KABUL, Afghanistan -- Prison doors and cells have been fortified at the US military jail in Afghanistan, a US official said yesterday, as details emerged of an escape by a suspected Al Qaeda leader and three others who picked locks and then ran through a mine field.
The Pentagon's belated confirmation of the identity of one of the four who escaped in July, Omar al-Farouq, sparked anger in Southeast Asia, where he was one of Osama bin Laden's top lieutenants.
Some officials in Indonesia, where he was captured in 2002 before being handed over to US authorities, accused Washington of failing to inform them of the escape.
US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales described the apparent breakdown in communication as a ''serious problem" and told CNN it would be investigated.
Although the escape was widely reported in July, US authorities at the time gave only an alias to identify Farouq, who was born in Kuwait to Iraqi parents.
According to a top security consultant in Indonesia, Ken Conboy, Farouq joined Al Qaeda in the early 1990s and trained in Afghanistan for three years before unsuccessfully trying to enroll at a flight school in the Philippines so he could commandeer an airplane on a suicide mission.
He later plotted to stage car and truck bombings at US embassies across Southeast Asia on or near the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States, but the plan was thwarted and he was captured, Conboy said.
The four escapees boasted about their breakout on a video broadcast Oct. 18 on Dubai-based television station Al-Arabiya, according to two editors at the station, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to the media.
The editors said the four Arabs claimed to have plotted their escape on a Sunday when many of the Americans on the base were off duty. One of the four, Muhammad Hassan, said to be Libyan, said he picked the lock of their cell.
In the video, apparently filmed in Afghanistan, the men show fellow militants a map of the base and the location of their cell. Another shot in the video showed Hassan leading the others in prayer. The editors would not say how they received the video.
About 500 suspected militants are held in the prison, a plain-looking building of about three stories next to runways and the command center at Bagram, the US military headquarters in Afghanistan.
Military officials have declined to elaborate on how the men escaped.
A spokesman said yesterday that an investigation into the breakout turned up weaknesses in security and that these had been corrected.
An Indonesian antiterrorism official, Major General Ansyaad Mbai, sharply criticized the US government for failing to inform him that Farouq had escaped.
''We know nothing about the escape of Omar al-Farouq," Mbai said. ''He is a dangerous terrorist for us. His escape will increase the threat of terrorism in Indonesia.
