WASHINGTON, Nov 30: The United States has plans to release scores of prisoners at its Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba for Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, according to reports Sunday.

A US military official told Time magazine that it would release 140 inmates from its detention center in Cuba, in the face of mounting international criticism of the legal limbo that has left them without access to legal representation.

A US military official told the magazine that the detainees slated for release are “the easiest 20 per cent” of the estimated 660 people kept at Guantanamo Bay, which the United States has leased from Cuba since 1903.

US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that some of the detainees had been captured by Afghan warlords and sold for the bounty offered by Washington for Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

“Many would not have been detained under the normal rules of engagement,” the source told the weekly.

“We’re dealing with some very, very dangerous people, but the pendulum is swinging too far in the wrong direction.”

Twenty prisoners were released and repatriated on Nov 21, but another 20 arrived around the same time, leaving the total number of inmates unchanged.

London and Washington are set to strike a deal for the return to Britain of nine British “terror” suspects held in Cuba, a lawyer for the detainees was quoted as saying in a newspaper published here on Sunday.

Human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith added in a separate newspaper interview that one of the detainees had been forced to admit taking part in an Al Qaeda plot to attack Britain’s parliament with anthrax in a bid to kill Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Stafford Smith said the deal to have the detainees returned to Britain will be tied up by Christmas, ending a bitter two-year transatlantic row over the issue.

London is opposed to the detainees facing any US military court, and Mr Blair failed to obtain any concessions during a recent state visit to Britain by US President George Bush.—AFP