Shaker Aamer

Shaker Aamer with his children pictured in 2001

Shaker Aamer (also known as Shaker Abdur-Raheem Aamer) is a Saudi Arabian citizen and the last British resident currently held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. He was arrested in Afghanistan in January 2002 and has participated in two hunger strikes and spent much of his time held in solitary confinement.

According to documents published in the Guantanamo Bay files leak, the U.S. military Joint Task Force Guantanamo believed in November 2007 that Aamer had led a unit of fighters in Afghanistan, including the Battle of Tora Bora, while his family was paid a stipend by Osama bin Laden. The file asserts past associations with Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui. Clive Stafford Smith a human rights lawyer said the leaked documents would not stand up in court and pointed out that part of the evidence comes from an unreliable witness. Mr Aamer’s father-in-law, Saaed Ahmed Siddique, said: "All of these claims have no basis. If any of this was true he would be in a court now."

Aamer was cleared for release by the United States in 2006 but remains in detention. The Reprieve website says: "He has never been charged by the United States with a crime and has never received a trial. However, he has been repeatedly abused and subjected to extended isolation in Guantánamo Bay."

Background

Aamer moved to the United Kingdom in 1996. He married a British woman and has four British children. Aamer is a British resident and was applying for citizenship.

At the outbreak of the Invasion of Afghanistan Aamer was working for a Saudi charity in Afghanistan.

Aamer says that interrogators in Afghanistan, who represented themselves as MI5 officers, told him he had two choices: (1) agree to spy on suspected jihadists in the United Kingdom; or (2) remain in US custody.

Detention issues

Supporters of Aamer contend that the UK should intervene in his detention because he moved to the United Kingdom in 1996, married a British woman, fathered four young children and was in the process of applying for British citizenship.

Aamer is represented by Clive Stafford Smith and Zachary Katznelson. He participated in the prison hunger strike that started in June and ended on July 28, 2005. Shaker says he helped negotiate the end to the summer's first extensive hunger strike. According to Shaker, the terms Colonel Michael Bumgarner agreed to, included treating the detainees in a manner consistent with the Geneva Convention, allowing the detainees to form a grievance committee.

Stafford Smith said the grievance committee was formed, but that the camp authorities disbanded it after a few days. American spokesmen Major Jeffrey Weir denied that the Americans had ever agreed to any conditions.

“	Given the time involved, the lengthy spells in solitary confinement and the torture allegedly used against him, Shaker Aamer's plight has been one of the worst of all the detainees held at Guantanamo.	”
—Amnesty International

On September 18, 2006, Aamer's attorneys filed a 16 page motion arguing for his removal from isolation in Guantanamo Bay prison. The motion alleges that Aamer had been held in solitary confinement for 360 days at the time of filing, and was tortured by beatings, exposure to temperature extremes, and sleep deprivation, which together caused him to suffer to the point of becoming mentally unbalanced, according to his lawyer, Zachary Katznelson. Aamer's case continues with him still in isolation.

On August 7, 2006, he was one of five Guantanamo detainees that British Foreign Secretary David Miliband requested be freed, citing the fact they had all been granted refugee status, or similar leave, to remain in Britain prior to their capture by US forces.

Hunger strike

Shaker Aamer has been on a hunger strike since late 2006, and has lost half his body weight. Zachary Philip Katznelson filed a motion to enforce the Geneva Conventions on his behalf on 19 September 2006.

On March 16, 2007 the Department of Defense published records of the detainees' height and weights.

Release negotiation

On August 7, 2007 the United Kingdom government requested the release of Shaker Aamer and four other men who had been legal British residents without being British citizens. The UK government warned that the negotiations might take months.

The Scotsman speculated that the USA was insisting the UK government put the five men under a lifetime of house arrest.

Three of the remaining UK residents were released in December 2007.

Binyam Mohammed was repatriated in February 2009. On a visit to the United States on March 13, 2009, when asked about Guantanamo captives, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said:

There is one outstanding (prisoner) that we would want returned to the U.K. We understand that his particular circumstances are being looked at at the moment, and that the U.S. administration has said they don't want to return him to the UK.

