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For Immediate Release
February, 13 2014, 08:14am EDT
Contact:
Press office: +44 (0) 207 553 8166/ 60 / donald.campbell@reprieve.org.uk / alice.gillham@reprieve.org.uk
Last British Resident in Guantanamo Marks 12th Year in Captivity Tomorrow
Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, has appealed to the British Government to apply new pressure on the US to secure his freedom, 12 years after his arrival at the prison on February 14 2002.
In a recent letter to his lawyer, Reprieve's Director Clive Stafford Smith, Mr Aamer said:
"The world has to tell the US Government that... they have lost their direction. The people best placed to do this are the British Government."
LONDON
Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, has appealed to the British Government to apply new pressure on the US to secure his freedom, 12 years after his arrival at the prison on February 14 2002.
In a recent letter to his lawyer, Reprieve's Director Clive Stafford Smith, Mr Aamer said:
"The world has to tell the US Government that... they have lost their direction. The people best placed to do this are the British Government."
Mr Aamer also described the difficulties of daily life at the hands of the prison authorities:
"Yesterday, my fellow detainee Emad Hassan did not take his legal call, for the same reason every time he misses a phone call or a meeting. They intimidate him by telling him before he goes, 'we'll do a full body search' - the 'scrotum groping search' as they call it. So Emad goes with them to the Camp 5 exit where they plan to do the search, and when he sees them ready to carry out a full body search, he tells them that he refuses the humiliation, and demands to go back to his cell."
"The authorities don't want someone like Emad to let the world know what has happened to him."
The anniversary comes just days after a court in Washington D.C ruled that hunger-striking detainees, including Mr Aamer, can challenge their force-feeding in a federal court. A case brought by legal charity Reprieve and associated counsel Jon B. Eisenberg saw the court ruling two-to-one that the Federal District Court has jurisdiction to decide whether the techniques used to force-feed detainees in Guantanamo Bay violate the law.
Mr Aamer is currently on hunger-strike, and in increasingly poor health. In his latest letter to his lawyers, he reports that 35 detainees are now hunger striking, a marked increase on the figures most recently reported by inmates.
Aamer's 47th birthday passed last December. Tomorrow (February 14) marks the 12th birthday of his son Faris, who was born on the day he was imprisoned.
Reprieve is a UK-based human rights organization that uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantanamo Bay.
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Update:
US President Donald Trump, Pakistan's prime minister, and the Iranian Foreign Ministry said Sunday that the US and Iran have reached an agreement on a framework to end the war that Trump launched in late February.
Iran's deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, said the terms of the deal will be made public after the memorandum of understanding is signed on Friday in Switzerland. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif wrote on social media that "both sides have declared the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon."
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The Associated Press reported Sunday that Israel's new strikes on Beirut "threatened to hamper negotiations over a deal, which in its current form is a deep disappointment to Israel’s government."
"The last time Israel struck the Beirut suburbs a week ago, it set off the most serious escalation of fighting between Iran and Israel since the tenuous ceasefire took hold April 7," AP added.
Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, wrote on social media that "as a US-Iranian deal seems like it might be closer, Israel predictably bombs the Beirut suburbs, evidently hoping to sabotage the deal."
"Why does Trump put up with this and continue to arm and fund such obstructionism?" Roth asked.
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Either Trump can't restrain Netanyahu, or the deal is already being violated before it's signed.
Either way, it undermines the deal's value for Iran. pic.twitter.com/v08c21i7wa
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