Authorities yesterday lifted the last remaining restrictions on an Australian man who spent more than five years as an inmate at Guantanamo Bay and admitted to supporting terrorism.

Asylum-seekers who claim to have been abused by British security guards accused the Government yesterday of running Guantanamo Bay-style detention camps.

The five Guantanamo prisoners charged with plotting the 11 September attacks made a dramatic joint appeal yesterday for a military judge to accept their confessions in full.

Raul Castro, the Cuban leader, has told the actor Sean Penn that he would be willing to meet Barack Obama, the President-elect, after he assumes power in the United States, although he added the encounter should take place in a "neutral location", for instance Guantanamo Bay.

Spare a thought for Osama bin Laden's driver, the Guantanamo Bay inmate who has been set free after years of imprisonment and is to be returned to his native Yemen to serve out the remaining month of a five-and-a-half-year sentence.

A judge in Washington has ruled that the US government has no grounds to continue holding five Algerian men who have been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for seven years, and should free them without delay. He ruled that a sixth Algerian should continue to be held because evidence against him is stronger.

In his first major interview since polling day, President-elect Barack Obama said last night that upon taking office he would close Guantanamo Bay and ban torture by the American military. He also said it would be "a disaster" if the US car industry were to collapse in the midst of today's economic crisis.

Gordon Brown shook hands yesterday with terror suspects who had been locked up in Guantanamo Bay because of their alleged links to al-Qa'ida. The surprise encounter came when the Prime Minister, who is on a four day tour of Gulf states, visited a "correctional centre" in Saudi Arabia for Islamist extremists who are being "deradicalised".

David Cameron has called on America and the rest of the world to reject "neo-conservative" policies in the post-Bush era so that democratic nations can act with "moral authority". Setting out his approach to foreign policy in a speech in Pakistan, he described himself as "a liberal Conservative".

Britain has failed in its duty to stop the US from committing "shameful acts" in the treatment of suspects detained during the war on terror, one of America's most respected intellectuals warns today.

The UK Government must disclose information relating to a Briton held at Guantanamo Bay. He says it supports his case that evidence against him was obtained through torture.

Osama bin Laden's former driver was found guilty today of terrorism at the first US war crimes trial since the Second World War.

A self-taught British hacker who broke into 97 US military computers from his north London bedsit will be extradited to the United States after losing his six-year legal fight in the House of Lords.