THE US has reportedly been accused of operating secret "floating prisons" to hold and interrogate war on terror suspects.
Human rights lawyers claim to have compiled a detailed list of US ships that have been used as offshore prisons for terror detainees, UK newspaper The Guardian reports.
The information has been reportedly gleaned from a number of sources, including from official statements from US military, official European reports and the testimonies of prisoners.
Human rights organisation Reprieve, which also operates in Australia, say they will publish the claims later this year.
"They (US authorities) choose ships to try to keep their misconduct as far as possible from the prying eyes of the media and lawyers. We will eventually reunite these ghost prisoners with their legal rights, ` Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve`s legal director, said to The Guardian.
"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.
"The US Government must show a commitment to rights and basic humanity by immediately revealing who these people are, where they are, and what has been done to them."
The Reprieve report will include an alleged testimony from a detainee in the US war on terror prison Guantanamo Bay.
He recounts second hand allegations of mistreatment aboard a US navy 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.
"He told me that there were about 50 other people on the ship. They were all closed off in the bottom of the ship.
"The prisoner commented to me that it was like something you see on TV. The people held on the ship were beaten even more severely than in Guantanamo."
Reprieve has urged the US Government to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained.
The US navy however has denied the claims.
"There are no detention facilities on US navy ships," Commander Jeffrey Gordon, a US navy spokesman, told The Guardian.
However, he told the newspaper it was a matter of public record that some individuals had been put on ships "for a few days" during what he called the initial days of detention.
Reprieve also says there have been more than 200 new cases of so-called extraordinary rendition since 2006, despite US President George W. Bush`s reassurances that the practice had ceased.
Extraordinary rendition involves terror suspects being detained and sent for interrogation to countries where Western legal and penal codes of conduct do not apply.
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