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REVELATIONS in a damning report into CIA torture of detainees led to renewed calls yesterday for the release of the last British resident held in Guantanamo Bay.
The fresh demand for Shaker Aamer’s release follows the publication of a report earlier this week by the US Senate intelligence committee which said that interrogations of terror suspects by the CIA were “far worse” than the agency had portrayed.
Mr Aamer, a Saudi national formerly resident in Battersea, London, has been held without charge or trial at the US gulag since 2002, despite having twice been cleared for release by the US administration.
During his detention Mr Aamer has been repeatedly subjected to physical violence — including regular beatings and “forcible cell extractions” as often as eight times a day.
He has also suffered prolonged periods of solitary confinement, protracted sleep deprivation, manipulation of the temperature around him, and humiliating “genital searches.”
Earlier this year Mr Aamer said: “The worst thing about torture is that you don’t know how to think, what to do, how to feel. You know you have your mind, but you don’t know how to react, which is horrible because you feel vulnerable. It’s terrible.”
Prior to his incarceration at Guantanamo Mr Aamer was held at the infamous Bagram US air force base in Afghanistan, where it is alleged that he also suffered severe torture at the hands of his captors.
The British government has repeatedly stated that it wants Mr Aamer released from Guantanamo and returned to his family in London.
But Mr Aamer’s lawyer, Reprieve director Clive Stafford Smith, believes that he is still imprisoned because of the evidence he might give relating to British complicity in torture.
He said: “It is deeply suspicious that Britain won’t say why their friends in the US refuse to transfer Shaker home to London.”
Reprieve director Clare Algar said: “Shaker has been to hell and back the last 13 years, and continues to suffer abuse in Guantanamo — it is high time he was returned to his family in London.”
