"They took us off the plane, humiliated us in a very disrespectful way," said Omar Shahin, of Phoenix.

The six Muslim scholars were returning from a conference in Minneapolis of the North American Imams Federation, said Shahin, president of the group. Five of them were from the Phoenix-Tempe area, while one was from Bakersfield, Calif., he said.

Three of them stood and said their normal evening prayers together on the plane, as 1.7 billion Muslims around the world do every day, Shahin said. He attributed any concerns by passengers or crew to ignorance about Islam.

"I never felt bad in my life like that," he said. "I never. Six imams. Six leaders in this country. Six scholars in handcuffs. It's terrible."

Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, expressed anger at the detentions.

"CAIR will be filing a complaint with relevant authorities in the morning over the treatment of the imams to determine whether the incident was caused by anti-Muslim hysteria by the passengers and/or the airline crew," Hooper said. "Because, unfortunately, this is a growing problem of singling out Muslims or people perceived to be Muslims at airports, and it's one that we've been addressing for some time."

Hooper said the meeting drew about 150 imams from all over the country, and that those attending included U.S. Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, D-Minneapolis, who just became the first Muslim elected to Congress. Shahin said they went as far as notifying police and the FBI about their meeting in advance.

Shahin expressed frustration that _ despite extensive efforts by him and other Muslim leaders since even before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks _ so many Americans know so little about Islam.

"If up to now they don't know about prayers, this is a real problem," he said.

Reached by cell phone just after his release, Shahin said he didn't know where they would spend the night or how they would try to get back to Phoenix on Tuesday. Hooper said US Airways refused to put the men on another flight.

Hogan said more information would likely be released Tuesday.

The other passengers on the flight, which was carrying 141 passengers and five crew members, were re-screened for boarding, Rader said. The plane took off about three hours after the men were removed from the flight.

Incoming flights were diverted to the city's main Fiumicino airport while departing flights were delayed, prompting long queues at its check-ins.

The alert had been prompted by an anonymous caller, who phoned fire fighters shortly after 8 am to say there was a bomb aboard a cargo plane.

Ciampino airport, which is located about 30 kilometres south of the Italian capital, hosts military and private planes and low-cost carriers such as Easyjet and Ryanair.

The Detroit-area resident and Saginaw Valley State University student has now been charged with two felonies and a misdemeanor because of the incident.

He was attending the meeting to get extra credit for an urban sociology class. He was unaware of the council rule, which calls for all men to remove their hats.

"It's not about them trying to bring order to a meeting because my hat -- not its shape, form or fashion -- disrupted the proceedings," he said.

"They just want to control us and tell us what we can or cannot do. I will not bow down and bow out and follow blindly."

Littleton says he believes the rule discriminates.

"A Jewish man -- would you ask me to remove my yarmulke? A kofee? A turban? Anything like that?" Littleton said.

"But I guess a Los Angeles Dodgers hat is not a religious symbol. That is secular. You respect religion but you don't respect this."

Littleton plans on going to the Saginaw County Courthouse this week to be arraigned on the charges.

They record high quality digital images, which are then fed back and stored in a special utility belt.

The head cams have been used in other parts of Britain but will be used for the first time in London by Haringey's Safer Neighbourhoods team this week.

Haringey Council's Safer Communities Partnership is funding the cost of the equipment, which is being used as part of a five-day crackdown on anti-social behaviour in the area.

The video images are said to be of very good quality and they could be used in court as evidence to support a prosecution, or in support of an application for an anti-social behaviour order (Asbo).

Detective Supt Richard Wood said: "If the cameras prove successful they will be deployed to other units within Haringey and could be used to assist police raids and officers working at football matches."

Haringey councillor Nilgun Canver said: "The new cameras are a fantastic and effective policing tool.

"We know they work, supply good quality images and are versatile for patrolling football crowds and shopping precincts.

"They can also be used for more intricate work such as dealing with domestic violence or any incident where the photographic evidence will help with a conviction."

This is in addition to the estimated £5 billion cost to British taxpayers of the Iraq war so far, and the £1 billion spent to date on the British deployment in Afghanistan.

The funding announcements came just days after Mr Blair admitted in an interview with al-Jazeera, the English language Arabic television channel, that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a "disaster".

No 10 officials have since dismissed the response as a slip of the tongue. But yesterday Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state, said military victory in Iraq was no longer possible.

Mr Kissinger told BBC1's Sunday AM: "If you mean by 'military victory' an Iraqi government whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible."

He cautioned against rapid withdrawal of allied troops and called for an international conference to resolve the crisis. Iran would have to be included in the negotiations over the future of Iraq, he said.

Mr Blair, on a visit to Pakistan yesterday to discuss anti-terror policy with President Pervez Musharraf, more than doubled assistance to the country from £236 million over the next three years to £480 million.

The extra money will go mainly towards encouraging moderate Muslim education in the network of Madrassa religious schools, which are blamed for turning many young people to extremism.

