Shaker Aamer, Guantanamo and Obama 's Duplicity

Dear Mr. President,

In your press conference Tuesday, you said: “All of us should reflect on why exactly are we doing this? Why are we doing this?” (NYT, May 1, 2013, p A1). This was in response to a question on the Guantanamo hunger strike by more than 130 prisoners—a desperate protest against the injustice of their imprisonment and inhumane treatment. You asked a good question—Why are we doing this?—one we should ask about Afghanistan, about drones, about targeted assassinations and kill lists, about secret government memos justifying the murder of U.S. citizens without a trial, about a global military empire, about a national security state that destroys democracy and freedom, about a whole range of injustices. The gist of your remarks on Guantanamo, however, was that you were going to try again to press Congress to allow prisoner transfers so you could close the prison. But the fate of at least 86 of those prisoners is in your hands, not Congress’s—they were long ago cleared for transfer and need only certification by the State Department that they can safely be released to another country; for 3 years that has not happened. Last year you closed the office charged with transferring prisoners. You have refused to release 56 Yemenis for fear they’ll join the local al Qaeda. And so, the responsibility for all this is yours, not Congress’s. Take the case of Shaker Aamer, a Saudi-born British citizen in Guantanamo for 11 years, acknowledged to be of no threat, cleared for release years ago, his return requested by British authorities many times. The injustice done to this man becomes clear in Victoria Brittain’s book, Shadow Lives. He was in Afghanistan doing charity work—building girls’ schools and digging wells—when leaflets offering bounties on ‘foreigners’ turned over to the Americans were dropped on Afghanistan and Pakistan—one of Cheney’s bright ideas. Aamer was sold for the bounty by a group who turned this into a money-making enterprise; he was tortured in Bagram prison, then sent to Guantanamo where he is still, one of the prisoners being force-fed—another form of torture. Imprisoned and tortured by the previous lawless administration, he remains imprisoned and tortured by the current lawless administration. Shaker Aamer is your responsibility, Mr. President, and the right thing to do is not to send more doctors and nurses to Guantanamo to force-feed prisoners but to release them and close the prison. That’s what a Nobel Peace Prize winner would do.