By Ibrahima Sylla

NOUAKCHOTT, June 4 (Reuters) - Lawyers for more than 20 suspected Islamic militants on trial in Mauritania said on Monday police had tortured their clients to obtain statements and said they would press charges against those responsible.

The group, including seven young men and more than a dozen Muslim religious teachers, are accused of receiving training from al Qaeda's North Africa wing and trying to set up a branch to create instability within and outside Mauritania.

"The accused have been attacked and tortured by the police," lawyer Fatmata MBaye said at a packed court hearing held under tight security and punctuated with shouts of "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great) from female relatives of the defendants.

Fellow defence lawyer Abdallahi Ould Dah said statements made by the accused had been extracted under torture.

MBaye said the defence team would lodge a legal complaint against those responsible for torturing her clients.

"Since September 2001 Muslim communities have been hounded and considered as responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Center towers," she said.

Mauritanian authorities have denied previous allegations of torture.

Wearing beards and white robes, the defendants sat calmly through the hearing except when some addressed the court to proclaim their innocence, including one who said: "We are facing the same ordeals and suffering the Prophet Mohamed knew."

Amid rowdy scenes one of their female supporters -- who sat on the other side of the courtroom to the men present -- was ejected from the court.

The suspects are accused of training with the Algerian-based Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), and some are also accused of involvement in a raid in June 2005 that killed 15 soldiers at a remote military post.

The GSPC, which recently changed its name to the al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, claimed responsibility for triple suicide bombings in Algeria last month and is on a U.S. list of terrorist organisations.

The trial was adjourned until Tuesday. It is the first of its kind in Mauritania since an elected civilian president took office in April, replacing a military government which overthrew authoritarian ruler Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya in 2005.

The Islamic Republic, which spans Arab and black Africa in the northwest of the continent, has remained an ally of the U.S.-led war on terrorism, even though Taya was accused of using it as an excuse for attacking the moderate Islamist opposition.

Some of the accused were arrested in April 2005, just months before senior army officers overthrew Taya in a bloodless coup. Exiled Mauritanians filed a lawsuit against Taya in New York last month accusing him of torture and crimes against humanity.

The military government held polls and handed over in April to an elected civilian president, Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, who has indicated his government will continue to cooperate with the United States.

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