Mr Waite said the nine Britons held as suspected terrorists were enduring the same nightmare he suffered after being kidnapped in 1987 and held captive for 1,763 days in Lebanon. This weekend the former special envoy for the Archbishop of Canterbury is travelling to the US to support families of the British Guantanamo detainees who will next week lobby for their release in New York and Washington.

The Guantanamo human rights commission will launch its campaign today with messages of support from the Nobel prize winners Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the poet Seamus Heaney.

Mr Waite said the US was subjecting the detainees in Camp Delta to the same unjust treatment he and the other Beirut hostages suffered: "There is a moral equivalence because they [the treatment] are both appalling, both presume guilt. I was suspected, they are suspected."

"Neither of us were able to see the evidence against us, and to be brought before a proper court of law where we could have a proper defence, therefore they are morally equated."

Mr Waite was kept chained in a dark room and often blindfolded. He is supporting the campaign because of his own experience: "I know what it is like to be held on suspicion and denied your human rights. As hostages we never knew whether we were ever going to get out, or to be killed. That's what is happening to the people in Guantanamo."

"Some of them will know that without having a proper defence they will face the death penalty. I faced that."

"The US has taken people from different parts of the world, blindfolded as I was. It is adopting the methods of the terrorists to deal with terrorism and it will fail."

Mr Waite, who was kidnapped as he sought the release of westerners who had been captured by Islamist militants, denied he was being soft on the threat al-Qaida poses: "I have been a victim of terrorism but I do think we are obliged to follow the rules of international law. Human rights law is international and non-negotiable."

The visit to the US was to have seen three families of British detainees take part. But Jamal Udeen's family dropped out yesterday after the Foreign Office said the five British detainees to be released from Guantanamo were expected to arriveat an RAF base in Britain next week, where anti-terrorist officers will question them.

Four British citizens and five British residents will remain in Camp Delta, where they face a regime and trials which have been condemned as unfair by human rights groups.

The Guantanamo human rights commission is also supported by the actor Vanessa Redgrave, who said the trip would raise awareness: "We are assisting in drawing the at tention of American and British citizens and lawmakers, that if anyone such as our prime minister or president, allows or puts people outside the law, that they consider themselves outside the law."