Guantanamo inmates fly home

Pakistan hopes more prisoners will be released soon

The United States has released three Afghans and a Pakistani who it had been holding as terror suspects at its military base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

The Afghans were flown to the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, and handed over to the local authorities

There are about 600 inmates at the Cuban base

One Pakistani was also returned to his country, and is being debriefed.

The US announced last week that it planned to release some of the prisoners held in Cuba whom it no longer considered a threat, or of further use to the intelligence services.

A spokesman for the International Red Cross in Kabul said it was trying to put the prisoners in touch with relatives.

"We will follow their progress until they are with their families," she told the AFP news agency.

More releases

Mohammed Sagheer, from North-West Frontier Province which borders Afghanistan, is the first of 58 Pakistanis detained at Camp Delta to be set free.

Last month, Pakistan said the majority of its 58 citizens detained at Camp Delta were not linked to the al-Qaeda network of Osama Bin Laden, blamed for the 11 September attacks on the United States.

State-owned Pakistan Television, which showed Mr Sagheer arriving back in the capital on Sunday night, quoted local authorities as saying 13 more Pakistani prisoners were to be released.

It gave no indication, however, of the timescale.

A spokesman for Pakistan's Interior Ministry said Mr Sagheer would be held for debriefing for a while.

Criticism

In the past few months, a team of Pakistani intelligence and security officials visited the detention centre at the US naval base on Cuba and interrogated each of the Pakistani prisoners.

The men were arrested by US-led coalition forces during the campaign against al-Qaeda fighters based in Afghanistan and the country's now-ousted Taleban rulers who gave them shelter.

Human rights groups have criticised the US for holding nearly 600 men from about 40 countries at Guantanamo indefinitely, without bringing any charges against them.