Downing Street has dismissed claims that three British al Qaeda suspects detained by the US are being mistreated.

Speaking as a UK inspection team reported back to the Foreign Office, Number 10 said the suspects were fit and well.

Dismissing reports that the detainees were blindfolded and shackled in inhumane conditions, a spokesman for the prime minister said: "The team confirmed that the three had no significant complaints - they are in good health and there was no sign of any mistreatment."

"There were no gags, no goggles, no earmuffs and no shackling of the detainees."

Later in the day, Ben Bradshaw, the foreign office minister, told MPs that the British government was satisfied that the three men were in good emotional and physical heath.

In a Commons statement, he said that the detainees were being held in an environment which complied with international law and said the government had no concerns for their immediate safety.

Fed and Watered

Downing Street had earlier said that the British inspection team had confirmed that the detainees were being given three meals a day and were being allowed to worship.

The three, who were "able to speak freely and without inhibition" to the team, are also being given daily medical checks, Downing Street said.

The intervention came after Jack Straw called for the suspects to be treated "humanely and in accordance with customary international law".

The government moved on Sunday to soothe growing unease among Labour MPs about conditions facing the prisoners - some of whom claim British citizenship - as photographs showing shaven-headed, kneeling and bound suspects dominate the newspapers.

"The British government's position is that prisoners - regardless of their technical status - should be treated humanely and in accordance with customary international law," Straw said in an official statement.

"We have always made that clear and the Americans have said they share this view."

However, on Monday Number 10 said that media reports suggesting the detainees had been "tortured" were totally incorrect.

According to the government the images published in many newspapers showed the detainees "in processing" and were not illustrative of their day to day treatment.

Fears

But speaking to the BBC, the former foreign minister Tony Lloyd expressed his concern that "the treatment does seem to be way below the standards we would expect".

"Are those prisoners going to be held up to the standards of the Geneva Convention, because that standard was set during a period which has seen us take in world wars where people were guilty of the most horrendous crimes, but we insisted that the Geneva Convention was the minimum standard. to provide a floor below which civilised nations shouldn't fall," he said.

"And frankly, Britain is a civilised nation; we must insist ourselves that we abide by the Geneva Convention, and we have got to insist that our allies, and we were America's closest ally, stick by that minimum standard."

Downing Street refused to be drawn on what will happen next to the three suspects - stressing it remained a "matter for the US" - and refused to name the three.

After consultation with the families concerned Downing Street, however, named one of the men as Feroz Abbasi - a 22-year-old British Muslim from Croydon.