Shaker Aamer

A Saudi national who is married to a British woman and is the father of four British children, Shaker Aamer came to live in the UK in 1996 and worked as an interpreter for a firm of solicitors.

Mr Aamer is believed to have been captured in January 2002 in Afghanistan, where he was working for a Saudi Arabian charity. He was transferred to Guantanamo Bay the same year. He had been applying for UK citizenship and had indefinite leave to stay in Britain at the time of his capture.

In 2005 his father-in-law called on the British Government to secure his release. Saeed Siddique said Mr Aamer's wife Zinnira had developed mental problems since his imprisonment.

A letter sent to Jack Straw, the then Foreign Secretary, said there was the "strongest moral obligation" to secure Mr Aamer's release.

The letter, written by Mr Aamer's UK solicitor Natalia Garcia and US counsel Clive Stafford Smith, said: "There is a British woman who may become a widow, and four young British children who face the prospect of being fatherless, if the government fails to act quickly.

"He has been held by the US now for three years, and the prospect of this continuing is a terrible weight on his family."

The family were resident in Birmingham at the time of Mr Aamer's capture, but are now believed to live in London.

Jamil el Banna

A Jordanian refugee who came to live in London with his wife Sabah in 1994 as political refugees and was granted asylum. They have five children, all born in England.

In 2002 Mr Banna, a mechanic, was seized by the CIA after MI5 wrongly told the Americans that his travelling companion was carrying bomb parts on a business trip to Gambia.

He was taken to Bagram airbase in Afghanistan and then to Guantánamo. He alleges ill treatment in both places.

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