You cannot hold people incommunicado without telling them what the charges are

Clive Stafford-Smith Lawyer

But the prisoners are completely unaware of the writ of habeas corpus against American president George W Bush and attorney-general John Ashcroft at the United States District Court in Washington DC.

They have no contact with their families or with lawyers while being held at the base.

Australian David Hicks, 26, who is also being held in Camp X-ray, was also included in the court papers submitted on Tuesday.

Clive Stafford-Smith, one of the lawyers, said the writ called on the US Government to allow lawyers access to the men and to bring charges against them.

"Habeas corpus says that they are not being held legally under the constitution.

Death penalty

"You cannot hold people incommunicado without telling them what the charges are."

Mr Stafford-Smith, of the Louisiana Crisis Assistance Centre, which provides legal representation to death-row prisoners, said the men also potentially faced the death penalty.

The American court will be asked to schedule a hearing on the case, which Mr Stafford-Smith said he hoped would happen quickly.

Shafiq Rasul's family have said he is innocent

Mr Stafford-Smith, a British-born lawyer who now practises in America, is one of a team which also includes the Centre for Constitutional Rights in New York, and Joseph Margulies, a Minneapolis-based lawyer.

He told the New York Times: "This is beyond anything the United States has ever attempted.

"There's never been a situation in which the United States has taken the position that - without any process at all - a person can be held indefinitely, without being notified of the charges they face, without access to counsel."

In the legal papers, the lawyers claim the men are not terrorists and their detention breaks the fundamental right to "due process" guaranteed in the American constitution.

Special legal team

The legal team believes they are backed by a Supreme Court decision that refugees from Cuba, Haiti and other countries held in detention centres were entitled to access to a lawyer and knowledge of any charges faced.

They will face a specially created legal team set up by Mr Ashcroft and led by American solicitor-general Ted Olsen, whose wife Barbara was on board the hijacked plane which crashed into the Pentagon on 11 September.

The two Britons were visited by officials from the British embassy in Washington last month, but did not request assistance from it.

An embassy spokeswoman said: "We would not intervene in a judicial process."