SARAJEVO, Jan 25: Some 200 people gathered in downtown Sarajevo on Friday to protest last week’s handover of six Arab terror suspects to US authorities, saying the move violated Bosnia’s laws and the European human rights convention.

The Bosnian wives of the six Arabs were among the demonstrators, whose hour-long protest in front of the Bosnian parliament and government building was peaceful.

The five Algerians and one man with joint Algerian-Yemeni nationality were arrested in Bosnia last October under suspicion of plotting attacks against US and British interests in Bosnia for Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network.

The Supreme Court of Bosnia’s Muslim-Croat entity ordered the detainees released last week, but authorities handed them over to US troops for transfer to the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The men are being held alongside fighters captured by US forces in Afghanistan.

The protestors carried banners saying: “Bring them back, we will not quit,” “Lies are your weapon, ours is the truth,” “We want justice” and “We protect the law.”

“Under the (European human rights) convention they have a right to contact their families and lawyers, we all know that, but they have not called,” Nadja Dizdarevic, the wife of one of the Arabs, said.—AFP