War crime trials arranged by the Pentagon against detainees at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was faulty and unfair, as disclosed by secret messages written by two US military prosecutors last year.

In one of the email messages revealed by the New York Times on Monday, Capt. John Carr, an Air Force prosecutor, told his superiors in March 2004 that the Pentagon-appointed military courts had "handpicked" four Guantanamo detainees to ensure all of them would be convicted.

The emails were written at a time when the Bush administration and the Pentagon were eager to start war crime trials against terrorist suspects, the first of this kind since the aftermath of the World War Two.

Carr also said that he had been told that any exculpatory evidence-- information that could help detainees to defend themselves in such trials-- would probably be withheld by the military.

Another prosecutor, Maj. Robert Preston, said that he could not bring himself to write a legal motion saying the trials would be "full and fair", as he knew they would not be so.

However, in a recent interview with the newspaper, Brig. Gen. Thomas L. Hemingway, a senior advisor for setting up the war crime trials, dismissed these allegations.

He said there is no evidence supporting the argument of the two prosecutors.

The Bush administration and the Pentagon have been facing persistent criticisms about the legitimacy of the war crime trial system, which they have been pushing forward since 2002.

The military commission, the new body created to carry out such trials, has overwhelming power in convicting the defendants, who will be deprived of the protection of civil or military laws.

The trials, which began last August against four detainees at Guantanamo, were suspended in November when a federal judge ruled the trials violated both US and international laws.

But a three-member higher court panel, including John G. Roberts, US President George W. Bush's pick for a Supreme Court seat, reversed that ruling on July 15.

The Pentagon said they expected to resume the trials in a few weeks and eight more detainees will be charged with war crimes soon.

Source: Xinhua