Shaker Aamer
Encyclopedia
Shaker Aamer is a Saudi Arabia
n 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 as of today, Aamer has been held at Guantánamo for . In this time fears over Mr Aamer's health have grown as he has participated in hunger strikes to protest his detention and spent much of his time held in solitary confinement
. After a visit in November 2011 Clive Stafford Smith
said: "I do not think it is stretching matters to say that he is gradually dying in Guantanamo Bay,".
According to documents published in the Guantanamo Bay files leak
, the US 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 has long been cleared for release by the United States and according to Reprieve's website: "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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
The UK government warned that the negotiations might take months.
The Scotsman
speculated that the US 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:
.
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.
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.
The Associated Press
quoted an email from Bumgarner that stated: "this blatant misrepresentation of the truth infuriates me."
According to the Associated Press Bumgarner asserted he wanted to refute the story in more detail, but would have to get clearance from his superiors first.
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
n citizen and the last British resident currently held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
. He was arrested in Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
in January 2002 and as of today, Aamer has been held at Guantánamo for . In this time fears over Mr Aamer's health have grown as he has participated in hunger strikes to protest his detention and spent much of his time held in solitary confinement
Solitary confinement
Solitary confinement is a special form of imprisonment in which a prisoner is isolated from any human contact, though often with the exception of members of prison staff. It is sometimes employed as a form of punishment beyond incarceration for a prisoner, and has been cited as an additional...
. After a visit in November 2011 Clive Stafford Smith
Clive Stafford Smith
Clive Adrian Stafford Smith OBE is a British [see talk] lawyer who specialises in the areas of civil rights and the death penalty in the United States of America....
said: "I do not think it is stretching matters to say that he is gradually dying in Guantanamo Bay,".
According to documents published in the Guantanamo Bay files leak
Guantanamo Bay files leak
The Guantánamo Bay files leak began on 25 April 2011, when WikiLeaks, along with several independent news organizations, began publishing 779 formerly secret documents relating to detainees at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp...
, the US military Joint Task Force Guantanamo
Joint Task Force Guantanamo
Joint Task Force Guantanamo is a U.S. military joint task force based at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba on the southeastern end of the island. JTF-GTMO falls under US Southern Command...
believed in November 2007 that Aamer had led a unit of fighters in Afghanistan, including the Battle of Tora Bora
Battle of Tora Bora
The Battle of Tora Bora was a military engagement that took place in Afghanistan in December 2001, during the opening stages of the war in that country launched following the 9/11 attacks on the United States. The U.S...
, while his family was paid a stipend by Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
. The file asserts past associations with Richard Reid
Richard Reid (shoe bomber)
Richard Colvin Reid , also known as the Shoe Bomber, is a self-admitted member of al-Qaeda who pled guilty in 2002 in U.S. federal court to eight criminal counts of terrorism stemming from his attempt to destroy a commercial aircraft in-flight by detonating explosives hidden in his shoes...
and Zacarias Moussaoui
Zacarias Moussaoui
Zacarias Moussaoui is a French citizen who was convicted of conspiring to kill citizens of the US as part of the September 11 attacks...
. Clive Stafford Smith
Clive Stafford Smith
Clive Adrian Stafford Smith OBE is a British [see talk] lawyer who specialises in the areas of civil rights and the death penalty in the United States of America....
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 has long been cleared for release by the United States and according to Reprieve's website: "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
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
.
Aamer says that interrogators in Afghanistan, who represented themselves as MI5
MI5
The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...
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
Clive Stafford Smith
Clive Adrian Stafford Smith OBE is a British [see talk] lawyer who specialises in the areas of civil rights and the death penalty in the United States of America....
and Zachary Katznelson. He participated in the prison hunger strike
Hunger strike
A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance or pressure in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke feelings of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most hunger strikers will take liquids but not...
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
Michael Bumgarner
Colonel Michael Bumgarner is an officer in the United States Armed Services.In 2005 and 2006, he was the commander of the Joint Detention Group, the guard force component of Joint Task Force Guantanamo....
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.
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
David Miliband
David Wright Miliband is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for South Shields since 2001, and was the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs from 2007 to 2010. He is the elder son of the late Marxist theorist Ralph 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
Zachary Philip Katznelson
Zachary Philip Katznelson is a British lawyer and senior counsel for the human rights group Reprieve.Katznelson and his colleagues have represented thirty-seven Guantanamo captives....
filed a motion to enforce the Geneva Conventions on his behalf on 19 September 2006.
On March 16, 2007 the Department of Defense
United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense is the U.S...
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
The Scotsman
The Scotsman is a British newspaper, published in Edinburgh.As of August 2011 it had an audited circulation of 38,423, down from about 100,000 in the 1980s....
speculated that the US 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
Home Secretary
The Secretary of State for the Home Department, commonly known as the Home Secretary, is the minister in charge of the Home Office of the United Kingdom, and one of the country's four Great Offices of State...
Jacqui Smith
Jacqui Smith
Jacqueline Jill "Jacqui" Smith is a member of the British Labour Party. She served as the Member of Parliament for Redditch from 1997 until 2010 and was the first ever female Home Secretary, thus making her the third woman to hold one of the Great Offices of State — after Margaret Thatcher and...
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 U.K.
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 KesslerGladys Kessler
Gladys Kessler is an American jurist who sits on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. She was nominated to the court by President Bill Clinton, and confirmed in July 1994....
.
Details of his interrogations in Bagram
In September 2009 Zachary Katznelson made what The GuardianThe Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
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
Bagram Theater Internment Facility
The Parwan Detention Facility , also called the Bagram Theater Internment Facility, is a United States-run prison located next to Bagram Airfield in the Parwan Province of Afghanistan.It was formerly known as the Bagram Collection Point...
.
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
Patrice Mangin
- Professor Patrice Mangin is a widely published forensic pathologist. He has graduated from the Faculty of medicine Broussais-Hôtel-Dieu, University René Descartes Paris VI . He has obtained his M.D. thesis at Faculty of medicine, University Louis Pasteur - Strasbourg I and board certification in...
, 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
Scott Horton (lawyer)
Scott Horton is a New York attorney known for his work in human rights law and the law of armed conflict, as well as emerging markets and international law. He graduated Texas Law School in Austin with a JD and was a partner in a large New York law firm, Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler...
published an article in Harper's magazine
Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, with a generally left-wing perspective. It is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. . The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010...
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
Colonel
Colonel , abbreviated Col or COL, is a military rank of a senior commissioned officer. It or a corresponding rank exists in most armies and in many air forces; the naval equivalent rank is generally "Captain". It is also used in some police forces and other paramilitary rank structures...
Michael Bumgarner
Michael Bumgarner
Colonel Michael Bumgarner is an officer in the United States Armed Services.In 2005 and 2006, he was the commander of the Joint Detention Group, the guard force component of Joint Task Force Guantanamo....
, 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.
The Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
quoted an email from Bumgarner that stated: "this blatant misrepresentation of the truth infuriates me."
According to the Associated Press Bumgarner asserted he wanted to refute the story in more detail, but would have to get clearance from his superiors first.
Calls for his release
- August, 2010, protesters disrupted a meeting that discussed plans to create a US Embassy near BatterseaBatterseaBattersea is an area of the London Borough of Wandsworth, England. It is an inner-city district of South London, situated on the south side of the River Thames, 2.9 miles south-west of Charing Cross. Battersea spans from Fairfield in the west to Queenstown in the east...
, 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 internationalAmnesty InternationalAmnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
calls Aamers ongoing incarceration a "mockery of justice" and denounced the "cruel limbo" he has been left in. At the same time The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
reported that people had sent 12.000 emails to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UK MP's in support of Aamer. - In her 2011 album In The Current Climate singer-songwriter Sarah GillespieSarah GillespieSarah Gillespie is a British-American singer songwriter based in London. She is known for combining beat poetry lyrics with folk, blues and jazz and for her collaborations with writer and saxophonist Gilad Atzmon.- Biography :...
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 AndrewsUniversity of St AndrewsThe University of St Andrews, informally referred to as "St Andrews", is the oldest university in Scotland and the third oldest in the English-speaking world after Oxford and Cambridge. The university is situated in the town of St Andrews, Fife, on the east coast of Scotland. It was founded between...
protest for the release of Aamer.
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 GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
November 22, 2010 - Shaker Aamer and the Guantánamo Prisoner List Andy Worthington, September 24, 2010
- Concerns over Guantanamo Bay interrogation methods The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
May 1, 2010 - 3,000 days of Guantanamo Bay imprisonment for Battersea man Shaker Aamer The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
April 29, 2010 - Shaker Aamer: Guantanamo's last British detainee The IndependentThe IndependentThe Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
March 3, 2010 - Free my dad from Guantanamo, 12-year-old asks Brown The IndependentThe IndependentThe Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
January 11, 2010 - Ministers in U-turn over torture documents for Guantanamo Briton, The IndependentThe IndependentThe Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
, 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