A U.S. judge is to hear arguments a detainee held at Guantanamo Bay cannot adequately prepare for his defense because of his mental health, lawyers said.

Attorneys for Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who was once a driver for Osama bin Laden, say their client has been driven crazy by his confinement to a small prison cell for at least 22 hours a day, The New York Times reported Saturday.

He will shout at us, said his military defense lawyer, Lt. Cmdr. Brian L. Mizer. He will bang his fists on the table.

Hamdan is the first terror detainee at the U.S. base on Cuba scheduled to be tried for war crimes.

His lawyers have asked his case be delayed until Hamdan is placed in less restrictive conditions at Guantanamo.

They argue their client cannot get a fair trial until he can focus on defending himself.

In more than six years of detention, Hamdan has had two phone calls to his family and no visits, the newspaper reported. Moreover, he has been disciplined for having a Snickers bar given to him by his lawyers and for possessing too many socks.

Critics have long asserted that Guantanamo’s climate-controlled isolation is a breeding ground for madness. But turning that into a legal claim marks a new stage for the military commissions at Guantanamo.

Pentagon officials say that Guantanamo holds dangerous men humanely and that there is no unusual incidence of mental illness there. Guantanamo, a military spokeswoman said, does not have solitary confinement, only “single-occupancy cells.”

In response to questions, Cmdr. Pauline A. Storum, the spokeswoman for Guantanamo, asserted that detainees were much healthier psychologically than the population in American prisons. Commander Storum said about 10 percent could be found mentally ill, compared, she said, with data showing that more than half of inmates in American correctional institutions had mental health problems.

Conditions in Guantanamo were more isolating than many death rows and maximum-security prisons in the United States, said Jules Lobel, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who is an expert on American prison conditions.

(SD-Agencies)