Arab News Staff Writer

JEDDAH, 30 January 2004 — A group of Saudi lawyers said they were continuing their efforts for the release of Saudi detainees held by US authorities in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The group yesterday held a meeting under the chairmanship of Ahmed Muhammad Mazhar to review their efforts to win the release of the prisoners.

The meeting comes after reports that the United States might release up to two-dozen prisoners from Guantanamo “in the near future.”

Dr. Muhammad Al-Idrissi, Saleh Al-Salim, Katib Al-Shammary and Khaled Al-Salim, secretary-general of the group, attended the meeting in Riyadh. The lawyers expressed their hope that US authorities would hand over the Saudi prisoners to the Kingdom on the basis of a bilateral agreement signed 72 years ago.

“The team will continue its efforts to alleviate the suffering of the Saudi prisoners’ families and relatives,” they said in a press statement.

They commended the US Embassy in Riyadh for its support to the team.

“They will continue its efforts with the Red Cross for the exchange of letters between the Saudi prisoners and their relatives,” the statement added.

“Maybe two dozen prisoners could be released ... in the near future,” Keith Peterson, the press attaché for the US Embassy in Stockholm, said on Wednesday. He spoke after a visit by the US Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues Pierre-Richard Prosper.

Peterson provided no details about either which prisoners would be released or their nationalities.

There are approximately 660 detainees from 42 countries at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay. They include 115 from Saudi Arabia. Most were captured in Afghanistan as part of the US “fight on terror” following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. Washington has classified the prisoners as “enemy combatants” rather than as prisoners of war.

This classification and consequent uncertain legal status has kept them outside the realm of the Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners of war and allowed the US authorities to hold them indefinitely beyond the reach of courts either in the United States or elsewhere.