ACTIVISTS campaigning for the release of Guantanamo detainee Ahmed Belbacha - who lived and worked in Bournemouth before he was captured abroad and sent to the US prison camp - are hoping to use the Labour Party conference to put pressure on the government to accept him back to the UK.

Campaigner Joy Hurcombe, who lives in Sussex, says that Belbacha, who came here as a refugee from Algeria and was given exceptional leave to remain by the Home Office, worked at the Highcliff Hotel during the 1999 Labour Conference. "While he was working there he received a generous tip and a letter of thanks from John Prescott," she claims.

Ms Hurcombe is a member of Reprieve, the legal charity which fights to defend prisoners on death row and in Guantanamo. It is spearheaded by the Dorset-based human rights lawyer Clive Stafford-Smith, who has fought to represent Belbacha plus a number of other Guantanamo detainees.

Ms Hurcombe told the Daily Echo: "Like many of the people detained in Guantanamo, Ahmed was picked up by bounty hunters who were promised money from the USA for turning in people. There is no record of him committing any crimes in the UK or anywhere else. In fact he left Algeria after a run-in with Islamists and is just an ordinary man who did an ordinary job here."

She says Belbacha was cleared for release by the US earlier this year but can't return because he is not on the government's list of people it is prepared to accept back into the UK.

"Five others have been and I think that what has happened to Ahmed isn't sinister, it's simply a mistake which we want the new Home Secretary and the Foreign Secretary to correct," she says.