Sarajevo - Bosnia-Herzegovinan authorities recently requested guarantees from the US government that six Bosnian citizens detained in Guantanamo Bay prison would not be executed or tortured, the Foreign Ministry confirmed Thursday in Sarajevo. "Bosnia-Herzegovina asked the US authorities to give guarantees that those people will not be sentenced to death, and will not be exposed to torture, inhumane and humiliating treatment," said the letter signed by Bosnia's ministers of justice, human rights and foreign affairs.
The Foreign Ministry said the official correspondence was sent earlier this month, after the government approved it last month.
Six Bosnian citizens of Algerian origin - all married to Bosnian women and known as the Algerian Group, were arrested in Bosnia- Herzegovina in October 2001 under suspicion of planning possible terrorist activities against US and British diplomatic missions in Bosnia.
The arrests were conducted in a nationwide Bosnian action to fight terrorism after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.
In February 2002, immediately after the six were released by a Bosnian court due to lack of evidence, the Bosnian government handed them over to the United States, which transferred them to the US internment camp Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
