Australian Captured with Taliban Now in US Custody Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Monday December 17 7:36 AM ET (via Yahoo) Al Qaeda-Trained Australian Reportedly Handed to U.S. SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian man captured among al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan has been handed over to the U.S. military but there was no evidence to confirm reports a second Australian had been caught, officials said. Australian Attorney General Daryl Williams said Northern Alliance fighters handed over Adelaide-born David Hicks, a convert to Islam, to U.S. forces early Monday and that the 26-year-old had been transferred to a U.S. Navy ship. ``Investigations into Mr. Hicks' activities are continuing,'' he said in a joint statement with Defense Minister Robert Hill. Hicks was the second Westerner arrested by the Northern Alliance among Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan during the U.S.-led strikes against the network of Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden and his hard-line Islamic protectors. American John Walker Lindh has been transferred from a U.S. Marine base near the southern Afghanistan city of Kandahar to the USS Peleliu in the Arabian Sea. Lindh was captured near Mazar-i-Sharif earlier this month with other fighters of the Taliban, which has been toppled by the U.S. operation launched in retaliation for September 11 suicide plane attacks on America which Washington says bin Laden planned. Australian authorities would not say whether Hicks was also being held on the Peleliu. ``I'm not going to comment on where he is being held except to say that he's safely in the hands of United States military personnel at the present time,'' Brigadier Ken Gillespie, head of Australian forces in Afghanistan, told Australian Broadcasting Corp. (ABC) radio. Williams and Gillespie said Australia had no information about a report on U.S. broadcaster National Public Radio on Sunday that a second Australian man had been found in Afghanistan. National Public Radio said the man had been left behind with other wounded when Kandahar, the spiritual home and former stronghold of the Taliban, fell on Dec. 7. It quoted a local doctor as saying one of those left behind was ``an Australian with blue eyes.'' ``There have been reports today of a second Australian being captured in Afghanistan,'' Williams said. ``The Australian government has no information to verify these reports.'' Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said his department had been contacted by the family of a 25-year-old man who had not heard from him since he had traveled to Afghanistan. They were worried it was their unidentified family member who had been captured. ``We hear they're concerned that a member of that family may have gone in that direction but we've not been able to confirm any details about that,'' Downer told reporters. U.S. and Australian authorities are grappling with the legal status of Lindh and Hicks and how and in what jurisdiction they might be tried. Williams said Australia had formally requested permission from the United States for Australian police and national security officers to interview Hicks. Described by his father as an adventure seeker, Hicks spent time with the Kosovo Liberation Front and Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba in 1999 before moving to Afghanistan in 2000 to train with al Qaeda. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytpac-12.17.01-21:49:09-18568