Shaker Aamer

Mike Freer Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Westminster Hall

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

Good morning. I am pleased to open the debate under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson, and to welcome colleagues here to support this important debate. I thank everyone who signed the e-petition that helped to secure it and I am glad that we were able to do so so quickly after the e-petition hit the 100,000 signature threshold. I thank everyone who made that happen, including the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel), Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, the Speaker, and the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt).

Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary rendition and the practice of effectively interning detainees without due process are wrong, and worse, a foreign policy disaster for our important ally, the United States. However, I am not here today to try to solve the problems of Guantanamo Bay or make general criticisms of US foreign policy—those debates are for another time. I am leading the debate with the sole aim of understanding what more the British Government and the US authorities can do to make the release of Mr Shaker Aamer, my constituent, and his return back to his family in London—the clearly stated policy of the British Government—more likely.

The debate has been given greater urgency by reports of a new round of hunger strikes, which started on 6 February, and conflicting information about Mr Aamer’s health. His US lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office have confirmed that Mr Aamer is one of at least 63 detainees involved in the hunger strike. From previous legal declarations made by Mr Stafford Smith following visits to his client in Guantanamo Bay, I understand that Shaker Aamer’s health was already poor and declining, even before the current round of hunger strikes began. Mr Aamer now fears that he will die in the camp, and his family and I, and many others, are extremely concerned for his physical and mental well-being. The US Under Secretary of Defence for Policy, James N. Miller, wrote to me on 26 February stating that Mr Aamer was in “good health”. The Minister wrote to me on 17 April telling me a US official had stated:

“Mr Aamer is in a stable condition”

and that

“he is being offered medical treatment”.

Mr Aamer’s lawyers have a long-standing request that the Foreign Office persuades the US authorities to allow an independent doctor to visit Mr Aamer in Guantanamo. It was arranged at Britain’s request for Binyam Mohamed, a former detainee and British resident. Will the Minister consider reinforcing that request?

Further to that, recent reports of US troops in riot gear assaulting the minimum security wing of the facility with batons and rubber bullets are particularly troubling. Mr Aamer reports to his lawyer that he is being “assaulted”, as he puts it, by the so-called forcible cell extraction team when he asks for anything, including his medication. I am concerned, and Parliament should be concerned, about the apparent disconnect between the various reports from Guantanamo Bay and what the US authorities say to our Government. Will the Minister comment on that?

Many people here will be aware of the details of Mr Aamer’s case, but for those who are not, a bit of background might be helpful. Shaker Aamer is a 46-year-old Saudi national and a permanent resident of the UK. He had permission to live in the UK indefinitely, based on his marriage to a British national. Mr Aamer has been held by the US Government, without charge, in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp for more than 11 years. He met his wife, Zinneera, in 1996 and started a family in London. His wife and four children, Johina, Michael, Saif and Faris—all of whom are British citizens—live in Battersea and are my constituents. His father-in-law, Mr Siddiqui, who started the e-petition, lives in Tooting, as do many of his supporters. The right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) is in his place; he cannot speak because he is a Front Bencher, but I am grateful for his support for the debate and for the ongoing campaign to free Mr Aamer.

In the summer of 2001, Mr Aamer went with his wife to Afghanistan. Shortly after, coalition forces entered the country. He managed to get his wife and children safe passage out of Afghanistan and they eventually arrived home. He had to separate from his family to protect them because, like many other foreign nationals, particularly Arabs, Mr Aamer was picked up by Afghan warlords and sold to the American forces, who were apparently paying thousands of dollars in bounties for anyone suspected of being an enemy combatant. After a short time at the detention facility in Kabul, he was transferred to the US Bagram airbase and then to the US Kandahar base, before being rendered to Guantanamo. He arrived at Guantanamo Bay on 14 February 2002, the day his youngest child, Faris, the son he has never met, was born in London. The explanation of why he was in Afghanistan is, in my view, beside the point. I have never met Mr Aamer and have never taken a view on why he was there. The fact remains that he languishes in Guantanamo Bay and has been there for more than 11 years without a charge being brought against him associated with his time in Afghanistan or any other period.

Shaker Aamer is one of the last 166 detainees still held at the facility, out of a total of 779 brought there from around the world from January 2002 onwards. He is Detainee 239. He has been cleared for transfer on two separate occasions by the US Government: in June 2007, when the Bush Administration conceded they had no evidence against him; and again in 2009, following the review of detainees initiated by President Obama’s Executive Order 13492, called “Review and Disposition of Individuals Detained at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base and Closure of Detention Facilities”. It was headed by Special Envoy Daniel Fried and was one of newly elected President Obama’s first executive orders. The transfer clearance document issue to Mr Aamer in November of 2009 was explicit:

“On January 22, 2009, the President of the United States ordered a new review of the status of each detainee at Guantanamo. As a result of that review, you”—

that is, Shaker Aamer—

“have been approved for transfer out of Guantanamo. The United States Government needs to make appropriate arrangements for your transfer and this will require negotiation with countries where you could be possibly transferred. We cannot at this time give you a specific time for your transfer. The United States Government intends to transfer you as soon as appropriate arrangements can be made.”

The meaning of the document is clear: he was allowed to go to “countries”—plural, which is important—and it should happen as “soon as appropriate arrangements” could be made. The US now apparently says he has only ever been cleared for transfer to Saudi Arabia. That is not Mr Aamer’s wish, not least because it would mean abandoning his family in London. Three years on, of course, he has not been transferred anywhere: Mr Aamer remains in Guantanamo Bay. Rupert Cornwell, in The Observer, summed up the situation well when he said that

“even George Orwell would have been pressed to conceive the plight”

of Shaker Aamer and other detainees in his situation,

“cleared for release, but denied freedom”.

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate, which is on a subject on which she has campaigned hard. I apologise that I need to step out for a meeting, but I will return for the rest of the debate. Does she agree that this detention without trial is a stain on a democracy? To hold an individual for that period without bringing charges is not acceptable and is akin to the treatment in Soviet gulags, which the Americans criticised throughout the cold war.

[Jane Ellison]

I could not agree more; it is exactly that. It is one of the distinguishing lines that we should draw between our mature democracies and those we have criticised over many years. For many decades, the west criticised the gulags of the Soviet era, yet we seem to have replicated them.