We Stand With Shaker: Open Letter to David Cameron Calls for Release of Shaker Aamer from Guantánamo and His Return to the UK

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We Stand With Shaker: Open Letter to David Cameron Calls for Release of Shaker Aamer from Guantánamo and His Return to the UK

Today (December 15), the We Stand With Shaker campaign that I launched with campaigner Joanne MacInnes three weeks ago secured a ringing endorsement from the Daily Mail — which highlighted Shaker’s plight in a front-page story and editorial on Friday — with the publication, in today’s edition of the Daily Mail, of an open letter to David Cameron, which I wrote, calling for the PM “to pick up the phone to President Obama, and to bring Shaker Aamer home.” The letter was also published on the We Stand With Shaker website.

The open letter is signed by dozens of actors, comedians, politicians, writers and other prominent individuals, including music legend Roger Waters (ex-Pink Floyd) and Clive Stafford Smith, the director of the legal action charity Reprieve, who both attended the launch on November 24, the comedian Frankie Boyle, the journalist Jemima Khan, actress Juliet Stevenson, actor Mark Rylance, singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, and Kate Allen, the director of Amnesty International UK.

More signatories will be published in the Daily Mail tomorrow — and I will be updating the list here and on the We Stand With Shaker website accordingly.

The full letter is below. Please feel free to share it widely! There is a real momentum to the campaign at the moment, with lots of TV coverage today, and a profile of the campaign in the Guardian‘s G2 supplement.

Please also continue to support us — on Facebook and on Twitter, watch our campaign video and our Human Rights Day video, check out our photos of celebrities standing with our giant inflatable figure of Shaker, and feel free to send in photos of yourself holding signs that read, “I Stand With Shaker” to our website, to join the others here. Also on this page are details of how you can contact David Cameron, Barack Obama and other senior officials to demand Shaker’s release.

An Open Letter to David Cameron Calling for the Release of Shaker Aamer from Guantánamo and His Return to the UK

Dear Mr. Cameron,

As we approach 2015, the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta, which introduced habeas corpus to the world, we call on you to urgently address the case of Shaker Aamer, a legal British resident with a British wife and four British children. He continues to be imprisoned without charge or trial in the US prison in Guantánamo,Bay, Cuba, in violation of the right not to be arbitrarily imprisoned which was enshrined in the Magna Carta.

Mr. Aamer’s ongoing imprisonment is all the more shocking because he has been approved for release by the United States on two occasions — by a military review board under President Bush in 2007, and by a high-level, inter-agency task force under President Obama in 2009. The British Government has been requesting his return since 2007, and we received assurances from you in June 2013 that you had raised his case with President Obama.

In a letter to Mr. Aamer’s daughter, Johina, last June, you wrote, “Despite efforts to secure his release, it remains the case that he has been cleared for transfer but not for release.” You added, “It also remains the case that any decision regarding your father’s release remains ultimately in the hands of the US Government.”

Does your comment to Mr. Aamer’s daughter about being cleared for transfer refer to rumours that the United States Government would like to send Mr. Aamer back to Saudi Arabia, the country of his birth? This would, no doubt, be convenient for the United States as from there Mr Aamer would be unable to talk about the torture and abuse he has witnessed and personally experienced during his long imprisonment.

However, what the US would like to do with Mr. Aamer is irrelevant, as the British Government has a non-negotiable responsibility to secure the return of Mr. Aamer, given his status as a legal British resident. We can find no reason why, given the special relationship between our two countries, you cannot call President Obama and tell him that Mr. Aamer must be returned to the UK as swiftly as possible.

We urge you to pick up the phone to President Obama, and to bring Shaker Aamer home.

Joanne MacInnes, We Stand With Shaker

Andy Worthington, We Stand With Shaker

Joy Hurcombe, Chair, Save Shaker Aamer Campaign

Roger Waters, musician (ex-Pink Floyd)

Clive Stafford Smith, Director, Reprieve

Juliet Stevenson, actress

Mark Rylance, actor

Frankie Boyle, comedian

Jeremy Hardy, comedian

Harriet Walter, actress

Bill Paterson, actor

Sara Pascoe, comedian

Janet Ellis, actress/broadcaster

Nicholas Kent, theatre director

Sophie Ellis-Bextor, singer

Peter Oborne, journalist and author

Jemima Khan, journalist

Nick Davies, journalist and author

John Pilger, journalist and broadcaster

David Davis MP (Conservative, Haltemprice and Howden)

Sir John Randall MP (Conservative, Uxbridge and South Ruislip)

Alistair Burt MP (Conservative, North East Bedfordshire)

Caroline Lucas MP (Green, Brighton Pavilion)

John McDonnell MP (Labour, Hayes and Harlington)

Andy Slaughter MP (Labour, Hammersmith)

George Galloway MP (Respect, Bradford West)

Jeremy Corbyn MP (Labour, Islington North)

Mark Durkan MP (SDLP, Foyle)

Norman Baker MP (Liberal Democrat, Lewes)

John Leech MP (Liberal Democrat, Manchester Withington)

Jean Lambert MEP (Green, London)

Baroness Jenny Jones (Green, House of Lords)

Baroness Helena Kennedy QC (Labour, House of Lords)

Shami Chakrabarti, Director, Liberty

Kate Allen, Director, Amnesty International UK

Denis Halliday, former Assistant Director-General, United Nations

Anna Perera, author, Guantanamo Boy

Benjamin Zephaniah, poet and author

Shaykh Suliman Ghani, imam, Tooting Islamic Centre

John Rees, co-founder, Stop the War Coalition

Peter Tatchell, human rights campaigner

Moazzam Begg, Director of Outreach, Cage

Dr. David Nicholl, neurologist

Gillian Slovo, novelist and playwright

Lisa Appignanesi, writer

Clare Solomon, press officer, People’s Assembly Against Austerity

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).