President Gayoom has promised to act after riots last year

Reforms in the Maldives will lack credibility unless prisoners of conscience there are released, Amnesty International says.

The London-based human rights group wants five men and women freed immediately and unconditionally.

It says they are being denied their right to freedom of expression.

The Maldives Government says there are no political prisoners in its jails and all the detainees were tried in open court with access to lawyers.

"They got fair trials and were sentenced according to the penal code," the Maldives' Acting High Commissioner in London, Adam Hassan, told the BBC.

No move towards reform can gain credibility while these prisoners of conscience remain in detention Amnesty International

The islands' government recently set up a human rights commission and ordered an inquiry into deaths in custody last September which triggered unprecedented anti-government protests.

In a statement, Amnesty said the five men and women were being detained in gross violation of their right to freedom of expression - four of them after what it calls grossly unfair trials.

Some of the prisoners named are said to have been sentenced to long prison terms for being involved in publishing articles critical of the government on a clandestine internet magazine.

Riots

Amnesty does note there have been some positive developments in the Maldives in recent months - such as the setting up of the human rights commission.

But it complains this commission cannot deal with cases that date back more than a year prior to its establishment.

Promises of reform for the future, says Amnesty, can only be taken seriously if clear cases of gross violations from the past are resolved.

Amnesty also acknowledges that an inquiry was held into the deaths of jail inmates last September.

This week President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom said security personnel at the jail had acted illegally and would be prosecuted.