Stephen Kenny calls it "a legal and moral black hole". The Australian lawyer for David Hicks, one of about 660 people from more than 40 countries detained by the US at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is the first non- military lawyer to be allowed to meet one of the prisoners at the infamous Camp Delta.

At a news conference in New York this month, he charged that "it appears to me that Saddam Hussein is going to be afforded a trial that provides a fairer system of justice than what Mr Hicks will receive".

When the US announced nearly two years ago that it would begin shipping some prisoners from the war in Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay, Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, called it "the least worst place we could have selected".

The 45-sq-mile military base in the south-eastern corner of Cuba is technically sovereign Cuban territory, but was leased to the US in perpetuity in 1934.

But Guantanamo Bay has become an international black eye for the US and for the administration of George W. Bush, the US president.

Of all the actions taken by the US in response to the September 11 2001 attacks, none has damaged the country's reputation abroad more than the decision to hold hundreds of suspected terrorists as unlawful "enemy combatants" outside the protection of either domestic law or the Geneva conventions on war prisoners.

Johan Steyn, one of Britain's most senior law lord judges, last month called the detentions in Guantanamo "a monstrous failure of justice", adding in a speech: "The purpose of holding the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay was and is to put them beyond the rule of law, beyond the protection of any courts and at the mercy of victors."

While conditions for the prisoners have improved markedly since the hastily established wire cages of what was formerly known as Camp X-Ray, 32 have attempted suicide in the past 18 months.

The hopelessness is not hard to understand. Many are still awaiting decisions on their release and plans are moving ahead at an extremely slowly pace to bring at least some detainees to trial before specially constituted military tribunals.

The Pentagon announced last week that a military lawyer had been appointed to represent a second detainee.

Bush administration lawyers have tried to justify the detentions, saying that terrorists who try to strike the US deserve the protection of neither domestic nor international laws.

In addition, the lawyers argue that complete isolation from friends, family and legal counsel have been essential to permit the in-depth interrogations that might help to prevent terrorist attacks.

But critics say the continued detentions are the most serious US breach of the rule of law since the internment of more than 120,000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans during the second world war.

A San Francisco federal appeals court last week ruled for the first time that the US administration has no right to deny the prisoners access to the US court system.

"We simply cannot accept the government's position that the Executive Branch possess the unchecked authority to imprison indefinitely any persons, foreign citizens included, on territory under the sole jurisdiction and control of the United States," the court said in its decision.

"We hold that no lawful policy or precedent supports such a counter-intuitive and undemocratic procedure."

The Supreme Court has already agreed to take up the issue next year.

Under the growing legal and diplomatic pressure, the US administration has gradually been trying to retreat from its insistence on an absolute right to detain terrorist suspects indefinitely and to bring them to trial under rules of its own choosing.

The US and Australia agreed last month to modify several procedures of the military tribunals in the case of Mr Hicks and one other detainee, in order to satisfy Australian demands that he receive a fair trial.

Talks with the UK have fared less well. In spite of repeated promises that a similar deal is in the works, the two governments have yet to reach a final agreement on the trial procedures for nine UK citizens held at Guantanamo.

The US has insisted that any such deals will be confined to the specific cases, but other countries are likely to demand similar treatment for their nationals.

Anger at the US has also been fuelled by what foreign governments see as a double standard in the treatment of those detained in Afghanistan.

John Walker Lindh, an American caught with the Taliban, was tried and convicted before a US civilian court.

Yaser Esam Hamdi, another American who was an armed fighter for the Taliban, was declared an enemy combatant but has now been given access to a lawyer. Yet many foreigners detained under far less suspicious circumstances continue to rot in Guantanamo Bay.