Last UK Resident to be Freed from Guantanamo after 13 Years
Shaker Aamer, the last British resident held at Guantanamo Bay, is to be released by U.S. authorities to Britain after over 13 years at the military prison, officials said Friday.
Saudi-born Aamer 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 U.S. military documents.
Aamer's lawyer Clive Stafford Smith said that his client, who was captured in Afghanistan in 2001, would probably not be released until the end of next month.
The move comes as President Barack Obama struggles to honor a six-year-old pledge to close the facility before leaving the White House in 2017.
"We have been notified by the U.S. government that it has decided to release Shaker Aamer to the UK," a British government spokesman said.
Aamer was captured in Tora Bora in northern Afghanistan in December 2001 before being transferred to Guantanamo in Cuba in February 2002, where he has been held ever since.
Stafford Smith called word of his release "great news, albeit about 13 years too late."
He added: "They only just gave notice to Congress, so that means that without robust intervention, Shaker and his family have to wait until October 25th at the earliest for their reunion."
Reprieve, a London-based human rights charity founded by Stafford Smith, said Aamer was first cleared for release in 2007.
A U.S. defense official speaking on condition of anonymity said the decision to release him had been taken "taking into consideration the robust security assurances" provided by Britain about how the transfer would take place.
Neither side gave any details of what would happen to Aamer after he returns to Britain.
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Obama signed an order to close the top-security facility in 2009 but has struggled to do so in the face of opposition in Congress and other countries reluctant to take in one-time terror suspects.
Some 114 detainees remain in the prison opened to hold terror suspects following the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Amid pressure for Aamer's release from MPs, newspapers and celebrities including Pink Floyd's Roger Waters, Prime Minister David Cameron raised the case with Obama when he visited the White House in January.
Aamer was born in Saudi Arabia in December 1968 and lived in the United States before settling in Britain, where he married and became a resident in 1996. He and his wife have four children who live in London.
Reprive says he was volunteering for a charity in Afghanistan when he was captured in 2001.
Some supporters suggest the reason he has been held so long at Guantanamo is because he may have witnessed the torture of others.
A medical examination ordered by his lawyers in December 2013 revealed Aamer was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, as well as migraine headaches, asthma and kidney pain.
Moazzam Begg, who was held for nearly three years at Guantanamo, said Aamer would struggle to rebuild his life.
"He's going to have a massive fight on his hands," Begg told BBC television.
"No amount of therapy and so forth will be able to replace those years. I think this will be a harder struggle for Shaker to deal with than the actual imprisonment."
Source: Agence France Presse
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