FOREIGN Secretary Jack Straw will find out the strength of local feeling about the treatment of so-called terrorists at America's controversial Guantanamo Bay camp tomorrow.

Members of the Blackburn with Darwen Stop the War Coalition plan to hand over a petition with hundreds of signatures to the Blackburn MP when he holds a surgery in Audley.

The signatures were collected during the last weekend's Arts In the Park festival, which was headlined by pop stars Liberty X and attracted an estimated 20,000 people to Blackburn.

The decision to launch the petition was taken by members of the Stop the War Coalition, which has previously campaigned for an end to violence in the Middle East and was opposed to military action, after seeing TV pictures of how prisoners at the camp, in Cuba, were being treated.

Many are described by the US Government as being Al-Qaeda suspects and were arrested during the military operations in Afghanistan.

Now America has announced plans to hold secret military tribunals to decide if the men are terrorists. If found guilty, they face the death sentence.

That plan has caused uproar around the world, with human rights campaigners saying it violates all international protocol.

Graham Carter, secretary of the Blackburn with Darwen Stop the War Coalition, said: "Arts in the Park isn't a political event but there was a stall from Amnesty there.

"Once word got round about what we were collecting signatures for, hundreds of people started coming up to us.

"It was a broad cross-section of people all of who are annoyed at America going round and doing what it wants.

"As one man put it, the Americans are blaming all the ills of the world one one group of people and trying to get rid of them without a fair trial.

"That sounds remarkably like a German concentration camp, according to that man, and the more I think about it, the more he is right. It is just like that and as people living in the area represented by Jack Straw we have to do all we can to make sure the strength of feeling against it is known."

Mr Straw has already expressed his concern about the situation. Two of the first eight men to stand 'trial' will be from Britain. There are eight British men believed to be being held in the camp.

An Early Day Motion -- a parliamentary petition -- has been signed by MPs calling for action to be taken against the US plans.

More than 240 MPs have now signed the Early Day Motion, including East Lancashire's Peter Pike, Gordon Prentice and Janet Anderson.

Prime Minister Tony Blair said: "Any commission or tribunal which tries these men must be one conducted within proper canons of law so that a fair trial is both taking place and seen to take place." Britain will also oppose use of the death penalty.