Last British resident at Guantanamo in protest
Print Edition
Shaker Aamer, the last British resident held in Guantanamo Bay who is due to be freed in weeks, has said he is on hunger strike and might not make it out alive, the Mail on Sunday reported yesterday.
Speaking for the first time since an announcement last month that he would be released, Aamer said he was still being subjected to physical abuse, the report said.
“I know there are people who do not want me ever to see the sun again,” he was quoted as saying in the transcript of a conversation with his British lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith.
“It means nothing that they have signed papers, as anything can happen before I get out. So if I die, it will be the full responsibility of the Americans,” the 46-year-old was quoted as saying.
Aamer told his lawyer that he went on hunger strike in a protest at an assault by Guantanamo guards to force him to give blood samples.
Aamer, a Saudi citizen with permanent British residency, was captured in Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan in December 2001 and has been in Guantanamo since 2002.
He is alleged to have been a key British-based recruiter and financier for the al-Qaida militant network and purportedly worked for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, according to United States military documents.
He has denied this, saying that he was only volunteering for a charity in Afghanistan at the time. The Mail on Sunday, which has campaigned for Aamer’s release, said that in a statement to British police two years ago he detailed abuses he had suffered and witnessed.
Stafford Smith has said he expects Aamer to be released at the end of this month.
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