTON -- U.S. troops did not violate the rights of prisoners from the war in Afghanistan by shaving and shackling them, the Pentagon said Friday.

"That's not correct ... that it's a violation of their rights," Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said. "It simply isn't."

In answer to a question at a press conference, Rumsfeld said one prisoner was sedated from among the 20 flown out of Afghanistan on a C-17 for detention in Cuba.

"These are people who would gnaw through hydraulic lines in the back of a C-17 to bring it down," Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the Pentagon press conference with Rumsfeld. In at least two incidents inside Afghanistan, Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners staged deadly uprisings against their guards.

The prisoners were taken Thursday from a makeshift detention center run by U.S. Marines in southern Afghanistan and arrived Friday afternoon at a recently constructed detention center in Guantanamo. Human rights advocates had questioned the use of hoods to keep them from seeing, and the fact that they were chained and reportedly shaved of their long beards.

In Pakistan Friday, military troops scoured remote landscape Friday for the bodies of seven U.S. Marines killed in the crash of their tanker plane. Investigators tried to determine what sent the aircraft into a mountain.

A Pakistani official at the Shamsi base near the bleak town of Washki, speaking on condition of anonymity, said some body parts had been found near where the KC-130 exploded Wednesday night. The crash produced the largest U.S. casualty toll of the anti-terror war.

Meantime, in Afghanistan, a firefight erupted Thursday as the plane carrying 20 war detainees left the southern city of Kandahar bound for a U.S. Navy base in Cuba, the Pentagon said Friday, revising an earlier statement on the timing of the incident.

And in the Philippines, American troops were on the ground preparing for an expansion of a counterterrorism training program for that country's armed forces.

An investigative and recovery team arrived Thursday at the site of the plane crash, about 180 miles southwest of the Pakistani border city of Quetta.

Four U.S. helicopters hovered over the rugged terrain while Marines and Pakistani troops on the ground used sophisticated equipment to search for charred body parts, witnesses and officials said. Two small pilotless planes, presumably U.S., also were seen in the area.

Rumsfeld said Thursday indication has been found that enemy fire caused the crash. He praised the seven victims at a joint appearance Thursday with Australia's defense minister.

"Their deaths, along with that of the U.S. Special Forces soldier last week, underscore the fact that the mission in Afghanistan remains difficult and remains dangerous," Rumsfeld said.

Another reminder of the danger came Thursday as the United States began transferring detainees from Afghanistan to the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A C-17 cargo plane left the American base at the Kandahar airport carrying 20 suspected al-Qaida prisoners, bound and wearing masks and goggles.

While the plane was still on the ground preparing to take off, unknown gunmen began firing near the edge of the base, said Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Dave Lapan. The fire was not directed at the plane and was so far away from it that officials believe it was unrelated to the prisoner transfer, he said.

Officials had previously said they believed the shooting was unrelated to the prisoners because initial reports indicated it began 15 minutes after takeoff. But Lapan said later reports from the scene indicated the shooting happened earlier than previously believed at the war's stateside command center in Tampa, Fla.

Marines responded with heavy fire, said a base spokesman at Kandahar, Marine Lt. James Jarvis. He said he knew of no American casualties in the firefight.

The prisoners, suspected members of the al-Qaida terror network, were being flown to the heavily guarded Caribbean base for further questioning and possible trials by military tribunals. U.S. forces were holding 331 other prisoners at Kandahar and another 19 at the air base in Bagram, north of Afghanistan's capital, Kabul.

As many as nine prisoners had been held on the amphibious assault ship USS Bataan in the Arabian Sea, but on Thursday only one remained -- American Taliban John Walker Lindh. The United States also was no longer holding prisoners in the northern Afghan city Mazar-e-Sharif.

Far to the southeast, in the Philippines, some two dozen U.S. special forces troops were planning logistics and security for a larger force that could arrive within a week, a defense official said on condition of anonymity.

In Manila, Philippine armed forces spokesman Brig. Gen. Edilberto Adan said this week that small groups of American soldiers, eventually totaling more than 100, soon would start arriving.

"We all know that the Philippine government has been very seriously attempting to deal with terrorists on one or two islands," Rumsfeld said, referring to the Abu Sayyaf extremist group linked with al-Qaida.