Mr Blair will today highlight the fact that £500 million is being pumped by Britain into the redevelopment of Afghanistan. Mr Brown, on his first visit to Iraq at the weekend, announced £100 million worth of reconstruction aid.

The Government was attacked last night by the Tories and Liberal Democrats and by its own MPs over the cost of its strategy.

Sir Menzies Campbell, the Lib Dem leader, accused the Prime Minister of having poured away billions of pounds. "Money that might have been spent on assisting the poorest countries has been squandered in illegal military action against Iraq," he told The Daily Telegraph.

David Davies, Tory MP for Monmouth, launched a scathing attack on the Prime Minister's decision to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on the religious schools in Pakistan. "He does not seem to have grasped the fact that these people are not motivated by money. They are motivated by extremist religious ideology," he said.

John McDonnell, the Left-wing MP challenging for the Labour leadership, said: "It's a disgraceful waste of resources killing people when at the same time, we are facing an NHS budget crisis.

No amount of money here on in will assist in resolving the situation." However, Hilary Benn, the International Development Secretary, said it was in the interests of the West to see Pakistani children well educated, because they were then less likely to be seduced by the appeals of extremists.

After talks with Mr Blair in Lahore, Gen Musharraf called for a further "massive inflow" of development aid on the scale of the post-war aid to Europe to rebuild the south east of Afghanistan, the centre of the Taliban insurgency.

He said the battle against the Taliban could not be won "with military action alone" but required a more balanced political approach, and more money for development and reconstruction.

In an apparent criticism of the British strategy so far, he added: "We [the Pakistanis] are the only ones who are trying to implement the whole strategy which means military, political and also reconstruction. More action is needed on the Afghan side because the war will be won on the Afghan side."

Gen Musharraf angrily rejected claims that Pakistan was failing to prevent militants crossing the border into Afghanistan to join the insurgency. "We are doing all we can. We are against terrorism, we are against extremism, we are against Talibanisation," he said.

Mr Blair's official spokesman insisted that Britain had always adopted a "twin-track" approach to Afghanistan, pursuing security alongside reconstruction.

Government sources said the money for Afghanistan and Iraq was from funds put aside in the budget for international development. The £500 million for Afghanistan had been pledged previously but was now "being delivered".

Asked last week in a Downing Street webcast whether he still wanted to increase the limit from 28 days to 90 days, the Prime Minister replied: "I favoured it then and I haven't changed my mind".

But Lord Goldsmith said: "The recent investigations demonstrate that it was right to extend the period to 28 days, but extending it any further would need evidence to demonstrate that that was needed."

Asked if there was evidence to increase to 90 days, Lord Goldsmith said: "Well, I haven't seen it yet."

Legislation to allow police to interview suspects after they had been charged could apply to ordinary criminals as well as terrorists, he continued.

"While terrorism is top of the agenda I don't think that it needs to be restricted to that."

There would need to be safeguards to ensure that suspects were not "browbeaten time and time again" by police in the interview room, he added.

Asked why suspects should agree to talk to police once they had been charged, Lord Goldsmith suggested that juries might be able to draw inferences from a suspect's silence in such circumstances.

Lord Goldsmith also repeated his support for allowing intercept evidence - such as telephone taps - to be used routinely in the courts of England and Wales.

"We need to give the police and prosecutors the tools they need in order to be able to bring serious and dangerous criminals to justice," he said. "I do believe that intercept evidence could be a key tool to doing that."

There were "real and legitimate considerations", he conceded. Any change in the law would have to protect the security services' intelligence-gathering techniques and avoid them being "swamped" with defence applications for reams of irrelevant intercept material.

Asked whether legislation would be introduced to permit the use of intercept evidence, Lord Goldsmith said: "That is something where we ought to work very hard to try to find an acceptable solution, and that is what I'm trying to do."

Officials were considering how to let prosecutors use "critical evidence" while protecting sources, he added, and no proposals had yet reached Cabinet level. The issue was still under review.

Lord Goldsmith also disclosed that he had advised the Home Secretary, John Reid, and the police that they could release unprecedented details about the evidence against terrorist suspects arrested in August and accused of plotting to blow up transatlantic airliners.

"It was plainly necessary for the public to understand why it was that they were being subjected to significant restrictions on travel and what they could carry," he said.

Lord Goldsmith refused to say whether he was heartened by the progress Scotland Yard was making in the cash-for-honours inquiry.

"I don't think it's for me to be heartened or disheartened by it," he said. "Like the police, I agree that speculation about the ongoing process is not helpful."

Declining to be drawn further on how he would respond to a decision by the Crown Prosecution Service, Lord Goldsmith said: "I don't want to speculate because the more that is said about this, the more it sounds as if I know that something is going to happen - and I absolutely don't.

"I know absolutely no more than you do," he told reporters, "and I know it later than you do because I have to read it in your newspapers."