A group of experts in international affairs has backed a campaign by The Argus for justice for Omar Deghayes.

The 36-year-old Guantanamo detainee has been on hunger strike for more than six weeks and his family fear he is near death.

BBC World Affairs editor John Simpson spoke out against the US prison camp at a fringe meeting of the Labour Party's annual conference in Brighton.

The meeting was also attended by Rosemary Hollis, the director of research at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and Saad Halawani, the society programmes manager at the Palestine office of the British Council.

Mr Simpson, told The Argus: "I admire you for bringing up this man's name and making the case exactly as you make it.

"What has happened in Guantanamo Bay is very troublesome to the conscience of everybody in the US and this country."

The Argus does not claim to know if Mr Deghayes is innocent or guilty but is fighting for the US to grant him his right to a fair trial.

Mr Deghayes claims to have been abused and blinded in one eye by guards at Camp V, regarded as the harshest compound on the Cuban island.

Speaking of alleged abuses in Guantanamo and in the Iraqi prison Abu Grahaib, Rosemary Hollis, said: "I don't see how you cannot see that it is an extraordinary oversight of the American and British governments to think if they had their own internal inquiries that would make it all right."