US drops Guantanamo charges

The US military has refused to release five Guantanamo Bay detainees - despite confirming it is to drop war crimes charges against them.

No reason was given for the decision on Tuesday.

The military said in a statement it retained the right to file new charges against the five men at a later time.

The announcement came a month after lieutenant colonel Darrel Vandeveld, the former prosecutor for the five suspects, resigned after criticising his own office for withholding evidence helpful to the defence of another detainee.

Six military prosecutors have quit the Guantanamo court in the last four years.

Some have said that the US government sought to use evidence obtained through torture while one alleged the trials were tainted by political interference.

'False confessions'

Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said: "The implosion of these five prosecutions painfully underscores how the Bush administration's torture and detention policies have failed to render justice in any sense of the word."

Noor Uthman Muhammed, Binyam Mohamed, Sufyiam Barhoumi, Ghassan Abdullah al Sharbi, and Jabran Said Bin al Qahtani had been charged with conspiracy and "providing material support for terrorism".