Campaign news

Free Shaker Aamer

24th December 2014

Aamer’s Continued Detention Shames Our Society

Letter to ‘Guardian’ 23 December 2014

Following the US Senate’s shocking report into the torture of prisoners by US staff, including medical personnel, we have urgently set up an all-party group for the immediate return of Shaker Aamer to his British wife and four children in London. Mr Aamer, an aid worker, was sold to the Americans 13 years ago in Afghanistan, where he was living with his family
. He was cleared for release in 2007 and again in 2009 by the most senior levels of US intelligence and military. Our prime minister has asked for his return to the UK. Successive foreign secretaries have assured his family and lawyers that they are doing everything to get him back. It is absolutely unacceptable that an innocent man who has suffered many of the forms of torture now made public by the Senate can continue to be held in Guantánamo Bay.

Our group has MPs from eight political parties, representing a broad section of UK public opinion, calling for Mr Aamer’s immediate release from a place where his torture continues. The group is committed to active engagement with the US authorities for Mr Aamer’s return home. His continued detention shames our society.

John McDonnell MP chair of the Shaker Aamer parliamentary group,
Victoria Brittain, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Peter Bottomley MP, Norman Baker MP, Caroline Lucas MP, Katy Clark MP, Ann Clwyd MP, Elfyn Llwyd MP, Andrew Mitchell MP, Joan Ruddock MP, George Galloway MP, Mark Lazarowicz MP, Andrew Slaughter MP, Sir Bob Russell MP, Naomi Long MP, Joan Walley MP, Martin Caton MP,Nick Harvey MP, John Leech MP, Mark Durkan MP, Alistair Burt MP, Sir John Randall MP, Yasmin Qureshi MP, Gerald Kaufman MP, Diane Abbott MP, Sarah Teather MP, David Ward MP, Hywel Williams MP, John Hemming MP, Mike Wood MP, Roger Godsiff MP, Julian Huppert MP, Michael Connarty MP, Roger Godsiff MP, Andew Dismore London Assembly member, Gavin Shuker MP, Mike Weir MP, Simon Wright MP