WASHINGTON, Oct 10: The International Red Cross said on Friday it was unacceptable that the United States continues to detain more than 600 people at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba without charges or prospect of a timely trial.

The United States set up the detention camp in early 2002 to hold suspected members of al Qaeda captured during the war to overthrow the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan.

But it refuses to treat the detainees as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions and reserves the right to hold them indefinitely without bringing them to trial.

“The main concern for us is the U.S. authorities ... have effectively placed them beyond the law,” said Amanda Williamson, spokeswoman in the Washington office of the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross.

“After more than 18 months of captivity, the internees have no idea about their fate, no means of recourse through any legal mechanism. They have been placed in a legal vacuum, a legal black hole. This, for the ICRC, is unacceptable,” Williamson told Reuters.

The Red Cross, which has an international mandate to monitor compliance with the Geneva Conventions and visit people detained in conflicts, has repeatedly expressed its concerns about aspects of the detention camp at Guantanamo, which was deliberately chosen because of its legal ambiguity.

But it usually couches any criticism in careful language because its priority is to retain access to the detainees and to work behind the scenes for improvements.

ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger visited Washington in May and told the United States it was time to set a legal framework for the detainees.

But little has happened since then and the Red Cross has grown increasingly concerned about the psychological effect of the uncertainty on the detainees.

“As time wears on, the anxiety for the detainees increases, and so do our concerns for the impact this uncertainty is having on the population in Guantanamo,” Williamson said. “We did feel that we had to make our concerns known.

“Clearly when you look at Guantanamo today, that crucial element — the lack of a legal framework — remains unresolved.”

The United States says the detainees are “enemy combatants” but not prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. It reserves the right to try them before military tribunals but has not yet brought any to trial.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan on Friday repeated the U.S. position that it treats the detainees consistently with the requirements of the conventions. “They are enemy combatants. We are at war on terrorism,” he added.

On Thursday, a group of former U.S. federal judges, diplomats, military officials and human rights advocates urged the Supreme Court to review the case of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere in the name of “terrorism.”

“The idea that American executive branch personnel, particularly military personnel, can detain people beyond the reach of habeas corpus is just repugnant to the rule of law,” said John Gibbons, former chief judge of the federal appeals court in Philadelphia.—Reuters