The five, arrested in May, include Bakir Alispahic, a former interior minister and former head of the Muslim-led intelligence service (AID), two other former AID officials and two senior police officers.

Alispahic's lawyer, Namik Silajdzic, told AFP all five had been released Monday by the supreme court of Bosnia's Muslim-Croat part.

Silajdzic added that they remained under investigation and that there was no legal deadline for the proceedings to end.

Court officials, who could not produce an indictment after five months of investigation, were not available for comment.

Investigators came under public pressure as Muslim civic associations requested the five to be released, claiming the accusations against them were unfounded.

The Muslim nationalist Party of Democratic Action (SDA) also called for their release and accused the ruling moderate alliance led by the Social democrats of reprisals against former officials.

The court ruling comes as the elections campaign in Bosnia intensifies, less than a week before the vote.

The five former Muslim officials, close to SDA, were suspected of setting up a camp that may have trained and armed terrorists.

The Pogorelica camp, near Fojnica, some 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Sarajevo, offered military training by Iranian secret service instructors for Bosnian Muslim students.

The NATO-led force deployed in Bosnia since the end of the 1992-95 war, raided the camp in 1996, on suspicion that it was being used as a terrorist training base.

Eight Muslim intelligence officers and three Iranian instructors were arrested during the raid and stocks of arms and booby-trapped children's toys were seized.