PM to plead Guantanamo Briton’s case with Obama
DAVID Cameron will seek to secure the release of the last British resident held in Guantanamo Bay in talks with Barack Obama, sources have revealed. The Pri me Minister is expected to travel to the White House later this month, his last scheduled encounter with the US President before May’s General Election.
Aides said he would raise the plight of Shaker Aamer, who has been held in Guantanamo without charge for almost 13 years.
Mr Aamer, a Saudi citizen, has resident status in the UK, and his British wife and four children, the youngest of whom he has never met, live in South London.
Paul Lewis, the Pentagon’s special envoy on Guantanamo, said the US administration is now ‘aggressively pursuing the transfer’ of the controversial detention camp’s remaining inmates. Mr Aamer was cleared for release from the prison by the Bush administration in 2007 and again by President Obama in 2009.
He has not faced a trial or been charged with a crime, despite his long detention.
He was sent to Guantanamo in 2002 after being picked up in Afghanistan. The US says he was an ally of Osama bin Laden, a claim he denies. Government sources said his case was raised by the Foreign Office with US Secretary of State John Kerry last year, and will be discussed by Mr Cameron and Mr Obama during the Prime Minister’s visit to Washington.
‘We are not expecting immediate release but we will be seeing they can look at this case with more urgency,’ said one.
US officials say 28 inmates were last year released from the facility in Cuba, the largest number since Mr Obama took office in 2009.
The detention centre was opened in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the US to hold ‘enemy combatants’ in what the US called a war on terror.
The US president has pledged to close the controversial prison, but his efforts have been delayed by resistance in the US Congress. Of the remaining 127 inmates at Guantanamo Bay, half have been approved for transfer to other countries.
The hold-up in Mr Aamer’s release is understood to be because US authorities have cleared him for release to Saudi Arabia, but not the UK, despite him being resident in this country. British officials, however, are seeking to persuade the US that they can address any concerns about a return to London.
Last month, five men held for more than a decade were sent to Kazakhstan for resettlement. The three Yemenis and two Tunisians had been captured in Pakistan and were suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda.
US officials said the men, who were also charged, no longer pose a threat.
Human rights organisation Amnesty International has launched a petition demanding the release of Mr Aamer, describing his detention without charge as a scandal.
UK Director Kate Allen said: ‘ We need the UK Government to definitively establish what the blockage over his release actually is – this terrible farce has gone on long enough.’
Cori Crider, of campaign group Reprieve and Mr Aamer’s lawyer, said: ‘Shaker has been cleared for release twice and has a country – and beloved family – ready and waiting for his return.
‘If we are to believe that the US-UK relationship is as special as the Prime Minister claims, he must secure Shaker’s release.’ Mr Cameron has been urged to raise Mr Aamer’s case by MPs from across the political spectrum, while a number of celebrities have backed a campaign to secure his release, including Roger Waters of Pink Floyd and singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor.