Lawyers acting on behalf of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are protesting that they have been denied full access to the pre-trial hearing of Bradley Manning, the US soldier accused of passing hundreds of thousands of secret state documents to the whistle-blowing website.

A motion filed with the army appeals court on Thursday asking for legal representatives of the site to be granted full privileges in the court has been rejected, relegating Assange's lawyer Jennifer Robinson to the public benches. The lack of access could prove significant should the hearing go into private session over confidential material, to which Assange will be excluded.

Robinson insisted that WikiLeaks should be considered a party to the hearing because of the on-going criminal investigation into the site in which Manning could be called as a witness. There is a grand jury currently sitting in secret in Virginia looking at a possible criminal pursuit of both Assange and the whistle-blowing network he founded.

Robinson told reporters in the court room at the Manning hearing that the soldier's own defence team had made it clear that pressure is being put on Manning to implicate Assange in the department of justice investigation.

WikiLeaks stresses that there would be no security risk in allowing it access to confidential private sessions of the court, as it is working with a lawyer with the Centre for Constitutional Rights, Amanda Jacobsen, who carries full security clearance.

Robinson said that Manning's defence team, led by a civilian lawyer, David Coombs, were aware of WikiLeaks's presence in the court "but that's the extent of the involvement".

The motion, filed with the appeal court by the CCR on behalf of WikiLeaks and Assange, says that the charges against Manning are wholly unproven. "There is strong evidence that Manning has nonetheless suffered serious human rights violations as a result of these unproven claims, including prolonged isolation and sensory deprivation, and other torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment reminiscent of the worst abuses at Guantánamo Bay."

The motion adds that Assange and WikiLeaks have rights under the US constitution to proper access to the hearing because they may have to confront "allegations against them, particularly as relates to the grand jury investigation in the eastern sistrict of Virginia, which is apparently targeting Assange in connection with matters that will likely be addressed at Manning's Article 32 hearing."