Mr Shaker Aamer

Tania Mathias Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[David T. C. Davies]

I will further reflect on that and say that my hon. Friend’s constituents are absolutely right. I am horrified at the prospect of this happening. It is completely and utterly wrong that Mr Aamer should be entitled to any compensation.

[Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government and other groups who fought for 14 years for the release of this resident of Britain, Shaker Aamer, should be given a lot of credit and that nothing can ever compensate somebody for the loss of liberty for 14 years without charge? However, if compensation of a monetary value should be given, surely it is the US Government who should be giving it.

[David T. C. Davies]

I will not comment on what other people have done, but my hon. Friend is certainly right to say that, if anybody is going to pay compensation, it should not be the British taxpayer given the enormous amount of time and money that British officials have spent trying to secure Mr Aamer’s freedom.

I will now set out some of the generally accepted facts. Mr Aamer is a Saudi citizen; he is not a British citizen at all. He was born in 1968 and moved to the UK in 1996. He subsequently got married here. He was given indefinite right to remain here and submitted an application for British citizenship. Before that application went through, he decided in 2001 to leave and move to Afghanistan, which at the time was run by the extreme Islamic Taliban Government.

The war in Afghanistan broke out in 2001, while Mr Aamer was over there. He was able to get his family out of Afghanistan, but he chose to stay there. In, I believe, November 2001, he was kidnapped by Afghan nationals and handed over to American nationals who imprisoned him. On that basis, I fail to see why the British taxpayer should become responsible for handing over to him a cheque for £1 million. He may be completely innocent of terrorist activity, but he certainly chose to embark on a very risky course of action of his own volition.

[Dr Mathias]

Westminster Hall is a good place to have a debate, but it is perhaps not the appropriate place to put someone on trial who was not tried for 14 years.

[David T. C. Davies]

My hon. Friend is probably right, but I am not putting him on trial. I have given the generally accepted facts: he chose to come to the United Kingdom as a Saudi citizen; he got married here; he applied to become a British citizen; and, before that application went through, he moved to Afghanistan. He apparently preferred to live in Afghanistan in 2001, and he was captured by Afghan nationals from the Northern Alliance and handed over to the Americans. There is no doubt about any of that, so I am just citing facts. He may be completely innocent of any terrorist activity, and I will assume that he is for the time being.

[Dr Mathias]

I appreciate my hon. Friend’s clarification. Unfortunately, as he knows, some facts have not yet been proven, and the Minister might give us more information on the question of any torture and the presence of British people during that torture. There are therefore many complicated issues with this case.

[David T. C. Davies]

There are certainly a lot of facts that have yet to come out, and I might refer to a few in a minute. I will first address the statement by the then Lord Chancellor, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), in 2010. He made a couple of points setting out why he would make large payments to the previous Guantanamo Bay inmates who returned to the UK.

I will not try to read it out but, in summary, the former Lord Chancellor said that the Gibson inquiry would not be able to begin until the claims had been resolved. My first question is: why not? I do not see why outstanding claims should prevent an inquiry from being set up. In any case, the Gibson inquiry subsequently ended because apparently nobody was satisfied that it would be impartial. There is no Gibson inquiry now, so that particular problem will not occur in the case of Mr Aamer.

My right hon. and learned Friend’s second point was that he felt there was absolutely no admission of culpability in any of the matters to which my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr Mathias) has just referred. If we, as a Government or as a country, are not culpable of any misdeeds in these people’s cases, why on earth are we not saying so and fighting the court cases? If there is any culpability, it certainly does not lie with any Minister of this Government or the previous coalition Government; the blame will rest with someone else—so maybe someone else, and not the British taxpayer, should be held accountable.

--- Later in debate ---

[David T. C. Davies]

Exactly, and I wonder how much of that £30 million to £50 million would be the costs being submitted by the lawyers working for these people—actually, the statement does not make that clear, so I cannot comment. However, my hon. Friend makes a very good point.

