Video: Andy Worthington Promotes We Stand With Shaker on George Galloway’s Sputnik Show on RT

Today (November 29), We Stand With Shaker, the new campaign to secure the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, got a big boost when campaign coordinator Joanne MacInnes and I were invited onto George Galloway’s Sputnik show on RT to discuss the campaign with George — and his co-host Gayatri. Please also follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and watch the campaign video here.

We were on the first half of the show, which was about 13 minutes in total, and as well as giving us the opportunity to promote the campaign and to tell Shaker’s story to a global audience, the interview also featured clips of music legend Roger Waters (ex-Pink Floyd) and human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell speaking at the launch on Monday.

I do hope you have time to watch the show, which is posted below via YouTube:

This is how George described the program on the RT website:

Shaker Aamer is the last British hostage held by our “closest ally” in the cells of Guantánamo, even though the British government has demanded his release and consecutive US governments have conceded that he has no case to answer. President Barack Obama ran for office with a pledge to shut down Guantánamo Bay, the United States’ own Gulag in an occupied corner of Cuba, but six years on it is still there and being expanded at great public expense. And, 12 years and nine months later, Shaker Aamer is still incarcerated. This week, Joanne Maclnnes and Andy Worthington join Sputnik to tell us about the fight for Shaker Aamer to come home.

After our interview, in the rest of the broadcast, George discussed the scandal engulfing Save the Children after Tony Blair was given an award honouring his “global legacy.” As he noted, “The award may well ruin the once admired Save the Children Fund; their staff around the world are in open revolt: a hundred thousand people, and rising, have signed the petition demanding the award be rescinded.”

Also, on Sputnik’s Facebook page, there’s rough footage of the launch of We Stand With Shaker, featuring the end of my speech introducing the campaign, plus — in their entirety — the great speeches made by Clive Stafford Smith of Reprieve, Roger Waters and Caroline Lucas MP, which I’m posting below:

Post by Sputnik on Russia Today.

Please keep sharing information about the campaign, on Facebook and Twitter (where we continue to post photos of high-profile supporters standing with the giant inflatable figure of Shaker that is at the heart of our campaign) and please also share it on whatever other platforms you use, and let’s make Shaker’s release a reality. As Joanne MacInnes said on the Sputnik show, when talking about what David Cameron should be doing for Shaker, “Get on the phone and bring him home.”

Details of how to contact the PM, and other UK officials, as well as Barack Obama and other senior US officials, are on the website here. Please also send photos of yourself holding up placards that read, “I Stand With Shaker,” to the campaign email, to be published on the website.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, the director of “We Stand With Shaker,” calling for the immediate release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.