Britain dismissed criticism today of the treatment of al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners held at a US base in Cuba.
British Foreign Secretary Mr Jack Straw conceded the prisoners - including three Britons - had not been formally charged after being captured in Afghanistan and taken to the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for interrogation.
"These people . . . are accused of having been members of the most dangerous terrorist organisation which the world has ever seen," he told BBC radio. "That is why they have been rounded up - because it is assumed that they are members of al-Qaeda".
Mr Straw said, however, he recognised the prisoners had rights and that the British government would ensure the three Britons, in particular, received those rights.
Mr Straw said he had discussed the prisoners in a telephone call on Saturday with his counterpart in Washington, US Secretary of State Mr Colin Powell.
US Defence Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld said on Friday the prisoners would be held as unlawful combatants and not as prisoners of war, opting for a status that gives them fewer rights than under the Geneva Conventions.
Human rights groups have expressed horror at how the prisoners were transported - shackled, manacled and blindfolded - and then locked up in outdoor wire-fence cells at the camp.
The US Pentagon has denied reports that the prisoners in Cuba are being kept in small cages and treated inhumanely.