SHAKER AAMER’S long-awaited release from Guantanamo Bay was delayed yesterday because Republican senators were visiting the torture camp.

The last British detainee jailed there was due for release yesterday, 30 days after the US agreed to free him.

But the father-of-four’s hopes of seeing his family were dashed at the 11th hour to allow for a delegation of three Republican senators on a “fact-finding” mission.

Legal action charity Reprieve director Clive Stafford Smith said that the “dreadful” decision to delay the release of Mr Aamer was for “purely logistical and political reasons.”

“They have had 30 days to prepare [for his release] — it only took 28 days after September 11 to start a war in Afghanistan,” he told the Mail on Sunday.

The delay comes after a mass demonstration in London on Saturday marking the 5,000th day, nearly 14 years, of Mr Aamer’s imprisonment without charge or trial.

Protesters wore orange prisoner jumpsuits and sacks over their heads and many carried banners calling for Mr Aamer, who was cleared for release in 2007, to be put on a plane bound for Britain.

The US government’s recent assertion that he would return home was “not even the first one this year,” said Aisha Maniar of the London Guantanamo Campaign.

Campaigners said that delays are of serious concern because Mr Aamer needs vital health check-ups following numerous hunger strikes and torture by the guards. More than 300 people have pledged to take 24-hour fasts in order for Mr Aamer to drop his current hunger strike because he is frail and ill.

Mr Aamer was captured by Afghan Northern Alliance fighters 2001 and then sold, for a bounty, to US forces, which locked him up in the unwelcome US outpost on Cuba.

Save Shaker Aamer Campaign chair Joy Hurcombe told the crowd: “We are here to demand answers.

“He is a man that has done no wrong. His imprisonment is an absolute disgrace and the government needs to know that we won’t go away until they pay attention.”

The campaign delivered a letter to Downing Street urging Tory Prime Minister David Cameron to take action. It read: “[Mr Aamer’s family] fear further disappointments and setbacks … he has warned that he may die before he is released.”