FOREIGN Secretary Jack Straw says a former Huddersfield student who says he has been tortured at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has not been forgotten.

Mr Straw, speaking exclusively to the Examiner, said work on the case of Omar Deghayes was continuing.

Mr Deghayes came to the UK from Libya with his family in 1986, six years after his prominent trade unionist and lawyer father Ahmer was allegedly assassinated by Col Gaddafi's regime.

He joined a legal practice course at Huddersfield University in 1998, but never completed it.

He was seized in the Pakistani city of Lahore in April, 2002, by armed intelligence officers, before eventually being transferred to Guantanamo.

In his first public words in three years Mr Deghayes says he had been:

* Electrocuted

* Beaten with canes

* Starved

* Smeared with human waste

* Blinded in one eye by the use of Mace riot control gas and gouging.

Mr Straw said problems arose because Mr Degahyes was classed as a non-British citizen. He was not recognised as British and couldn't be offered consular support.

He added: "I've met some of the families and Foreign Office minister Baroness Symons has met all the families concerned.

"Under international treaty we can't represent them, but we will make representations to the US on their behalf."

But Mr Straw said it was a matter of how quickly the US decided to move.

There are four other British residents still being held at the camp. Mr Straw added: "They have not been forgotten. We are in a difficult position."

Last week, 80 people gathered at the Hudawi Centre in Hillhouse to hear Mr Deghayes' sister, Amani, who lives in Brighton, explain the case and why her brother should be brought home.