A student union has asked its national body to support the campaign for Guantanamo detainee Omar Deghayes.

Roger Hylton, union president at the University of Sussex, has written to National Union of Students president Kat Fletcher with details of the 36-year-old law graduate from Saltdean, who has been imprisoned without trial for three years.

Mr Hylton hopes to enlist the support of student unions around the country to garner national support for the case, in particular getting more MPs to sign an Early Day Motion calling for the case to be debated in Parliament.

The motion was proposed by Brighton Kemp Town MP Des Turner last July and has 39 MPs' signatures.

Mr Hylton would also like the NUS to encourage students to write letters to Home Secretary Charles Clarke and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw about the case.

The NUS represents more than five million students affiliated to more than 700 unions across the UK.