"The Department of Defense announced today that it transferred three detainees from Guantanamo Bay (GTMO), Cuba to France for prosecution," the Pentagon said in a statement.

The statement said the transfers raised the number of detainees who have been moved out of Guantanamo to 211.

The last three French detainees at Guantanamo were Mustaq Ali Patel, Ridouane Khalid and Khaled Ben Mustafa.

The United States agreed to hand them over last month shortly before a meeting between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and French President Jacques Chirac, officials said.

The Pentagon statement did not elaborate on what assurances were received from France that the three detainees would be prosecuted.

However, four other Frenchmen who were transferred last July from Guantanamo to France remain in custody there while being investigated on suspicion of associating with criminals "in relation to a terrorist enterprise.

Four British detainees who were transferred from Guantanamo January 26 were briefly arrested on their return and then released without charge. They have been refused passports under an obscure British law that has not been used in 30 years.

Patel, who was born in India but acquired French citizenship through marriage, was living in Afghanistan for several years before his arrest in late 2001.

Khalid, 36, is the brother of two men arrested in France last year on suspicion of hiding terrorist funds and recruiting Chechen militants.

Mustafa, 33, was arrested in Afghanistan where his family said he was learning Arabic in an Islamic school.

About 540 prisoners are being held at Guantanamo, most of them captured in Afghanistan or Pakistan after a US-led campaign that toppled the Taliban regime in Kabul.