Washington ? The United States is holding dozens of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay who have no meaningful connection to al-Qaida or the Taliban, and were sent to the maximum-security facility over the objections of intelligence officers in Afghanistan who had recommended them for release, according to military sources with direct knowledge of the matter.

At least 59 detainees — nearly 10 percent of the prison population at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — were deemed to be of no intelligence value after repeated interrogations in Afghanistan. All were placed on “recommended for repatriation” lists well before they were transferred to Guantanamo, a facility intended to hold the most hardened terrorists and Taliban suspects.

Dozens of the detainees are Afghan and Pakistani nationals described in classified intelligence reports as farmers, taxi drivers, cobblers and laborers. Some were low-level fighters conscripted by the Taliban in the weeks before the collapse of the ruling Afghan regime.

“There are a lot of guilty (people) in there,” said one officer, “but there’s a lot of farmers in there too.”

The sources’ accounts point to a previously undisclosed struggle within the military over the handling of the detainees. Even senior commanders were said to be troubled by the problems.

Maj. Gen. Michael E. Dunlavey, the operational commander at Guantanamo Bay until October, traveled to Afghanistan in the spring to complain that too many “Mickey Mouse” detainees were being sent to the already crowded facility, sources said.

The sources blamed a host of problems, including flawed screening guidelines, policies that made it almost impossible to take prisoners off Guantanamo flight manifests and a pervasive fear of letting a valuable prisoner go free by mistake.

“No one wanted to be the guy who released the 21st hijacker,” one officer said.

While that concern remains a legitimate one, the fact that dozens of the detainees are still in custody a year or more after their capture has become a source of deep concern to military officers engaged in the war on terrorism around the globe.

Many fear that detaining innocents, and providing no legal mechanism for appeal, can only breed distrust and animosity toward the United States — not only in the home countries and governments of the prisoners but also among the inmates.