Habeas corpus petition

Shaker Aamer had a writ of habeas corpus petition filed on his behalf.

Re-initiation

On 2008-07-18 Zachary Katznelson filed a "STATUS REPORT" with regard to Shaker Aamer and Jihad Dhiab, before Judge Gladys Kessler.

Details of his interrogations in Bagram

In September 2009 Zachary Katznelson made what The Guardian characterized as "extraordinary claims" on behalf of his client Shaker Aamer. Katznelson repeated accounts Aamer had offered him of severe beatings in the Bagram Theater Internment Facility. Aamer had told him that close to a dozen men had beaten him, including interrogators who represented themselves as officers of MI5, the United Kingdom's internal counter-terrorism agency. Aamer described being terrified following one severe beating, when he recovered from being stunned by the beating he found all his interrogators had left the room and had left a pistol on the table. He said he didn't know if the pistol was loaded. He said it occurred to him that it had been left so he could kill himself. He said it occurred to him that it had been left so that if he picked it up, he could be shot and killed on the excuse he was trying to shoot them.

Shaker Aamer and the alleged coverup around the deaths on June 10, 2006

The Department of Defense reported three detainees killed themselves, on June 10, 2006. However a team of independent pathologists, led by Dr Patrice Mangin, were unable to confirm the military's claim the deaths were suicide. The military returned the bodies to the families for burial missing key parts essential for Mangin's team to confirm the cause of death.

On January 18, 2010, attorney and journalist Scott Horton published an article in Harper's magazine asserting that the men did not hang themselves in their cells, but rather died during their interrogations at "Camp No". He wrote that Shaker Aamer had also been brought to a secret interrogation site, about one kilometer from Camp Delta, with the other three men, and subjected to interrogation methods that included asphyxiation. Horton wrote that Aamer's repatriation was being delayed so he could not testify about the use of this technique upon his return to the United Kingdom.

Colonel Michael Bumgarner, named in Horton's article as being present during the interrogations, and of taking a lead role in the cover-up, denied Horton's claims.

Calls for his release

• August, 2010, protesters disrupted a meeting that discussed plans to create a US Embassy near Battersea, the home of Mr. Aamer.
• On December 11, 2010 hundreds took to the streets in London near the US embassy to demand Aamer's release.
• In February 2011 Amnesty international calls Aamers ongoing incarceration a "mockery of justice" and denounced the "cruel limbo" he has been left in. At the same time The Guardian reported that people had sent 12.000 emails to US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and UK MP's in support of Aamer.
• In her 2011 album In The Current Climate singer-songwriter Sarah Gillespie sings an imaginary first person song of Aamer entitled How The West Was Won. Gillespie devoted the track to Aamer in the CD booklet.
• In May 2011 Students of University of St Andrews protest for the release of Aamer.

References

External links

• Leader of al-Qaida cell in London turned out to be an 11-year-old boy who had never left his village in Saudi Arabia 25 April 2011
• Shaker Aamer: UK man's nine years at Guantanamo has made a 'mockery' of Justice
• Where is the justice for Shaker Aamer? The Guardian November 22, 2010
• Shaker Aamer and the Guantánamo Prisoner List Andy Worthington, September 24, 2010
• Concerns over Guantanamo Bay interrogation methods The Guardian May 1, 2010
• 3,000 days of Guantanamo Bay imprisonment for Battersea man Shaker Aamer The Guardian April 29, 2010
• Shaker Aamer: Guantanamo's last British detainee The Independent March 3, 2010
• Free my dad from Guantanamo, 12-year-old asks Brown The Independent January 11, 2010
• Ministers in U-turn over torture documents for Guantanamo Briton, The Independent, December 21, 2009
• Guantánamo strike has directors worried, New York Times, September 18, 2005
• New allegations of MI5 complicity in Guantanamo abuse case
• Guantanamo man wins papers ruling
• Shaker Aamer - biography
• Shaker Aamer - case history