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Last UK resident to be freed from Guantanamo after 13 years
Highlights
Shaker Aamer, the last British resident held at Guantanamo Bay, is to be released by US authorities to Britain after over 13 years at the military prison, officials said Friday.
Shaker Aamer, the last British resident held at Guantanamo Bay, is to be released by US authorities to Britain after over 13 years at the military prison, officials said Friday.
Saudi-born Aamer is alleged to have been a key British-based recruiter and financier for the Al-Qaeda militant network and purportedly worked for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, according to US military documents.
Aamer's lawyer Clive Stafford Smith said that his client, captured in Afghanistan in 2001, would probably not be released until the end of next month. The announcement comes as US President Barack Obama struggles to honour a six-year-old pledge to close the facility before leaving the White House in 2017.
Washington has notified London of its decision to release Aamer, a government spokesman said. "Welcome decision by US government to return Shaker Aamer to the UK," Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said on Twitter.
He said it had been a "long-standing priority" for the government to secure Aamer's release. Aamer was captured in Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan in December 2001 before being transferred to Guantanamo on Cuba in February 2002, where he has been held ever since.
Stafford Smith called his release "great news, albeit about 13 years too late". He added: "They only just gave notice to Congress, so that means that without robust intervention, Shaker and his family have to wait until October 25th at the earliest for their reunion."
Aamer's daughter Johina, who last saw her father at the age of four, wrote on Twitter: "Thank you everyone for all the support. The news hasn't hit yet. We can't believe we might finally see our Dad after 14 years."
Aamer's father-in-law, Saeed Siddique, 71, told ITV television: "Very happy day. The happiest day for us. "Whole family is very delighted, brothers, sisters. I don't believe it until I see him."
Of Aamer's children, he added: "The last one, his father did not see him and he did not see his father because he was born after his detention." Reprieve, a London-based human rights charity founded by Stafford Smith, said Aamer was first cleared for release in 2007.
A US defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the decision to release him had been made "taking into consideration the robust security assurances" provided by Britain about how the transfer would take place.
Neither side gave any details of what would happen to Aamer after he returns to Britain.
Cause celebre
Obama signed an order to close the top-security facility in 2009 but has struggled to do so in the face of opposition from Congress and other countries reluctant to take in one-time terror suspects.
Some 114 detainees remain in the prison opened to hold suspects following the September 11, 2001 attacks. Amid pressure for Aamer's release from MPs, newspapers and celebrities including Pink Floyd's Roger Waters, Prime Minister David Cameron raised the case with Obama when he visited the White House in January.
Aamer was born in Saudi Arabia in December 1968 and lived in the United States before settling in Britain, where he married and became a resident in 1996. He and his wife have four children who live in London. Reprieve says he was volunteering for a charity in Afghanistan when he was captured in 2001.
Some supporters suggest the reason he has been held so long at Guantanamo is because he may have witnessed the torture of others. A medical examination ordered by his lawyers in December 2013 revealed Aamer was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, as well as migraine headaches, asthma and kidney pain.
Moazzam Begg, who was held for nearly three years at Guantanamo, said Aamer would struggle to rebuild his life. "He's going to have a massive fight on his hands," Begg told BBC television.
"No amount of therapy and so forth will be able to replace those years. I think this will be a harder struggle for Shaker to deal with than the actual imprisonment."
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