Free Shaker Aamer!

  

by New Worker correspondent

DOZENS of people gathered in Whitehall, opposite Downing Street, last Saturday to demand action from the Government to take action to secure the release of Shaker Aamer, who is still held in the Guantánamo prison by the United States government.

 Shaker Aamer has been held in the Guantánamo Bay concentration camp since 2002. He is a legal permanent resident of Britain, married to a British national, with four British children living in London.

 Shaker has long been cleared for release by the United States, never been charged by the United States with a crime and has never received a trial.

 Reprieve Director Clive Stafford Smith visited Shaker in November 2011 and on departure, immediately penned a letter to Foreign Secretary William Hague listing numerous physical ailments that Shaker suffers – a list that had just been cleared through the US censorship process.

 The letter calls for Shaker's release and meanwhile Shaker waits alone in his cell, officially cleared of wrongdoing, but still paying the cruellest of costs for his kindness to others.

 Protesters at Saturday’s event read out the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, on the 63^rd  anniversary of its adoption by the United Nations.