A HAGLEY doctor who ran ten laps around the White House in a mock orange prison outfit to highlight the plight of the last Brit in Guantánamo Bay says he’s staggered that not a single US journalist turned up to report on his protest in the city that broke the Watergate scandal.

Amnesty International member Dr David Nicholl, who is in training for the London Marathon, staged the protest run around the White House in a bid to focus American attention on the case of Shaker Aamer - who has been held without trial or charge for more than 13 years in the notorious US prison camp in Cuba.

But the 50-year-old hospital consultant was mortified that, despite rallying calls from Amnesty members in the US, his efforts to highlight the ongoing incarceration of 122 Guantánamo detainees - including British resident Mr Aamer - were snubbed by the American media.

Dr Nicholl said: "This is the biggest scandal since Watergate. I just find it desperately sad. The city's the home of Woodward and Bernstein and yet there wasn't a single American journalist there."

He said two British news reporters turned out and onlookers were polite despite eyeing him strangely as he ran past the Washington and Lincoln memorials in his brightly-coloured replica prison outfit with chains and an image showing the face of Mr Aamer, who claims to have been tortured.

But he added: "People really haven't got a clue what's going on. I don't know which is more distressing - the fact that there's torture going on or that no-one's reporting on it."

The campaigning doc, who was in Washington for a neurology conference, also took along an Amnesty International petition calling on US President Barack Obama to arrange for the immediate release of 46-year-old Mr Aamer and he was joined by the Witness Against Torture campaign group at the end of his eight-mile run on Sunday April 19 which started in Capitol Hill and finished at the Pennsylvania Avenue/North Lawn view of the White House.

Dr Nicholl, who last month took the 41,000-signature petition to the gates of Downing Street, plans to wear the same orange jumpsuit, chains and handcuffs when he takes part in this Sunday’s London Marathon – exactly a decade after he first took to the streets of the capitol to highlight the case of Mr Aamer in 2005.

He said he hopes to complete the gruelling 26-mile course in under five hours but he conceded: “Whatever slight aches and pains I might feel as a result of doing the marathon will honestly be as nothing compared to the years of torment Shaker and his family have gone through.”

US President Barack Obama is reported to have said in January that US authorities would “prioritise” the case of the Saudi-born UK resident, whose wife and children are British and live in London.

And while out on the election campaign trail in the Black Country last week, former Foreign Secretary William Hague told the News: "We have worked hard on case of Shaker Aamer and we're committed to working on bringing him back to the UK."

Anyone wishing to sponsor Dr Nicholl's marathon efforts for Shaker can do so online at www.justgiving.com/FreeShaker