Campaigners fighting for the release of a Guantanamo Bay inmate have reacted with anger to a harrowing description of the way he is being force fed.

They accused a doctor who admitted force feeding hunger-striking prisoners of breaching human rights.

Captain John Edmondson said prisoners, including Omar Deghayes, 36, from Saltdean, are force-fed through tubes pushed down their nose into their stomachs to keep them alive.

Some were tied down during the process.

Captain Edmonson, the camp's chief doctor, admitted the practice in a sworn statement in response to a lawsuit on behalf of hunger-striking detainees.

He said prisoners routinely suffered bleeding and nausea when they were fed and the process was painful.

Jackie Chase, from The Argus-backed Save Omar campaign, said: "Dr Edmondson has breached the UN Convention on Torture. The force-feeding of prisoners is prohibited."

Some Guantanamo detainees have been refusing food since August and 81 of the 550 people held there have joined the strike.

Many have been held without charge inside the prison since it opened four years ago in the US Marine base in Cuba.

Campaigners have called on the British Government to intervene in the case of Mr Deghayes to urge the US to either bring him to trial on criminal charges or release him.

Mr Deghayes was 16 when his family fled his home country of Libya for the UK in 1986.

He took his A levels in Hove and had recently completed a law degree when he was arrested while travelling in Pakistan in 2001.