Taliban captives should go home, says rights group

The US has no legal basis for holding members of the Taliban at Guantanamo Bay, the organisation Human Rights Watch said in a letter to the American defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.

The intervention comes amid growing calls for access to prisoners held by the US following September 11 and the war in Afghanistan.

The group, which with Amnesty International has been monitoring the situation of prisoners, said yesterday that there were three types of prisoners at the US camp in Cuba, who should be released.

They were "Taliban soldiers who were detained in the now-concluded war between the US and the government of Afghanistan, unless they are being prosecuted for war crimes; civilians who have no meaningful connection to al-Qaida or the Taliban and probably should never have been sent to Guantanamo in the first place; and suspected terrorists whose detention had nothing to do with the war in Afghanistan, unless they are charged with a crime and prosecuted".

"There are people being held at Guantanamo who shouldn't be there,"said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.

"The US cannot simply hold the detainees for as long as it wants." Attempts to provide legal representation for those held at Guantanamo Bay have so far been unsuccessful.

Human Rights Watch claims the Taliban soldiers captured during the war should have been repatriated following the formation of the government of Hamid Karzai.

Mr Roth suggested that, under the Geneva convention, the US should release those soldiers unless they are being charged with war crimes or other criminal offences.

The US has released some prisoners from Guantanamo Bay but says that others are providing useful intelligence. The Red Cross has been allowed to visit them.