Guantanamo Bay may be a place of legal limbo for 680 detainees, but clearly US laws apply to US personnel overseeing the suspects being held there. A US Army chaplain and two translators, all of them Muslim, have been charged with spying. The chaplain and one of the translators are accused of handling classified information and the second translator is allegedly guilty of espionage and aiding the enemy. At this point, it is entirely inappropriate to suggest that any of the three are guilty.

But if they are, what is surprising is that not more individuals from a country which sets such great a store by human rights, justice and equality before the law have not already broken rank. That the land of the free has created a small, hidden outpost of tyranny is becoming ever clearer. A deeply critical report last week from the International Red Cross, which has in the past condemned the conditions under which the detainees are being held and forced some improvements, focused on the uncertainty that the prisoners face. They simply do not know what their future is. There have reportedly been at least 21 attempted suicides so far, and depression among the inmates is very common. Whatever the crimes the detainees may have committed, the nature and duration of their detention is giving growing cause for concern in the US — not least among a number of senior US judges and military lawyers. Last week, a group of them said that after two years imprisonment, the detainees deserved to know what was in store for them. Or, as they said, justice delayed is justice denied.

The response from Washington was that these men are being held because they supported or were involved in international terrorism and that they will all, in due course, receive a fair legal hearing.

That is no longer good enough. We support the war on international terrorism, but we must nonetheless be concerned at the way in which those alleged — not proven — to be terrorists are being treated.

Some soldiers and administrators at Guantanamo may feel uneasy about the policy that they are executing. If any US personnel serving at the detention center have been spying for Al-Qaeda, then they deserve to have the book thrown at them. If on the other hand they have been motivated to act out of decent humane feelings and in protest at what they consider to be wrongdoing by the United States, then their position is very different indeed.

Unfortunately US military law is unlikely to acknowledge such subtleties. It will treat any apparent offense with the greatest severity, not least because unless one or two protesters are stopped and punished, many more unhappy US personnel at Guantanamo might step forward.