NYT: Details Emerge on Brazen Escape in Afghanistan (more serious breach)

Details Emerge on a Brazen Escape in Afghanistan
By ERIC SCHMITT
and TIM GOLDEN
Published: December 4, 2005


WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 - The prisoners were considered some of the most dangerous men among the hundreds of terror suspects locked behind the walls of a secretive and secure American military detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan.

Their escape, however, might as well have been a breakout from the county jail.

According to military officials familiar with the episode, the suspects are believed to have picked the lock on their cell, changed out of their bright orange uniforms and made their way through a heavily guarded military base under the cover of night. They then crawled over a faulty wall where a getaway vehicle was apparently waiting for them, the officials said. "It is embarrassing and amazing at the same time," one American defense official said. "It was a disaster."

The fact of the escape was disclosed by the American authorities shortly after it set off an intense manhunt at Bagram, 40 miles north of Kabul, on the morning of July 11. But internal military documents and interviews with military and intelligence officials indicate it was a far more serious breach than the Defense Department has acknowledged. One of the four suspects was identified as Al Qaeda's highest-ranking operative in Southeast Asia when he was captured in 2002, a fact that emerged only during an unrelated military trial last month. Another, a Saudi, was also described by intelligence officials as an important Qaeda operative in Afghanistan.

The detainees planned their breakout meticulously, United States officials said, apparently studying the guards' routines, getting themselves moved into a cell that was less visible to the guards and taking advantage of construction work that was intended to expand and improve security at the prison....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/international/asia/04escape.html?hp&ex=1133672400&en=940f0bf560dee9a5&ei=5094&partner=homepage

so they can be tracked.

But they didn't need the Q Branch keyring!

:rofl: