UK denies Pentagon claim Britain in 'no rush' to free Guantánamo inmate (Code Pink's on the case)
Source: The Guardian
UK Secretary of Defence tells Guardian government is actively pursuing the release of Shaker Aamer, who is on hunger strike
Matt Williams in New York
Sunday May 12 2013 14.24 BST
Serious questions have been raised over the British government's commitment to securing the release of the Guantánamo Bay detainee Shaker Aamer, after a senior US lawmaker was told by the Pentagon that the UK was in "no rush" to get him out.
Aamer, a British resident, has been held at the controversial detention camp for 11 years, despite never having been tried or charged with any crime. He has been cleared for release on two separate occasions, but remains behind bars as the last Briton at the camp.
The issue of his continued incarceration has seemingly become a sore point between the UK and US governments. The British government maintains it is committed to getting Aamer out of Guantánamo. Over the last two weeks, foreign secretary William Hague and defence secretary Philip Hammond have lobbied their US counterparts – secretary of state John Kerry and defense secretary Chuck Hagel – over Aamer, a Foreign Office spokeswoman said. But the official UK line has seemingly been undermined by the Pentagon, with officials reportedly briefing that Britain's commitment to the detainee's release is half-hearted.
The senior senator from New Mexico, Tom Udall, enquired into the status of Aamer after being lobbied by his supporters. What he was told by an official at the Department of Defense's legislative affairs division differs substantially from the long-held British line that UK officials are focused on Aamer's release.
An email seen by the Guardian from Udall's chief of staff, Michael Collins, to advocacy group Code Pink's founder Medea Benjamin suggests that UK commitment is less than full-throttled. Collins states: "We were told that the UK is not exactly in a rush to get him and Saudi Arabia (the place of Aamer's birth) … isn't interested either.".
Speaking to the Guardian over the weekend, Hammond vehemently denied that interpretation of British efforts. In regards to the "no rush" claim, the minister said: "That is not the position of the UK government. Every time I meet with my US counterpart I always raise the case of Shaker Aamer and I will do so again when I meet him in Singapore (for the Shangri-La Dialogue security conference])and at the upcoming Nato meeting."
Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/12/guantanamo-bay-shaker-aamer-hammond
Eralier OP about this with more background: Guantanamo Bay's last UK detainee: 'people are dying here' in hunger strike
And this from his Wikipedia article gives some important background (my emphasis):
Aamer took his family to Afghanistan in 2001 where he was working for an Islamic charity. He was working for the charity when the U.S. invaded the country later that year.The Northern Alliance took him into custody in Jalalabad on 24 November 2001, and passed him to the Americans. The US routinely paid ransom for Arabs handed over to them. They interrogated Aamer at Bagram Theater Internment Facility and transported him to Guantánamo on 14 February 2002.
According to documents published in the leak of Guantanamo Bay files, in November 2007 the US military Joint Task Force Guantanamo believed that Aamer was a “recruiter, financier, and facilitator” for al-Qaeda, based partly on evidence given by the informant Yasim Muhammed Basardah, a fellow detainee. The leaked documents alleged that Aamer had confessed to interrogators that he was in Tora Bora with Osama bin Laden at the time of the US bombing. Aamer denied the allegations.
Clive Stafford Smith of Reprieve said the evidence against his client "would not stand up in court." He pointed out that part of the evidence comes from Basardah, whom American judges found to be “utterly incredible” and who was tortured and "promised all sorts of things."[10]
The Bush administration acknowledged later that it had no evidence against Aamer, and he was cleared for release in 2007. The Obama administration cleared him for release in 2009.
Aamer's allegations about Bagram interrogations
In September 2009 Zachary Katznelson, a Reprieve lawyer, said that Aamer had told of suffering severe beatings at the Bagram facility. Aamer said 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. Following one severe beating, he recovered from being stunned to find that all the interrogators had left the room and put a pistol on the table. He did not find out if the pistol was loaded. He said it occurred to him that it had been left either so he could kill himself, or that, if he picked it up, he could be shot and killed on the excuse he was trying to shoot them.
Aamer says that the "MI5" interrogators told him he had two choices: (1) agree to spy on suspected jihadists in the United Kingdom; or (2) remain in US custody. He said that guards/agents repeatedly knocked his head against the wall while an MI5 officer was in the room.
"All I know is that I felt someone grab my head and start beating my head into the back wall – so hard that my head was bouncing. And they were shouting that they would kill me or I would die."
Fifteen other British former detainees have alleged similar mistreatment by MI5 and MI6 agents, including torture. They filed suit against the British government over their mistreatment and torture. In November 2010, the British government settled the suit, paying the detainees millions of pounds in compensation. Aamer is also on the compensation list and part of the deal, but details are not known as most of the deal is still secret.
=snip=
At Camp "No" on June 9, 2006
Aamer said that he was beaten for hours and subjected to interrogation methods that included asphyxiation on 9 June 2006, the same day that three fellow prisoners died in Guantanamo. Describing the event, Aamer said that he was strapped to a chair, fully restrained at the head, arms and legs. When MPs pressed on pressure points all over his body: his temples, just under his jawline, in the hollow beneath his ears. They bent his nose repeatedly, pinched his thighs and feet. They inflicted pain to his eyes, bent his fingers until he screamed and then they cut off his airway and put a mask over him, so he could not cry out.
The law professor Scott Horton published an award-winning article in Harper's Magazine in 2010. He said that Aamer had been brought to "Camp No," a secret interrogation black site outside the camp, with the three men who died on the day of the event. Horton described Aamer's account of having his airways cut off as "alarming" and wrote, "This is the same technique that appears to have been used on the three deceased prisoners." Colonel Michael Bumgarner, the commander of the camps during the incident and identified in Horton's article as having been present during the interrogations, denied Horton's claims.
Horton wrote that Aamer's repatriation was being delayed so that he could not testify about his alleged torture in Bagram or the events on 9 June 2006. He wrote: "American authorities may be concerned that Aamer, if released, could provide evidence against them in criminal investigations."
The rest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaker_Aamer
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