The Pentagon said no evidence had been found to support the allegations of two US military prosecutors that the war crime trials against Guantanamo detainees were rigged.

Pentagon spokesman Lawrence T. Di Rita was quoted by Tuesday's The Washington Post as saying that the military had conducted a very "thorough" probe after the two prosecutors made the charges in several e-mails sent to their superiors early last year.

He dismissed the allegations, which were disclosed by Monday's The New York Times, as "much a do about nothing."

According to The New York Times, in one of the e-mails, 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 e-mails were written at a time when the Bush administration and the Pentagon were eager to start war crime trials against terror suspects, the first of their kind since the aftermath of the World War Two.

Carr also said 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 he could not in good conscience write a legal motion that said the trials would be "full and fair", which he knew would not.

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 commissions, new organs created to carry out such trials, have 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 that 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