By LARRY NEUMEISTER
Associated Press

NEW YORK - Federal judges grew increasingly impatient and sometimes angry Tuesday as they questioned government lawyers on why the United States denied asylum to three women who suffered genital mutilation in Guinea.

The three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals must decide whether the Board of Immigration Appeals was right to deny asylum to the women and permit them to be returned to Guinea.

The women remain in the U.S. while the case is pending. Two have been in the country since 2003, another since 1992. Lawyers said as many as 95 percent of all women there are subjected to the practice.

At the hearing, the judges seemed particularly upset at a conclusion by the government that it was fair to return the women to Guinea because they could not suffer further persecution since mutilation had already occurred. At times, all three judges raised their voices or cut off lawyers to make a point.

Asylum cases built on other forms of persecution did not require that the individual seeking asylum prove that the persecution could be repeated, the judges said.

"Supply me any case in which a well-founded fear of persecution was not sustained because the same leg couldn't be amputated or the same organ removed," demanded Hon. Rosemary Pooler.

Jessica Sherman, a Justice Department lawyer, said there was no evidence in the cases of the three women that the same individuals who harmed them would do so again.