Lawyers for Guantanamo inmates oppose new rules

Lawyers representing some of the prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay have condemned efforts by the Bush administration to make it more difficult for them to visit their clients. The lawyers say restrictions already in place make their jobs all but impossible.

The United States Justice Department has requested that a federal court impose tighter restrictions on the lawyers, claiming their visits with prisoners have "caused intractable problems and threats to security at Guantanamo".

In a brief to the court, the department claims information is passed from prisoners to their lawyers and then given to the media.

Lawyers representing some of the 385 prisoners at the US naval base on Cuba said yesterday what was really driving the request was the US government's desire to diminish further the scrutiny that Guantanamo receives.

Clive Stafford Smith, the legal director of the UK-based group Reprieve, which represents several dozen prisoners, said: "They say the lawyers have caused unrest, they say we have caused hunger strikes. This is monumental crap ... It's being done to stop any journalists finding out what they did to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others."

Under the proposals, lawyers would be restricted to three visits with a client, correspondence to clients would be vetted by military intelligence and government officials could prevent lawyers from having access to secret evidence used by military tribunals to decide whether the prisoners were "enemy combatants".

Since the prison opened in January 2002 - to hold suspects rounded up in the so-called war on terror - it has been the focus of countless claims of abuse and torture. Three British prisoners who were eventually released without charge said they were abused.

Mr Mohammed, an alleged plotter of the 11 September attacks, claims to have been abused by the CIA. According to a Pentagon transcript of his tribunal proceedings in March, from which all lawyers and journalists were banned, he claimed responsibility for a series of terror attacks.

Lawyers said the government was trying to refuse the prisoners a basic legal right - to be brought to trial or else released.

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