By Jane Sutton

MIAMI, Oct 31 (Reuters) - A civilian lawyer for the only Canadian terrorism suspect held at Guantanamo said on Wednesday he had been barred from his client's hearing at the U.S. base next week because of a dispute with military defense lawyers.

The Canadian lawyer, Dennis Edney, said he was prevented from visiting Toronto-born Omar Khadr, who is accused by a U.S. military war crimes tribunal of throwing a grenade that killed one American soldier and wounded another during a firefight at an alleged al Qaeda compound in Afghanistan in 2002.

Edney said the ban came after he disagreed with and publicly criticized the U.S. military lawyers appointed to defend Khadr, who was 15 years old and severely wounded when he was captured. He is now 21.

"It's certainly not in Khadr's best interest," Edney said by telephone. "It's a violation of the accepted right to counsel. They obviously don't want me speaking to Khadr before the arraignment."

Military defense lawyers did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

The detention camp that opened in 2002 at the Guantanamo naval base in Cuba holds about 330 non-Americans accused of links to al Qaeda or associated Islamist militant groups. So far, only one person has been convicted in the war crimes trials, and that was the result of a plea bargain.

The dispute among Khadr's lawyers came to light as the U.S. military prepares to resume the widely criticized tribunals.

In June, the proceedings screeched to a halt when military judges threw out the charges against Khadr and a Yemeni prisoner, Salim Hamdan.

The judges said they lacked jurisdiction because the two defendants had not been designated "unlawful enemy combatants" as required under the 2006 law that authorized military tribunals for foreign terrorism suspects.

The distinction was crucial, the judges said, because international law requires other types of trial for "lawful enemy combatants."

A newly convened military appeals court ruled that the judges themselves had authority to decide whether defendants were "unlawful" combatants and reinstated the charges.

SUSPECT WANTS CANADIAN LAWYERS

A hearing was scheduled at Guantanamo for Nov. 8 to take up Khadr's case.

Another is planned in December for Hamdan, who is accused of driving and guarding al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Hamdan's legal challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court forced the government to scrap its first Guantanamo trial system.

Edney, who was at the June hearing, battled for years before winning U.S. permission to visit Khadr. He said he was barred from seeing him in September and that military defense lawyers recently told him in a phone call that he could not attend Khadr's arraignment.

Under revised trial rules, defendants can represent themselves or have U.S. military defense lawyers appointed. Foreign and civilian lawyers can join the defense but only as advisors, if they obtain U.S. security clearances and if someone other than the U.S. government pays the bill.

Khadr fired his American civilian lawyers and has repeatedly said he only wants Canadian attorneys.

Edney has criticized the military lawyers assigned to the case as inexperienced and said they have done little to prepare a defense on charges that could keep Khadr in prison for life.

He also said Khadr was sad, jaded, unfit for trial and in need of assessment by an independent psychiatrist.

"He's spent a quarter of his life in Guantanamo," said Edney.

In the lone Guantanamo conviction, Australian David Hicks admitted training with al Qaeda and pleaded guilty in March to providing material support for terrorism. He was sent to Australia to serve a nine-month sentence.

No other trial has advanced beyond preliminary hearings.

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