Abu Qatada is not a bad guy, insists newly freed Aamer

SHAKER AAMER, the last British resident held at Guantánamo Bay has defended the radical cleric Abu Qatada, insisting he is not a “bad guy”.

Mr Aamer, 48, who was held by the US authorities for 14 years before being released in October, insisted he had never heard Qatada speak about Osama bin Laden.

Qatada fled to Britain from Jordan in 1993 with his wife and three children, using a forged passport. He claimed asylum on the grounds of religious persecution and was granted leave to remain in 1994. But he was deported to his native Jordan in 2013, where he was wanted on terror charges.

In an interview with the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire, Mr Aamer insisted that Qatada, who was eventually acquitted of terrorism charges by a court in Amman, was a good person. He said: “According to my own knowledge, he [Qatada] got nothing to do with bin Laden and he never, he never preached about him in his circles.”

Mr Aamer, who claims he was subjected to appalling torture and abuse while an inmate at Guantánamo Bay, has accused the British authorities of complicity in his treatment.

But he said he had no interest in pursuing legal action against the Government. Mr Aamer compared his time in Guantánamo to the island of Azkaban in the Harry Potter books, “where there’s no happiness, they just suck all your feelings out of you”.