WASHINGTON, Aug 11: The US government argued on Tuesday that "war on terror" detainees at the naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had no right to meet a lawyer, even if they try to contest their imprisonment in civilian courts.

Lawyers for the inmates had asked a federal court in Washington to allow them to meet with the Guantanamo detainees. Government lawyers on Tuesday filed a 26-page document laying out their argument for why the detainees should be denied access to their attorneys.

The government lawyers argued that a June ruling by the US Supreme Court, which recognized the detainees' right to challenge their imprisonment in civilian courts, did not explicitly grant them a right to be represented by a lawyer in that process.

The ruling "says nothing at all" to suggest that the inmates have "a right to counsel, much less a right to the type of unrestricted access to counsel they seek, in order to pursue their case," according to the government's brief.

No "principle of law or reason entitles alien enemy combatants detained on a military base outside the sovereign territory of the United States to define the terms of their access to counsel," it read.

The Supreme Court indeed "has left a great deal of issues in doubt in its June decision," said Georgetown University professor Jonathan Turley. "There are more holes than cheese in its opinion, in defining the specific rights and process detainees must be accorded." -AFP