Last British Guantanamo Detainee: Give Tony Blair Amnesty To Tell Truth On Torture [Video]

Shaker Aamer is the last British prisoner to be held at Guantanamo (for now). He was held for 14 years, and since his release he has refused to stay silent about his ordeal.

Below is a segment of his interview with ITV news:

In his very first interview since release, he states that he was tortured in Guantanamo with brutal beatings, starvation and sleep deprivation among other methods. He also claims that Tony Blair and Jack Straw were aware that he was being tortured while in office.

When asked whether Blair would speak about the torture program he said, “If [it was] guaranteed that he would not be behind bars, I think he would.” 

“I do not want to prosecute anybody,” Aamer told the BBC in a later interview. “I do not want anybody to be asked about what his role [was] in the past. I just want people to tell the truth. I don’t believe the court will solve this problem. I don’t believe the court will bring justice because of what happened in the past.”

Below is his BBC interview:

He also describes how mental torture was used against him.

“‘If you don’t start talking, we will rape your daughter and you will hear her crying daddy, daddy.’ That was completely inhumane. It was worse than the beating as well, worse than everything, just thinking of my daughter, and I just sat there silent completely,” Aamer told the BBC on Monday recounting his experience at Bagram Air Base en route to Guantanamo; his daughter was only five years old at the time.

State Department representative John Kirby responded to the allegations in a press briefing, stating that, “we don’t torture. The United States does not torture… I don’t know what he’s referring to, but I can tell you that we meet our obligations under international law for the humane treatment of detainees.”

When challenged to use the past tense to describe the treatment of detainees, Kirby said “Well, I think it’s been a long discussion, when you go back to waterboarding, but… the United States military, the ones that are holding these detainees, or have held these detainees, does not torture.

I’m not a historian. I don’t think it’s valuable to relive every incident in the past. I think it’s a matter of public record that we haven’t always lived up to that standard. But I can tell you that without knowing his particular claims, or what particular timeframe, I can assure you, as I said. Again, the United States military, who was holding these detainees, follows the law and does not torture.”

The United States Military “does  not torture” while it apparently has not “always lived up to that standard”. Using the present tense allows the military to wipe its own slate clean whenever a case of torture arises, because one can only find out about torture as an event that had occurred in the past.

Aamer was captured by bounty hunters in Kabul, where he was accused of being an associate of Osama Bin Laden. He claims that he was doing charity work, starting schools for girls. Aamer was never charged with a crime.

While captive, he claims to have had his head slammed against a wall, deprived of sleep for nine days, starved, pinched, had his eyes poked, made to listen to loud music and forced to stand exposed to the cold winter after being doused with cold water. Court documents show that he was held in solitary confinement for a whopping 360 days- he claims that he was held for up to two years.

His first day in Guantanamo wasn’t easy. In the BBC interview, he said , “they really beat you up so that while you are still on the concrete, on the airport, before even they move you to check you and process your case. They did it for two, three hours and truly, truly, that’s one of the times where I felt like I’m not going to live that night,” he said.

Through his ordeal, he read books that spoke to him of his experiences; Harry Potter proved to be a particularly good fit.

“They’ve got an island in Harry Potter, it says Azkaban, where there’s no happiness,” he told the BBC. “They just suck all your feelings out of you, and you don’t have no feelings any more. And truly that’s how I felt all the time. This is Azkaban. This is not from this world because that’s what they tried.”

It is ironic that America’s pursuit of “terrorists” via Guantanamo would prove to be an effective recruiting tool for Jihadists. Aamer addressed these would-be extremists:

“Even if there is a war you cannot kill just anybody, you cannot kill kids, you cannot kill chaplains, you cannot just go in the street and get a knife and start stabbing people,” Aamer told the Daily Mail on Sunday. “If you are that angry about this country, you can get the hell out.”

Regardless of the torture his own government had allowed him to be subjected to, he still views the UK as his home.

“At last that moment I’d dreamt of came and she came through the door,” he said. “That instant washed away the pain of 14 years. It washed away the tiredness, the agony, the stress. It was like it no longer existed. I hugged her, she hugged me, and we just wept.”

Sources: Daily Mail, The Guardian, RT, RT

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