In a first step to possibly granting asylum to prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, Germany is reviewing the legal issues, a government spokesman said Monday in Berlin, reported dpa.
Many of the 250 prisoners held by the United States face torture or death if they return to their homelands.
Many face no charges, but do not want to live in the United States. Washington is asking other nations to let them immigrate. US president-elect Barack Obama is committed to closing the detention camp on Cuba.
The Foreign Ministry in Berlin is doing the detailed study of the political and legal aspects, a ministry spokesman said.
But another official, deputy government spokesman Thomas Steg, said the issue of whether to actually accept anyone was not currently up for decision.
He said the prisoners' future was up to the United States and their homelands. Nor was it a "specifically German problem." It had to be decided at European Union level, he said.
Christoph Ahlhaus, interior minister of Hamburg state, suggested in a newspaper interview Monday that Germany should offer a home to a few of the "innocent" prisoners.
Most of the Islamists and sympathizers were captured during US anti-terrorism operations in and near Afghanistan.