Protesters are calling on Prime Minister Gordon Brown to speed up the release of Guantanamo Bay prisoner Omar Deghayes.

Mr Brown was in Brighton yesterday to address the Trades Union Congress (TUC) at the Brighton Centre.

Supporters of the Save Omar campaign gathered on the seafront to lobby for the Saltdean resident's release from the military prison in Cuba, where he has been held without charge since 2002.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith wrote to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in August to request the return of Mr Deghayes and four other UK residents to Britain. But his family and supporters have had no indication of when this will happen.

Save Omar spokeswoman Jackie Chase said: "He is still not home. The British say they are negotiating. The hold-up seems to be on the American side.

"If there are no charges the man should be free to come home immediately."

She said the Government's request to the US may have been prompted by the prospect of a House of Lords ruling in October on whether its policy of not negotiating the release of people with British resident status was lawful.

Ms Chase said: "It may well be the Government was anxious not to be defeated by the Law Lords and wanted to be seen to be acting in advance of the hearing."

Mr Deghayes has reportedly been left permanently blind in one eye and has had a finger crushed due to mistreatment and torture in Guantanamo Bay.

He was arrested in Pakistan in 2001 and held without charge at Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay since 2002.

By January 2005 the Government had secured the release and return of all UK nationals detained at the centre but had not sought the release of people with only residential rights such as Mr Deghayes.

The Argus launched its Justice For Omar campaign to press the US to either charge him or send him home.

The other Guantanamo inmates subject to the Government's request are Shaker Aamer, a London resident originally from Saudi Arabia, Jamil El Banna, a Jordanian refugee whose family lives in Dollis Hill, north-west London, Binyam Mohamed, who lived in Kensington, west London, and had applied for asylum from Ethiopia, and Abdennour Sameur, a refugee from Algeria who lived in Bournemouth.

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