By Tom Ramstack

FORT MEADE, Md., Oct 30 (Reuters) - Defense attorneys for suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks questioned on Friday whether U.S. lawmakers improperly influenced the legal process during a visit to the Guantanamo Bay military prison.

The attorneys raised the issue while they questioned a female guard during a pre-trial hearing at Guantanamo about physical contact between women and the five detainees in the death penalty case. Their Muslim traditions forbid physical contact with women other than their wives or relatives.

The female guard, who used the pseudonym Sergeant Jinx, said guards touched detainees' wrists, shoulders and forearms when they handcuffed them and moved them within the prison at a U.S. Navy base in Cuba.

"To remove the restraints, I imagine a minimal amount of touching might happen," Sergeant Jinx said.

Guards have touched the detainees more forcibly when they resisted orders from the prison staff, she said.

The suspects in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks want Judge Army Colonel James Pohl to make permanent his interim order in January banning female guards from touching the detainees.

Republican Senators Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Tim Scott of South Carolina and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia discussed the order with Sergeant Jinx and other Guantanamo Bay soldiers during their visit last week.

On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Ash Carter described the order as "outrageous" during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

Defense attorneys said the senators might have influenced the "motive and bias" in Sergeant Jinx's testimony.

"I'm saying that what she's been through in the last 10 days might fashion the way she sees things," said Cheryl Bormann, attorney for suspect Walid bin Attash.

Bin Attash is charged with hijacking, terrorism, war crimes and conspiring with hijackers to fly airliners into New York's World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. Almost 3,000 people died in the attacks.

Pohl did not issue any rulings on Friday that would revise the ban on female guards touching prisoners.

The hearing was monitored by closed circuit television from a media center at Fort Meade, outside Washington.

(Reporting by Tom Ramstack; Editing by Ian Simpson and Eric Beech) ((ian.simpson@tr.com))

Keywords: USA GUANTANAMO/