When Omar Deghayes opens his eyes this morning and looks around his 8ft by 8ft prison cell he will have very little to look forward to.

It is doubtful he will be able to speak to any other detainee in Camp Delta, doubtful he will be given any mail or a new book to read.

It is unlikely he will see the sun or be allowed outside for exercise.

This is how he will spend his fourth anniversary in Guantanamo Bay - without being charged for a crime and with little hope of release.

Omar, from Saltdean, will be fed regularly but 24-hour lighting will make it difficult for him to distinguish day from night.

He will be surrounded by duplicate cells holding similar suspected terrorists - who have also not been charged - but industrial fans make it difficult for them to talk.

If he is lucky he will not annoy his guards, who have reportedly beaten and tortured him.

Lawyer Clive Stafford-Smith is the only contact Omar has had with the outside world during his years in captivity.

Mr Stafford-Smith has visited Guantanamo Bay on several occasions and believes the conditions there are now much worse than those endured by US prisoners on death row.

He said: "Omar's really down. He's been locked up for four years and he's suffered a lot in that time.

"But he's obstinate, he doesn't just take orders from these people who have essentially kidnapped him.

"He's been blinded since he's been there for disobeying orders - five soldiers went into his cell and sprayed pepper spray in his eyes for shouting.

"He's always had problems with his eyes but he's totally blind in his right eye now, permanently."

Those who have been released from their Camp Delta jails have described how they were locked in "cages", permanently living under bright neon lights.

Murat Kurnaz, a German released last Thursday after four years at the Cuban facility, said he was mistreated to the end by US military personnel, who kept him shackled and blindfolded until his flight home had landed.

He has been released following an agreement between the US and German governments that he would no longer pose a security threat.

But such a deal looks no closer for Omar, still living in what Mr Kurnaz has described as "a parallel universe".

Mr Stafford-Smith said: "I don't know if there's such a thing as a normal day in Guantanamo, there's nothing normal about it at all. It's just extreme tedium.

"In the early days I was able to take him books so he could continue the legal studies he'd begun over here but now they've stopped allowing that so it's incredibly boring.

"They're just meant to sit there the whole time and not do anything. Let's not forget he's never been charged for anything, for more than four years - nothing. They get very little exercise. Omar is in Camp Five, which is the most repressed. He is meant to get one hour out of his cell three days a week but he rarely does.

"There's a library, they have books but the authorities are so paranoid about everything they won't let them be read without being censored.

"For a while I was taking in books but it was just getting ridiculous, even children's stories like Puss In Boots, Jack And The Beanstalk were getting censored.

"There's no TV. There's no communal room. These guys are held in solitary confinement."

Omar was arrested while travelling in Pakistan in February 2002 and then transferred to the Guantanamo Bay detention facility eight months later.

For months his family were left desperate for news, with no idea of his whereabouts.

Even now, four years later, they have still not been allowed to see him and rarely receive letters.

Omar's brother Abubaker Deghayes said: "The last letter we got was on July 1.

The one before that was in August last year. Apparently he's written many more but the Americans say they must have got lost in the post.

"There seems to be a strategy of not allowing his letters to get here. They are using the letters as weapons. We send him letters all the time but we don't know if he's getting them either."

Much like any news coming out or going into Guantanamo Bay, those letters are censored.

Mr Stafford-Smith said: "Everything, any single word my clients tell me, is censored and I need permission from the US authorities to talk about anything I hear.

There's still things they won't let me talk about, even to Omar's family.

"They won't let me take a letter from the prisoner to his family.

"They censor out any number for example, it's beats me why. Omar has a son who is six but he can't write that in a letter. He hasn't seen his son since he was one year old."

For Omar's family the situation is becoming increasingly desperate.

Last week Omar's friends and family met Richard Bell, first secretary to the US ambassador Robert Holmes Tuttle.

The secretary was, they said, polite and listened attentively to their pleas to either release Omar or charge him.

But he offered little hope that the Saltdean student, whose father was murdered in Libya during the Eighties, was any closer to justice.

Kemptown MP Des Turner said afterwards he thought it was unlikely the 37-year-old would ever be released as long as the war against terror continued.

A High Court appeal requesting that the Government lobbies for the release of three British residents held in the US detention centre, including Omar, still hangs in the balance.

Such pressure applied by the German government succeeded in procuring the release of Mr Kurnaz.

But until Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett shows the same willingness to help her people, the Deghayes family seem to be running out of hope.

Campaigners from the Save Omar group, Brighton and Hove City Council and The Argus have repeatedly called on her to meet the family to discuss his situation - so far to no avail.

Abubaker Deghayes said: "I feel really let down and frustrated. The Government has let us down. The UN has let us down.

"This has become such an uphill struggle and at the moment we can't see an end to it. All we can think about is Omar. My mother is crying all the time.

"We feel really insecure. It's hard to have faith in humanity when something like this is happening to your family.

"The only people giving us hope are the campaigners and people like Clive trying to bring an end to this black episode."

Omar's family fled to the UK after his father, a political dissident, was assassinated in Libya when Omar was 15.

They fled to the UK not necessarily for justice but for safety.

As Omar Deghayes waits in his prison cell for day 1,462, he may wonder if either exist at all.