Four police officers will stand trial over accusations they assaulted Tooting terror suspect Babar Ahmad.

At City of Westminster Magistrates' Court today, their defence counsel Colin Reynolds said they intended to enter not guilty pleas in relation to allegations they attacked the 36-year-old as they arrested him during a raid on his home in 2003.

The officers - PCs Nigel Cowley, 32, Roderick James-Bowen, 39, and Mark Jones, 43, and Detective Constable John Donohue, 36 - spoke only to confirm their name and ages.

District Judge Daphne Wickham committed the case to Southwark Crown Court. The men, who were all members of the Metropolitan Police's territorial support group at the time, will stand trial charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm on October 29.

Mr Ahmad is currently in the low-secure Long Lartin prison after being held without trial for nearly seven years - the longest detained-without-charge British citizen in the modern history of the UK, according to campaign group Free Babar Ahmad.

He has never been charged or convicted of any criminal offence.

After his imprisonment in 2004, the American Government issued a warrant for his extradition, claiming he was involved in websites that allegedly supported Chechen resistance fighters in the 1990s.

Judges at the European Court of Human Rights are due to announce next year whether extradition would breach his human rights.