Carpetbaggery

Shaker Aamer is a leader. He doesn’t lead by the strength of ideas, but by the charisma of his personality, his engaging smile, and his passionate eyes. People just naturally follow Shaker.

Born in Saudi Arabia in 1968, Shaker headed to America at age 17 to live with family friends. The next few years were spent traveling throughout Europe, the Middle East, and finally London. There he met and fell in love with Londoner Zin Siddique, whom he married in 1997. Also that year, their first child Johina was born, followed by Michael in 1999, and Saif the following year. Shaker worked as an interpreter for a London law firm that worked on immigration cases. He was granted permanent residency. In June of 2001, Shaker and a friend, Moazzam Begg, moved their families to Kabul, Afghanistan, where he worked for an Islamic charity by establishing a girls’ school, teaching English to the children of Arabic-speaking expats, and overseeing a number of well-digging projects. Little did Shaker know that he was about to become the “poster child” for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

That September, of course, was 9/11. Sensing the encroaching danger, Shaker arranged for the safety of his three children and then-pregnant wife. The school at which he worked was flattened in the first days of the U.S.-led bombing campaign that followed. Soon after that, Shaker was kidnapped by Afghan bounty hunters. At the time, U.S. coalition forces were offering as much as $5,000 to locals who would turn in suspected “terrorists.” As far as the locals were concerned, “you had me at $5,000!” A thriving economy soon developed around hostage taking and trading. Moving up the chain, Shaker was sold to other bounty hunters twice before being sold to Northern Alliance soldiers, who then turned him over (sold him) to U.S. forces. Throughout this ordeal, Shaker feared that eventually he would be executed when he could no longer be sold. So, his heart leaped when he heard the sound of American voices. He thought he was saved. But for Shaker, the nightmare was just beginning.

In prison at Kandahar airport, Shaker was shocked at the abusive treatment of detainees and almost immediately organized a hunger strike. In December 2001, he was transferred to Bagram Air Force base, where he was starved, kept awake for nine days straight, and chained in positions that made the slightest movement unbearable. He became emaciated. Delirious and desperate to cease his torture, Aamer says he confessed to whatever the Americans wanted. Yes, he was assessed to be a key member of the UK-based al-Qaida network. Yes, he had multiple associations to senior al-Qaida members. Yes, that included Osama bin Laden. Just make it stop. He was also present when American and British intelligence officers tortured a fellow prisoner until he “confessed” that Saddam Hussein was actively training al-Qaida members.

On February 14 (Happy Valentine’s Day!), 2002, Shaker arrived at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. That same day, his son, Faris, was born. In August 2002, Shaker wrote a heavily censored letter, that included drawings to entertain his children. In the letter, he wrote “I just became 41… but physically I’m 50. I got arthritis, kidney problems, hearing problems, eye problems, my hair has fallen out, my heart is aching.”

The regime in Guantanamo became tougher as the prisoners’ treatment was made entirely dependent on their perceived cooperation with the interrogators, and a torture program was introduced via defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld. But Shaker continued to stand up for his fellow prisoners, to liaise between them and the authorities, and to translate documents for them, and he was regarded as a significant presence within the prison.

On March 9, 2005, in another letter to his wife, he wrote a heartfelt plea to his wife: “You are the soul of my life. You are the best of my heart. You are the light of my eyes. You are the oxygen in my lungs, you are the sun on my back, the sweetest taste of my mouth, you are everything, you are everything I need to live, to love, to be….Do you know how much you are important for my life? If you break, I will break; if you become weak, I will become weak; if you go, I will go. You are my soul twin. I need you to be strong.”

That summer, as a widespread hunger strike broke out at the prison, Shaker helped to bring it under control, and, with a handful of other prisoners, was part of a Prisoners’ Council involved in negotiations to secure better rights for prisoners. The authorities soon soured on the Council, disbanded it, and threw Shaker into solitary confinement, where he remained for at least a year and a half. During that period, in June 2006, he claimed he was beaten for hours and asphyxiated during an interrogation on the same day that three other Guantanamo inmates died. The official story regarding these three men was that they committed suicide. They were found with rags stuffed down their throats and a mask over their mouths to keep them from spitting out the rags. Their hands and feet were bound. Still, according to U.S. officials, these three men were able to tie a noose to the top of the cell, climb on a chair, put their heads in the noose (with hands still bound!), and commit suicide. This is still the official story, even though a number of soldiers who were present on the night in question cast doubt on the official account in an article published in Harper’s Magazine in January 2010.

All throughout his captivity, Shaker has disavowed the details of his “confession” as giving his captors what they wanted to hear so they would stop torturing him. No evidence has ever been produced against him. In 2007, the Bush administration cleared Shaker for full release. Although many in England have campaigned for his return, it is believed that the British authorities don’t want him because he witnessed British officers torturing prisoners in Afghanistan. The sole country to which he has been cleared for release is Saudi Arabia. According to Shaker’s lawyer, Stafford Smith, “The sole reason for the US to send Shaker to Saudi Arabia is to have him silenced, most likely by sentencing him to a long imprisonment after a sham trial.”

Why might powerful interests desire the silencing of Shaker Aamer? Smith points out that his case has an incendiary element: he is allegedly able to describe in detail how a UK intelligence agent was present when a US interrogator repeatedly smashed his head against a wall shortly before he was sent to Guantanamo. Described as articulate and highly intelligent, Shaker’s allegations of British complicity in his torture and detention would undoubtedly reopen the debate over British complicity in the darker side of America’s “war on terror.” Shaker has already announced he is suing MI5 and MI6 for defamation.

On August 9, 2008, however, Shaker was still unbowed and unbroken. In another letter to his wife, he wrote, “My sweetheart, yes I lost a lot of weight, yes I have a lot of sickness, yes I got short sight, yes my bones are aching, yes I got white hair, yes I got old but I love to tell you my heart is still young, my mind still strong, stronger than ever.”

Amidst fervent public protest, Shaker was again cleared for release by the Obama administration in 2011, and even England seemed to be wanting him back, when four British MPs — Jeremy Corbyn, John Leech, Caroline Lucas, and Michael Meacher — wrote an open letter to Congress seeking Shaker’s return to the U.K. And yet, Shaker still sits in Guantanamo prison, along with 85 other prisoners who have been similarly “cleared for release.”

It is the child who has never met his father who is understood to have struggled most. Faris, 11, is reported to play obsessively with the presents bought years ago by his father in the search for a connection. “He loves playing with the toys that Shaker bought for my other children. They are very special for him,” said Shaker’s wife Zin.

This week, Shaker Aamer is entering the 80th day of his hunger strike against his treatment. His lawyer says that his voice is weak and he has lost 40 pounds in the past few weeks. Yet, according to Smith, Shaker is still mentally strong. “The other day they told him to close the hole in the cell door that they push food through. But Shaker, despite being on hunger strike, refuses to shut the hole. So they push his food through and it stays there all day where he can smell it.”

Johina Aamer

The situation is such that Aamer is starting to suspect the regime at Guantánamo Bay is trying to kill him through medical neglect. Simultaneously, the strain on his family is starting to mount. Johina Aamer, a high school student who last saw her dad when she was four, asks the public to imagine what it must be like: “Imagine being locked up for more than 10 years of your life and possibly more years to come while everyone sits there and does nothing about it.”

America, all of this is being done in our name. This action is creating future terrorists around the world who have nothing but hate for the country that kidnapped, tortured, and held their loved one for more than a decade without charge. How would you feel toward the country who did this to your son, brother, father, or friend? As comedian Sam Kinison used to say, “I know what turns Mr. Hand into Mr. Fist!”

This is as much a black mark on our nation as a million black soles in chains, the trail of tears, and Japanese internment camps. But this self-inflected wound is still open and festering.

There are those who insist that our Constitution is only meant for U.S. citizens. No one else is ascribed its rights. But wasn’t America supposed to be a beacon of light into the world for freedom and democracy? Weren’t we the ones who were supposed to stand for something other than shadowy justice and concentration camps? And if you call yourself a Christian, isn’t there a higher law than the Constitution that describes how we are to treat our enemies and care for the stranger? (See the Good Samaritan.)

Shaker Aamer will likely die soon, but his name should live on in American history along with Hiroshima, Selma, Watergate, and Iran/Contra, as something we can never allow to happen again. Shaker’s name should stick in our throats until it makes us gag, much like the rags that were shoved down his throat.

Click on picture below to sign the international petition (for non-UK signees) asking for his release. I’m sure that someone will get right on that.