If the Government showed a willingness to go to court, it might well be that Mr Aamer’s extremely expensive lawyers would think twice about bringing the case to court. There is certainly an implication of that in this report from the BBC and other press reports. In this report, Mr Stafford Smith, one of the main lawyers involved, implied that he was not going to bother suing the Americans because he had no chance of getting money out of them. As far as I am concerned, let Mr Aamer’s lawyers fight for their money in Britain, and let the Minister and the Government do everything in their power to stop them from getting it.

There are facts that need to come out here. Mr Aamer himself obviously felt that the extreme brand of Islam favoured by the Taliban at that time in 2001 was preferable to anything on offer in the UK. He chose to go out there to Afghanistan.

[Dr Mathias]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[David T. C. Davies]

Hang on; I will give way in a moment, but perhaps my hon. Friend can clarify this matter if she knows anything about it. Mr Aamer claims that he was working for a charity in Afghanistan. I have scoured the internet and looked at every report I can find from everybody that has had an interest in this case, and I have not been able to find out anywhere the name of this charity.

[Dr Mathias]

There are lots of principles at stake here and I think it is very worthy of us to debate them, but I do not believe that we are here to put somebody on trial who was in prison for 14 years without any trial, and without their being present here today. Will my hon. Friend please stick to the principles of this very worthy debate and avoid putting Mr Shaker Aamer on trial here today?

[David T. C. Davies]

I am not putting him on trial, but if his lawyer wants to come out and tell us more about this charity that he was working for, his lawyer should do so; he has had plenty of opportunities.

[Dr Mathias]

rose—

[David T. C. Davies]

I will give way once more to my hon. Friend, but lots of people have been saying lots of things in defence of Mr Aamer; nobody has been telling us about this charity that he was working for. If my hon. Friend knows anything about it, I ask her to enlighten us.

[Dr Mathias]

Yes, I have information, but it needs to be given in a court of law if it is relevant. I do not believe that it is valuable here. I believe that if my hon. Friend needs this conversation, then the lawyer must be here, Mr Shaker Aamer must be here and we must go back 14 years, when a trial should have taken place.

[David T. C. Davies]

No, I disagree with my hon. Friend. If she knows the name of the charity, then she should say so; it is not listed anywhere else. And while she is at it, she ought to try to find out, or the lawyer ought to explain, why Mr Aamer was apparently arrested on a fake Belgian passport when he was in Afghanistan, because fake passports are not normally de rigueur when one is doing work for aid agencies.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hayes]

That is what my hon. Friend has raised in part, but it is impossible to consider it out of the context of the circumstances that prevail in respect of Shaker Aamer. My belief, which I am sure my hon. Friend and the whole Chamber shares, is that the fairness of any judicial system is vital to its popular acceptance. The unintended consequence of Guantanamo Bay is to create a perception of unfairness, which potentially fuels distaste for and hostility towards the US and her allies. With that in mind, the UK Government committed to making best endeavours to bring Mr Aamer back to the UK. Representations on his behalf in which the UK position was made clear were made by Ministers at the most senior levels, including by the Prime Minister to President Obama. The whole Chamber will be aware of that, because it was the subject of some publicity. The fact that the US Administration agreed to review Mr Aamer’s case as a priority and then release him demonstrated our close ties once again.

Following the return of Mr Aamer, it is important to emphasise that the UK is not considering accepting any further detainees from Guantanamo Bay. The timetable for the closure of that facility has not emerged, but Members will be mindful that it remains a matter for the US Government. Members will know that President Obama has commented on that a number of times. In respect of Mr Aamer, officials in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and across the Government worked to ensure that the return happened quickly and securely.

[Dr Mathias]

In view of the motion’s wording, will the Minister tell us whether the Government are looking into the allegations that UK personnel may have been present at times when torture was administered to Mr Shaker Aamer, whether in Afghanistan or in Guantanamo Bay?

[Mr Hayes]

I heard my hon. Friend raise the same issue earlier in the debate.