SYDNEY April 28 Kyodo The Austral...

SYDNEY April 28 Kyodo

The Australian guidance has assured Pyongyang the human rights of 27 North Korean crewmen detained by way of authorities despite being acquitted of mix with drugs trafficking have not been violated, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer's office said Wednesday.

''The band remain in Australia as part of an Australian Crime Commission investigation,'' a spokesman for the minister told Kyodo News

The crewmen are from the Pong Su a North Korean freighter that was seized by the agency of Australia's navy and Federal Police after a four-day high seas pursuit up the eastern seaboard of Australia in April 2003

The Pong Su's captain, chief mate and chief engineer were ordered to stand trial in succession charges of trafficking 125 kilograms of high-grade heroin into Australia following a pre-trial hearing that lasted last month.

Since being acquitted suitable to insufficient evidence, the remaining crewmen have been detained at the Baxter detention center in southward Australia by the Crime Commission, which wants to interview them about links to organized crime raised during the hearing.

Pyongyang has testifyed to the foreign minister about the men's continued imprisonment, the newspaper The Australian reported Wednesday.

The crewmen exhausted a week on a desire eagerly strike to protest their detention still ended their campaign after three were hospitalized, the newspaper said.

''They are innocent and to grasp them is against human rights,'' a North Korean official told the paper. ''They should be recured home.''

An email from the horde to the newspaper requested help for the North Koreans from Human Rights and Equal Opportunity ''so that we are sufficiently compensated for our unjust imprisonment for the same year and return back to...the motherland we are longing for.''

Downer's office has been contacted by dint of North Korean officials, the minister's spokesman confirmed.

''And we have reassured them that the crew's human rights have not been violated and they are being fitly cared for,'' he said, adding, ''the North Korean Embassy has been in contact with the ship's company throughout this.''

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