US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last night defended the indefinite detention of hundreds of foreign terrorism suspects in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and said they had disclosed vital information about al Qaeda.
Rumsfeld said interrogation of the prisoners had provided details of the group behind the September 11th, 2001 attacks and could help prevent future acts of terrorism.
In Washington, the Pentagon gave its first account of whom it was holding at the base, and said the prisoners included senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders.
"Enemy combatants at Guantanamo include not only rank-and-file Jihadists who took up arms against the United States, but also senior al Qaeda operatives and leaders, and Taliban leaders," Mr Paul Butler, a Pentagon official involved in Guantanamo policy, said without providing names, nationalities or any specific evidence.
Mr Rumsfeld also said the United States would create a board to review each year the cases of prisoners held at the US naval base to consider whether they should be released or held further as a threat to US security.
Speaking to a business group in Miami, Mr Rumsfeld called the continued detention of the roughly 650 Guantanamo prisoners without charges or access to lawyers a "security necessity, and I might add it is also just plain common sense."
"I recognize that in our society the idea of detaining people without lawyers seems unusual, detaining people without trials seems unusual. After all, our country stands for freedom and it stands for the protection of rights," Mr Rumsfeld said.
But he said the prisoners are not "common criminals. They're enemy combatants and terrorists who are being detained for acts of war against our country. And that is why different rules have to apply," he said.