The US government was accused of "barbarism" and employing "victor's justice" as it emerged that two Britons could be among the first detainees at Guantanamo Bay to face trial by secretive military tribunals.
Mr Moazzam Begg (35) and Mr Feroz Abbasi (23) are on US President George Bush's initial list of six who could face the "military commissions".
British officials today assured the families of the two men that the death penalty "appeared unlikely" in their cases.
They also said that the two men had not yet been charged. Exact details of the tribunals have not been released and the British Government said it would launch "vigorous" discussions with the US over the men's access to lawyers, standards of evidence and appeals in case of guilty verdicts.
Both men are accused of being al Qaida terrorists. Mr Moazzam, from Sparkbrook, Birmingham, was seized by the CIA in Pakistan in February 2002 and taken to Afghanistan, where he was held for a year without access to British consular staff, before being shipped out to Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
His family have always maintained that he was a victim of mistaken identity. His father father Mr Azmat Begg, 63, said today: "The trial will be military, the judge will be military and yet my son is a civilian. This is just not right.
"If the Government or military are appointing people in the court, that is absolutely wrong. It should be an independent person.
"My son was never involved in al Qaida. He is a proper, family man." Mr Abbasi has been at Camp Delta for 18 months and was held in Afghanistan before that.