PARIS, Aug 9 (AFP) - French prosecutors on Monday opposed a fresh request for the conditional release of four Frenchmen repatriated from the US prison at Guantanamo Bay and under investigation in France for terrorism-related crimes.
Last week, a Paris appeals court judge rejected an emergency appeal for the release of the four, in line with recommendations from the prosecutors. On Monday, a larger panel of judges was re-examining the request.
The panel was expected to deliver its ruling later Monday, lawyers for the accused said.
Mourad Benchellali, 23, Nizar Sassi, 25, Brahim Yadel, 33, and Imad Achab Kanouni, 27, were placed under investigation on July 31, four days after their return to France, on suspicion of criminal conspiracy in relation with a terrorist enterprise.
Benchellali and Sassi are also suspected of using false passports that allowed them to reach Afghanistan, where the four men were arrested by US forces on the border with Pakistan in December 2001.
The French nationals are suspected of spending significant time in Al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and belonging to a network that recruited Islamic militants.
Investigators are particularly interested in any information the suspects might have about safe houses in Kabul and Pakistan, the Tora Bora caves on Afghanistan's border with Pakistan and Al-Qaeda training camps, court sources said.
Defence attorneys for Benchellali and Sassi have said that keeping the men in detention is inhumane due to the more than two years they spent in the prison at Guantanamo Bay, and not justified by the evidence against them.
The lawyers have also alleged that the two men were abused while incarcerated at the controversial US jail in Cuba.
Three other French detainees remain among the estimated 600 inmates at the US detention facility in Cuba.