Ten years since he was incarcerated in Guantánamo Bay, Aamer has been abandoned by successive British governments
When the allied invasion of Afghanistan began in October 2001 with the bombing of Kabul, among the families forced to flee were the Aamers. With three young children and a fourth expected, the family had only recently moved from London to the poorest nation in the world. Their work was teaching the sons and daughters of Arabic-speaking expatriates in the capital, but the school was flattened in the first days of the bombing and the family quickly fell victim to the lawlessness that ensued.
By November Shaker Aamer had been sold on twice by bounty hunters, the third time by the Northern Alliance to US forces, who helicoptered him to Bagram airbase in what he described years later as a kidnapping operation pure and simple. "We were hostages not prisoners," he said, a distinction successive British governments have failed to confront. On 14 February 2002 he was airlifted again, to Guantánamo Bay. The urgent question today is why, 10 years on, he alone of the 16 detainees who possessed British citizenship and residency is still held hostage there?
If we look through a small window into the Blair government's first few months of enthusiastic participation in the Afghan war, opened by chance through accidents of litigation in which internal communiqués were required to be disclosed, we can see clearly how it all began. Arbitrary incommunicado detention of a prisoner is a crime under international law; such detention, extended indefinitely, can be categorised as torture. Presence at and encouragement of such detention is a crime too. Yet on 10 January 2002, then foreign secretary Jack Straw was urging in emails to colleagues the transfer of UK detainees to unlawful imprisonment in Guantánamo as the "best way to meet our counter-terrorism objective", rejecting "the only alternative of repatriation to the United Kingdom". In response to a question, scribbled on a copy of the Cabinet Office agenda for 11 January, about the legality of US detention of non-prisoner of war combatants, he offered a scribbled answer: "Consider later if we have to in extremis but it's still dodgy I would think." Three days later, a Cabinet Office note records that no objections "in principle" had been raised to transfers to Guantánamo. A month later, another note records then home secretary David Blunkett's opinion: "The longer they stay in Cuba/Afghanistan the better." Who are "they"? Using Blair's language, Islamist views constituted a "virus" to be "eliminated". In practical terms, human beings presumed to hold those views could be taken out of circulation by any means possible, and permanently.
By 31 January 2002 the prime minister, Tony Blair, was greeted at Bagram airport by interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai. A stone's throw away, in a freezing aircraft hangar, was Aamer. What reports went back to Whitehall from British intelligence agents, there to interrogate on the express instructions of government ministers? If frank, they would have described small groups of men sitting, hour after hour, on the concrete floor in unnatural postures, forbidden to move or speak. Screams echoed around the open space from interrogation rooms above. If a door opened, there would be a glimpse for a minute of a man hanging shackled by his wrists.
All of this was criminal; no one present could be unaware. But Aamer's ordeal has one unique feature: he is the only prisoner to have described a UK intelligence agent being present while he was beaten. Is this why he, the key to any serious investigation of British complicity in the lawless activities of the invading allies, is now entering his 11th year of captivity, with the coalition government insisting, just as its predecessor did, that it is impotent to persuade the US to return him home to the UK?
Each of the families of the 15 British men who came back from Guantánamo had been told the same; nevertheless each ministerial claim of impossibility buckled in turn under the adverse publicity generated by the horrific tales that US-cleared lawyers brought out from Guantánamo – not just of torture and rendition but of British complicity. Even those awaiting trial before military commissions came to find themselves instead on a plane bound for London.
Ministerial memos betrayed a passing concern – that Aamer too might launch litigation in the UK. But Aamer, fiercely independent, had no lawyers throughout the key years to bring out news of his treatment – savage attacks by US guards, brutal force-feeding to break his hunger strikes, and years of isolation in punishment for protest, which is still continuing. And so, after 2007, Britain, shamefully, felt able to "close its file" on Aamer.
So how to explain the repetition of the same message Aamer's wife and children in Battersea heard from Blair and then Gordon Brown, when the coalition vowed to do better? The excuse given for impotence is now that the US has toughened its criteria for removal. But we are, after all, the US's closest ally and possess sophisticated methods of detecting risk. Besides, Aamer faces no charges in Guantánamo and has been "cleared for release" for many years.
Aamer is described by all who know him as principled and fiercely resistant to every aspect of the unlawful Guantánamo regime. It seems this singled him out for what has become indefinite detention. His US captors view him as a "leader" for whom the only acceptable exit route is transfer to his country of origin, Saudi Arabia.
As is clear from an internal ministerial memo written in 2007, the UK government was actively assisting the US to achieve Aamer's permanent removal to detention in Saudi Arabia, a country condemned by NGOs as perpetrating a regime of draconian repression. Aamer's British wife, with or without a husband free to be with her, would be a non-person, in a country where women are liable to be flogged for attempting to drive a car. The US's continuing private belief that this is achievable is inexplicable unless it believes the mindset of the Blair government is shared by its successors. For the 16th Guantánamo hostage, just as for the 15 before him, it seems it will be informed public indignation alone that will bring him home.
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