SAN FRANSISCO - The US government said today it had neither an exact count nor all the names of hundreds of people captured in Afghanistan over a year ago and now detained at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.

US government lawyers made the disclosure during a court hearing in a case on behalf of Falen Gherebi, a Libyan national believed to be in US custody in Cuba.

In May, a US District Court said it did not have the authority to consider whether Gherebi was being held lawfully and remanded the matter to an appeals court.

At the appeals court hearing on Monday, the planned debate over the government's right to hold Gherebi dissolved into a more basic discussion over whether the US government even had kept complete records on the people being held.

"They won't let him out and they also won't tell us if he's there," said Stephen Yagman, a lawyer for Falen Gherebi's brother, Belaid Gherebi, a San Diego resident, who has sued to get his brother legal representation. "This is crazy. This is just nuts."

Yagman complained that the government has stonewalled such requests on behalf of Gherebi and other detainees by maintaining ignorance as to who exactly it had in custody.

A panel of appeals court judges hearing the case on Monday expressed shock about the apparent lack of record keeping on a group of hundreds of people, possibly including some children, who have been in custody for 577 days.

"It strikes me as astonishing that the government says they have no idea whether this gentleman is or is not being held," one said. "Don't you even keep records?"

Government lawyers responded that while they had attempted to keep records, they were incomplete because some of those who were arrested had not co-operated with authorities. They said that translating the names from Arabic to English had created further problems with spelling.

After scanning a list for names similar to that of Falen Gherebi, the lawyers said: "We think we have him but we're not sure. We can't confirm it 100 per cent."

The US government, which maintains the people being held are all dangerous individuals with connections to terrorists, has argued that the court does not have jurisdiction to rule on the legal rights of these people, since they are being held on foreign soil, in Cuba, on land that is only leased to the United States.

- REUTERS