Guantánamo Prisoner Shaker Aamer Complains to UK Tribunal About Intelligence Services’ Role in His Kidnapping and Torture

Please sign the international petition calling for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, which currently has over 4,900 signatures.

What will it take to free Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the US prison at Guantánamo Bay? Cleared for release in 2007 under President Bush, and again in 2010 under President Obama, he languishes still in Guantánamo, separated from his British wife and his four British children, because President Obama cannot be bothered to muster the political will to send him home to his family, and the British government may also be to blame, despite claims to the contrary, and despite a request for his return that was made to Barack Obama by David Cameron at a meeting in June.

On Wednesday, Reprieve, the London-based legal action charity whose lawyers represent 15 prisoners still held at Guantánamo, including Shaker Aamer, issued a press release announcing that, in the latest attempt to put pressure on the British government, he has “filed a complaint against the UK security services over their continuing involvement in his detention without charge or trial.”

Shaker has submitted his complaint to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), which “investigates complaints about the conduct of the UK’s intelligence agencies,” although it is “also highly secretive and provides a one-sided process in which the citizen hears at best very little — and usually nothing at all — about the case put against them.” In his complaint, Shaker states, “The actions of the [UK] security services have prevented [my] release due to defamatory statements that have no basis in honest fact.”

His complaint also deals with his interrogation by UK security services in the US prison at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, after his capture by bounty hunters in Afghanistan, but prior to his transfer to Guantánamo — claims that were accepted by the British High Court in 2009, and that led to a Metropolitan Police investigation, and a visit to Guantánamo to interview Shaker earlier this year. He complains that the British agents interrogated him “despite the fact that they knew that [he] was being abused,” and that the security services “actively sanctioned or encouraged [his] illegal transfer from Afghanistan to Guantánamo Bay.”

As Reprieve also noted, “This has strengthened concerns set out by Mr. Aamer and his lawyers at Reprieve that false information provided by British intelligence is leading to his ongoing detention at Guantánamo,” contradicting what the UK government has been stating publicly.

Kat Craig, Reprieve’s Legal Director, said, “The US has cleared Shaker, and the British government wants him home — so why is he still there? All the evidence points to briefing against him by the UK intelligence services, who are terrified that his release will allow him to speak freely about the part they played in his torture and rendition. In effect, our spies are undermining the aims of our democratically elected government. The IPT will be worthless if it cannot put an end to this scandal.”

In the last year, his supporters in the UK secured 100,000 signatures on an e-petition that was supposed to lead to a full Parliamentary debate about his case, although all that has happened to date is a backbench debate in Westminster Hall, on April 24, where fine words were spoken, but no demonstrative action ensued (see here and here for transcripts).

During the debate, as Reprieve reported, Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt responded to MP’s questions about why Shaker Aamer continues to be held at Guantánamo by saying, “I have a supposition [of why the US is continuing to hold Shaker Aamer] but it’s not a detail I can go in to.”

In response, Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve’s director, said. “It is deeply suspicious that the UK won’t say why their friends in the US refuse to transfer Shaker home to London. The US and UK intelligence services appear to be working together to ensure Shaker stays where he is or gets shipped off to Saudi Arabia. Shaker knows too much. Given that he could appear as a witness against the perpetrators of some the UK’s dirtiest secrets over their role in the ‘war on terror’, it is far better for the intelligence services if he is sent away to another prison in Saudi Arabia.”

He added, “We don’t doubt William Hague’s sincerity when he says that he wants Shaker released. Mr Hague needs to get assurances from his own security service that they haven’t provided information to be used to keep Shaker in arbitrary detention, and that any falsehood they have told to the CIA have been corrected. National embarrassment isn’t a reason to keep a man who has been cleared for release locked away in prison. Shaker must be returned to his family in London at once.”

There have long been fears that the US government only wants to release Shaker Aamer to Saudi Arabia, and not to the UK, and, as I explained in July, these fears have only been heightened recently:

[I]n the recently released “Final Dispositions” of President Obama’s Guantánamo Review Task Force (dated January 22, 2010, but only made publicly available on June 17, 2013), it appears that campaigners’ and lawyers’ long-held fears that the US is intent on sending Shaker back to Saudi Arabia, the country of his birth, and not the UK, are true.

The entry for Shaker recommends, “Transfer to [redacted], subject to appropriate security measures, including [redacted],” and it appears that the space for the destination county is the right size for “Saudi Arabia” but not “United Kingdom.” This also corresponds to distressing rumors we have been hearing about for many years.

None of this lets the British government off the hook, as it remains imperative that ministers secure his release here, to be reunited with his British wife and British children, rather than in Saudi Arabia, where he may well be imprisoned and prohibited from being reunited with his family.

The obligation is on the British government, not just because Shaker was given indefinite leave to remain in the UK, and not just because of ministers’ failure to secure his release for the last eleven and half years, but also because the Metropolitan Police have been investigating Shaker’s claim, accepted by a British court in December 2009, that British agents were present while he was abused by US operatives in a prison in Afghanistan shortly after his capture.

While we wait for further information, it is worth remembering that, in despair at ever being released, along with the majority of his fellow prisoners, Shaker was part of the prison-wide hunger strike that began in February, and, in the summer, involved 106 of the 166 prisoners still held at the time. The number of hunger strikers is now down to 19, although 18 of those men are still being force-fed, a process that medical professionals condemn as abusive. A reminder of what long-term hunger striking does was recently provided by Cori Crider, one of Shaker’s lawyers at Reprieve, who, after meeting him in Guantánamo over the summer, said, “Shaker Aamer cannot be recognized from the rotund photo of him with his children.”

It is time for the dark farce of Shaker Aamer’s unending detention to be concluded. No more excuses — whether from the US or the UK governments — can be allowed to prevent him, at long last, from being united with his family.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).

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