Stain on US justice

THERE is much to admire about the US justice system – not least its ruthless pursuit of the bankers who triggered the global financial crisis. The guilty men have been named, prosecuted and t heir employers hammered with massive fines.

British banks have been doggedly held to account in a way that puts our own toothless regulators to shame.

Last week, the £1.25billion fine levied on Barclays in the US, for rigging the foreign c ur r e ncy markets, dwarfed t he £285million penalty imposed in the UK.

Similarly, on the eye-watering sleaze and rampant corruption at Fifa, it has again been the US taking the moral lead – with its Attorney General bringing charges against more than a dozen officials accused of taking bungs.

Which brings us, bewilderingly, to the deeply immoral case of Shaker Aamer – the last British resident to be held in Guantanamo Bay, where he has been kept in inhuman conditions for 13 years.

As our heartrending report on Pages 36 and 37 explains, Aamer’s case file has been vetted by six US government departments of state, including Defence and Homeland Security, all of which have cleared him for release. Yet, for reasons no one will disclose (though his supporters suspect it is to stop him revealing what he knows about torture), the US authorities continue to stall – subjecting Aamer and his wife and four children in Britain to the most appalling mental trauma.

This paper has always accepted that Aamer may be a bad man. But every day that he remains in Guantanamo without having his innocence or guilt tested in a court is a grotesque affront to justice.

It’s also a shameful stain on an American legal system from which we are entitled to expect so much better.