Thank you for helping me win my freedom, says Shaker
THE last Briton detained in Guantanamo Bay thanked the Daily Mail last night for ‘fighting’ for his release from the brutal prison camp.
Shaker Aamer is due to be freed within weeks after 14 years languishing in captivity.
The father of four – who has been held for so long that he has never seen his youngest child – said that after years of ‘total darkness’, Barack Obama could no longer face the ‘embarrassment’ of keeping him locked up without charge.
The Mail took up his cause last December after a damning official report by the US Senate lifted the lid on the torture methods used by the CIA at Guan- tanamo and elsewhere. Last night, the 48-year-old said: ‘I know about the Daily Mail’s campaign to free me and I deeply appreciate their hard work for justice.
‘All my thanks go to all these hard and strong fighters for justice who did not give up after all these years of fighting. Even though it came very late, I am grateful to all the good people who supported me and to my lawyers who forced the reality of my situation to be seen by the whole world so Obama and Cameron finally acted to avoid more embarrassment.
‘Fourteen years I have been swallowed by this leviathan. Since then, nothing but total darkness around me. Now, I can finally say this: see you on the safety of the shores.’
Mr Aamer claimed that – despite his imminent freedom – he is still being subjected to physical abuse by his captors. He is on hunger strike in protest at his treatment and still holds fears that he might die before being released.
Details also emerged of a draft of a 24,000-word statement Mr Aamer provided to Metropolitan Police detectives two years ago giving his account of his time in captivity.
At the time, the Met was investigating British complicity in rendition and torture. Mr Aamer told the police that he was ‘abused by the US military from the day I arrived’ at Bagram air base in Afghanistan in December 2001.
He claims he had travelled to the country earlier that year from Britain to work for a charity, but was kidnapped by villagers and sold to the Americans.
He assumed they would release him but, instead, the military considered him a senior figure in Al Qaeda who knew Osama Bin Laden, and was later described as a ‘reported recruiter, financier and facilitator with a history of participating in jihadist combat’.
The Government has resisted demands to hold a full judicial inquiry into Britain’s role in the socalled ‘war on terror’.
David Cameron said he would wait until the publication of a report by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee to see if a further probe was required.
Mr Aamer, whose wife and children live in south-west London, said yes- terday: ‘The time has come for the Government to face up to Britain’s role in torture and rendition. Only by dealing with it can we restore our nation’s honour and integrity.’
The Mail has always acknowledged that Mr Aamer has questions to answer over what he was doing in Taliban- controlled Afghanistan when he was first detained. But we argued it was an affront to justice and the rule of law that he was denied a trial in which the charges made against him could be tested.