British officials would not comment on the conditions surrounding his release although it is understood he will be subject to monitoring by the security services. British Prime Minister David Cameron had requested Aamer’s release, as did a March parliamentary motion supported by the British government.
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Aamer was arrested by Afghan forces in late 2001 in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, and subsequently transferred to USA custody.
Reprieve, Amnesty global and other groups have been lobbying for Mr Aamer’s release for several years. His lawyers say that he was forced to stay awake for nine days, denied food, doused in freezing water and made to stand on concrete in the winter for 16 hours.
Aamer, a Saudi national living in London, was seized in Afghanistan and rendered to the U.S. facility in Cuba in 2001. They recorded in secret documents that he was a “member of al-Qaeda tied to the European support network” and a “close associate” of Bin Laden himself.
Mr Aamer has been the subject of a long campaign to secure his release fronted by some of Britain’s best known celebrity faces.
He said: “It is long overdue”. According to his lawyers, throughout much of his detention he has been held in solitary confinement. In 2005, he lost half his body weight during a hunger strike. “While today’s decision to transfer Aamer is good news, it is unacceptable that the administration continues to drag its feet on transferring cleared detainees”. Shaker Aamer began shouting from his cell as the journalists filmed outside.
MP for Tooting, Sadiq Khan, said: “Shaker Aamer is a British resident with family in the Tooting area”.
Since 2007 he has been cleared for release twice, by U.S. presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama. However, the jail gates didn’t swing open.
‘He has been tortured and abused for more than a decade, and what he wants most is to be left alone with his family to start rebuilding his life.’
A report last month revealed that the Pentagon had been actively blocking his release, despite participating in one of the federal reviews that found he posed no threat to national security and could be returned home.
Why he is getting out now, and what happens to him next, is simply unclear.
“Shaker Aamer’s case is a symbol of Guantanamo’s utter failure“.
“We have been notified by the U.S. government that it has decided to release Shaker Aamer to the United Kingdom”, a government spokesman said. His first letter to his family from Guantanamo in 2003 read, “My dear wife and lovely kids, I don’t know when I am coming out but pray for me that it will be soon”.
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The father-of-four was taken to the infamous prison on Valentine’s Day in 2002 – on the same day his youngest was born.
