Lawyers have filed petitions in a US court on behalf of nine prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay detention centre, asking for their release.

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The BBC reports today that "the petitions say the detention is illegal and demand the men's release. The detainees named include two Britons, Moazzem Begg from Birmingham and Feroz Abassi from Croydon in London, three French citizens and a Turk, two Arabs from Jordan and Iraq and a Canadian. The petitions come hours after the Bush administration said it might release some of the prisoners. BBC Pentagon correspondent Nick Childs says it is increasingly clear that the administration was caught off-guard by Monday's ruling."
Let's not forget that "detainees from 40 countries are currently being held at the Cuba base. Most of them were captured in Afghanistan in late 2001 during the US-led invasion to oust the Taleban regime. Many have spent more than two years in captivity without being charged."

According to The Guardian, these "petitions on behalf of Moazzem Begg and Feroz Abbasi, filed at a federal court in Washington, represented the first wave of a widely anticipated assault on the legality of the detention centre in Cuba. [...] Human rights activists accuse the Pentagon and US justice department of seeking to subvert the supreme court ruling, which, they argue, calls for a review in a civilian court, by trying to substitute hastily arranged military reviews."

Furthermore, "lawyers for the 13 detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, whose victory at the Supreme Court gave them the right to challenge the detentions in federal court said on Friday that the Bush administration had agreed to let them travel within days to meet their clients at the naval base there. The visits, the first by civilian lawyers to Guantánamo to visit detainees who have not been charged with any crime, would be a preliminary step to early court hearings in which the lawyers could exercise their new authority to challenge the detentions." underlines The New York Times.

The Telegraph, in an interview with Moazzam Begg's (one of the prisoners) father quotes him as saying: "I am worried about his mental health. He has been confined for a long time. I am very much worried about his welfare. I want to see him home straight away, brought to England. He should be medically and physically examined and if he has done anything wrong, all right, take him to the court. If he has not done anything wrong, he should be released. I do not know why they are keeping him there. He must be immediately released and our Government should take full useful force to take him back rather than delay it."

More news on Guantanamo prisoners:
Yahoo! News - Full coverage on Guantanamo Detainees
Washington Post - Lawyers Seek Relief for 5 Detainees
Reuters - Lawyers Seek Release of Nine Guantanamo Prisoners

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