The comments by Marine Corps Major Michael Mori, who represents Australian "enemy combatant" David Hicks, came as the US National Council of Churches said the Pentagon had rebuffed its request to visit the Guantanamo Bay detainees.

The council last month had sought permission to send a delegation to the prisoner camp home to some 660 foreign terror suspects out of "humanitarian concern for the detainees physical and mental well being," said the group's general secretary, Bob Edgar.

But Defense Department official Jeffrey Starr said access to detainees "is only provided to the International Committee of the Red Cross, and on a case-by-case basis to government officials for legitimate government purposes," according to excerpts from his letter made public by the council.

The US government insists that, as "enemy combatants," the Guantanamo Bay detainees can be held and interrogated indefinitely without any legal representation.

US President George W. Bush has declared six such inmates, including Hicks, eligible to be tried by military tribunals, which existed in the United Stated during World War II and were reinstated in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks to try terrorism suspects.

The tribunals will conduct their business behind closed doors a will have a lower threshold for conviction than regular courts, according to legal experts.

Mori, who on Wednesday held a press conference in a Washington suburb along with several other military attorneys, said the military tribunals or commissions were "created and controlled by those with a vested interest only in convictions."

"Using the commission process just creates an unfair system that threatens to convict the innocent and provides the guilty a justifiable complaint as to their convictions," the lawyer said.

He said he believed the system was unfair because only the executive branch of government controlled them and was responsible for filing charges, setting the rules and appointing judge and jury.

He warned that military trials could "lower the standard" used to treat US citizens in foreign countries and might set "a dangerous precedent."

"The reality is, we wouldn't tolerate these rules if they were applied to US citizens," he said.

Mori said the United States should use well-established courts-martial, if there was reliable evidence to convict a detainee.

In a separate interview with Sydney commercial radio, the attorney said he believed that since Hicks had not injured any US citizens, he should be tried in Australia.

Hicks was captured by US troops in late 2001 in Afghanistan where he was fighting alongside Taliban troops.

A working-class lad from South Australia, he has had a lengthy involvement in Islamist causes outside his native land, according to people familiar with his background.

In 1999, he traveled to the Balkans to fight with the Kosovo Liberation Army against Yugoslav troops trying to maintain control over the predominantly Muslim enclave.

After that, he received military training in camps run by radical Muslim groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The United States and Australia agreed last November that Washington would not seek the death penalty for Hicks or monitor his conversations with his attorneys.

If he is convicted, he is likely to be allowed to serve his prison term in Australia under this accord.

WAR.WIRE