The United States is struggling to convince governments, lawyers and human rights activists that everything at its Guantanamo 'war on terror' detention camp is above board.
Even the start of military tribunals for all detainees and looming pre-trial hearings for four inmates at the camp have failed to quell controversy swirling around the handling of the Taleban and al Qaeda detainees.
Allegations of abuse made by some Britons and a Swedish national, former inmates released earlier this year from Camp Delta at the Guantanamo Bay US navy base in Cuba, have received widespread attention.
These have been strongly denied by the US administration as part of the "war of words" in its war on terror.
But the US military may still face a legal battle over the two and half years most of the detainees have spent behind razor wire barriers, under interrogation, without access to a lawyer or a court.
The onslaught is likely to be led by rights groups and US lawyers for detainees who have called Guantanamo a "legal black hole".
The US Supreme Court ruled in June that the Defence Department had failed to give the inmates, most of whom were detained during the Afghanistan war in 2001, their full rights.
In response the tribunals were started on July 29 to determine whether detainees were really "enemy combatants" when they were captured.
But many experts say the Supreme Court will have to make a new ruling on the tribunals, which have also had a poor response from the inmates.
Six of the first 12 inmates - three Afghans, an Algerian, an Iranian, a Moroccan, Pakistani, a Saudi, a Tunisian and three Yemenis - whose cases were reviewed by panels of three military officers refused to attend the hearings.
The whole process will take weeks or months and US military experts are not sure how many inmates will attend. They said "informal" detainee leaders could pressure others to boycott the hearings.
Even if "enemy combatant" status - and an extended stay at Guantanamo - is confirmed, the inmates can still go before Administrative Review Boards later this year. These will decide whether inmates still pose "a threat" to the United States and its allies.
The US military has pleaded that it has drafted top military legal and administrative experts to ensure a fresh look at the detainees' dossiers.
A foreign diplomat in Washington who has been negotiating with the US administration about Guantanamo detainees said: "We are getting the message that the war on terror is still going on so we have to be patient. But we have the feeling the tribunals are too little too late."
Lawyers for dozens of detainees have already launched habeus corpus actions and Turley predicted a new appeal to the highest US court, calling the use of tribunals without established judges "highly questionable".
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