'This could be the last time I see my children'

Martin Bright reports on the aristocrat fighting extradition to America who says he is part of a secret deal with the US on the Guantanamo Bay detainees.

Carlyle-Clarke, 47, a furniture importer and former racing yachtsman, will present a 2,000-name petition to the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, this week, to protest against his deportation to Alabama. If convicted he could face 25 years in a prison system described by Amnesty International as one of the harshest in the country.

The American authorities have been pursuing Carlyle-Clarke since the late Eighties, when his name was connected with a £60 million deal to import cannabis into the US east coast from the Caribbean.

Carlyle-Clarke, whose family has owned the ancient Winterborne Clenston estate in Dorset since 1066, told The Observer: 'I am sole parent to an eight-year-old child I have brought up from birth. My over-riding concern is the welfare of Max. There has never been another figure in his life. He has no one else and would be effectively orphaned by my extradition.'