Five British citizens being held at Guantanamo will be sent back within 24 hours. Officials in Britain say prosecutors will decide whether to release the men or charge them with a crime.

Legal experts believe it unlikely the five British citizens to be released will face trial at home because any information gleaned from the men during interrogation would be inadmissible since they had no access to lawyers. Lawyers also said it was questionable whether British courts have jurisdiction over alleged criminal acts in Afghanistan, unless acts of terrorism or treason could be proven.

Families and lawyers of the five prisoners have insisted throughout their two-year-long detention that the men are innocent and were mistakenly caught up in the U.S. war on terror.

The Guardian reports that the families are angry -- we don't blame them:

The father of a British terror suspect held in Guantanamo Bay yesterday denounced a leak from the Bush administration which alleged his son trained at an al-Qaida training camp. Azmat Begg, 65, was in the US capital as part of a campaign for justice for the four remaining Britons held without charge or access to a lawyer for up to two years.

The US leak, to the Daily Telegraph, alleges that the four remaining men trained in terrorist camps and learned skills such as bomb-making. But lawyers for the men yesterday described the claims as "rubbish" and "tendentious" and expressed fears that they might have invented confessions under the psychological pressure of two years' detention without charge or trial and in the mistaken belief they might face the death penalty.

Mr Begg, a former bank manager from Birmingham, said the leaked claims about his son were either American lies or "definitely" obtained under duress. He said Moazzam had been in Afghanistan as an aid worker, teaching and building wells for the poor, and since his detention by the US he had been "kept like an animal in a cell".

Mr Begg continued: "Mr President, I do not plead for mercy. My son has not been charged with any crime. He does not know what is alleged against him. Neither do I. He has been held captive for more than two years. "In all that time he has never been charged and tried. I do not ask for mercy. I ask for justice."

Joining the families at the Washington protest were actress Vanessa Redgrave and former hostage Terry Waite.

We're glad to see other organizations speaking out as well: