More than 250 doctors from around the world have called on the US to abandon the force-feeding of Guantanamo Bay hunger strikers.

Omar Deghayes, a 37-yearold law graduate from Saltdean, is believed to be among those being fed against their will by methods condemned by the doctors and described as torture by human rights organisations.

Doctors Christa Beesley, a Macmillan GP facilitator at Brighton and Hove City Primary Care Trust; Michael Sharp, GP at North Laine Medical Centre, Brighton, and Alex Dombrowe, GP at The Meadows Surgery in Burgess Hill, are among those who have signed a joint letter published in this week's edition of the medical journal The Lancet.

Co-authors include bestselling British author Oliver Sacks; Holly Atkinson, president of Physicians for Human Rights, and John Kalk, a doctor who supported hunger strikers' human rights in apartheid-era South Africa.

International agreements prevent doctors from force-feeding hunger strikers if the individuals have made an informed choice about their protest, the doctors said.

Restraint chairs reportedly used at the US military base in Cuba are also banned.

Those doctors carrying out the actions should be disciplined by their professional bodies, the letter concluded.

A total of 263 doctors from the UK, Ireland, the US, Germany, Australia, Italy and the Netherlands signed the letter, which was co-ordinated by Dr David Nicholl, of City Hospital, Birmingham.

Dr Nicholl said: "This letter shows the strength of feeling among the world's leading medical experts.

"They are saying with one voice that force-feeding of hunger strikers is unequivocally wrong."

When questioned by Radio 4's Today programme, a spokesman for the Guantanamo Bay doctors said they disagreed fundamentally with the medical ethics expressed in the letter.

He said: "We believe it is in the detainees' best interests and in our best interests to keep them alive."