KEY POINTS:
LONDON - Human rights lawyers say the United States is operating "floating prisons" to house those arrested in its war on terror.
The lawyers also claim there has been an effort to conceal the number and whereabouts of detainees, a report in Britain's Guardian newspaper says.
Information about the operation of prison ships had emerged through several sources, including statements from the US military, the Council of Europe and related parliamentary bodies, and the testimonies of prisoners, the report said.
The analysis - to be published this year by the human rights group Reprieve - also says there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when US President George W. Bush declared the practice had stopped.
Research by Reprieve says the US may have used as many as 17 ships as "floating prisons" since 2001.
Detainees are interrogated on the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it says.
Ships understood to have held prisoners included the USS Bataan and USS Peleliu, the Guardian said.
A further 15 ships are suspected of having operated around the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has been used as a military base by Britain and the US.
Reprieve intends to raise specific concerns involving the USS Ashland when it was off Somalia early last year, conducting maritime security operations in an effort to capture al Qaeda terrorists.
Many people were abducted by Somali, Kenyan and Ethiopian forces in a systematic operation involving regular interrogations by individuals believed to be members of the FBI and CIA, the Guardian report said.
Ultimately more than 100 individuals were "disappeared" to prisons in locations including Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Guantanamo Bay, it said.
The Reprieve study includes the account of a prisoner released from Guantanamo Bay, who described a fellow inmate's story of detention on an amphibious assault ship.
"One of my fellow prisoners in Guantanamo was at sea on an American ship with about 50 others before coming to Guantanamo ... he was in the cage next to me." the prisoner said, according to the Guardian report.
"He told me that there were about 50 other people on the ship. They were all closed off in the bottom of the ship ... [and] were beaten even more severely than in Guantanamo."
Reprieve's legal director, Clive Stafford Smith, said the use of ships was a perfect way to avoid scrutiny.
"By its own admission, the US Government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have been 'through the system' since 2001."
A US Navy spokesman told the Guardian that "there are no detention facilities on US Navy ships".
But he said it was a matter of public record that some individuals had been put on ships "for a few days" in what he called the initial days of detention.
Meanwhile, a 150-year-old Muslim Indian seminary which is said to have inspired the Taleban has issued a fatwa against terrorism, insisting Islam is a religion of peace.
Senior clerics from Darul Uloom Deoband said they wished to wipe out terrorism. The rector, Habibur Rehman, said: "Islam rejects all kinds of unjust violence, breach of peace, bloodshed, murder and plunder and does not allow it in any form."
- INDEPENDENT, AAP
