The United States will start tohold pretrial hearings for an Australian and three al-Qaeda suspects held at the US Navy Base in Guantanamo Bay next month, USdefense officials said on Friday.

The Australian, David Hicks, and three al-Qaeda suspects from Yemen and Sudan are scheduled for separate hearings in a courtroomin a prison at the Guantanamo base during the week of August 23, the officials said.

These will be the hearings for the first criminal trials against terror suspects held at the Guantanamo base.

At the Guantanamo base, the United States holds 594 foreign nationals, mostly were captured during the US-led war in Afghanistan and have been held for more than two years without charges or access to lawyers.

The Pentagon has announced that it would quickly hold hearings for all the detainees at the Guantanamo base, in response to the Supreme Court ruling late last month that the government was jailing terrorism suspects without due process.

The Pentagon has also announced that the detainees could appearbefore US courts to contest their indefinite detention.

Source: Xinhua