Bosnian Prime Minister Adnan Terzic was quoted by the Oslobodjenje daily as saying that he had sent the request to Washington on Wednesday, but he declined to give any other details.
Following American requests for their arrest and transfer, in early 2002 Bosnian authorities transferred six naturalised Bosnian citizens from Algeria and Yemen to US troops that were engaged in Bosnia within the SFOR peace-keeping mission. The six men were arrested in 2001 on suspicion that they had been planning terrorist attacks on the US and British embassies in Sarajevo.
During an investigation launched by the Bosnian authorities, two of the six arrested men were stripped of Bosnian citizenship which they had been granted unlawfully.
In 2004, the families of the naturalised Bosnians lodged a complaint with the Bosnian Centre for Human Rights, which was at the time the highest competent judicial institution in the country, claiming that the human rights of the six men were violated with their extradition to the US.
The Centre ruled that the extradition of the six men to the USA, where they could face death penalty, was in violation of their human rights and asked the Bosnian government to take urgent measures to ensure their release.
A Bosnian Justice Ministry official visited the detainees in Guantanamo in 2004, where he was told that no formal indictment had been issued against the detained Bosnian citizens.
Earlier this week, the families of the detainees staged a protest rally outside the government headquarters in Sarajevo, after which the government authorised Terzic to request the release of the men from Guantanamo.