Rights News includes: Detainee Items & Shaker Aamer: The Forgotten Prisoner by Moazzam Begg

Find all of the following at Bill of Rights Defense Committee: here

2/27, Ian Wilhelm, Chronicle of Philanthropy, Nonprofit Coalition Argues Antiterrorism Efforts Hurt Charities

2/27, Karen DeYoung and Del Quentin Wilber, Washington Post, Britain Acknowledges 2 Detainees Are in U.S. Prison in Afghanistan

2/27, Bobby Ghosh, Time, What To Do With Gitmo Detainees: No Easy Solutions

2/27, Devlin Barrett, Associated Press, Enemy combatant case moved into civilian courts

2/27, Daphne Eviatar, Washington Independent, Glimmers of Bush: Does National Security Trump the Law?

2/27, Agence France-Presse, Lawyers for Guantanamo prisoners urge release

Grassroots News:

2/23, Manuel Valdez, Associated Press, Wash. activist fights immigrant detention center

1/21, Raleigh News & Observer (NC), Activists to discuss immigration program

1/13, Washington Post, ACLU Will Push For Police Surveillance Limits

1/9, Ian Demsky, The News Tribune, Detention center cleanup on Tideflats due again

1/6, Edward Sieger, The Express-Times (Easton, PA), We're watching ... er, uh ... listening

12/16, Pamela Lehman, Morning Call, Bethlehem's candid cameras make a splash

Excerpt: Aamer should be sent to since he was cleared for release and transfer over a year ago.

here
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Guantánamo: The Forgotten Prisoner
28/02/2009

Finally, Binyam Mohamed is coming home. But Shaker Aamer is also a British resident – don't abandon this gentle family man

By Moazzam Begg

Perhaps the most heart-breaking thing a child whose father is in prison will ever have to do is to explain to his – or her – classmates why daddy never comes to collect him from school. The very mention that daddy is in jail will, at least in some cases, elicit the puerile jeering and mockery expected in any school playground. Society – schools included – tells us that people in prison must be bad. That may be the case for those found guilty of heinous crimes. But, how does a seven-year-old – who has never seen his father, except through old photographs his tormented mother shows him – explain to his peers the iniquitous nature of the removal of habeas corpus? How does he argue his father's case when he doesn't even know what a father is? How will he explain all this to his classmates when we cannot even explain it to adults? This – and much more – is what one chid and his three older siblings in London have experienced daily since the incarceration of their father more than seven years ago.

Since the early 90s, Shaker Aamer had resided in the UK, where he worked as a translator at a legal firm and later met his wife. In the summer of 2001, Aamer made the decision to live and work in Pakistan and Afghanistan, along with his wife and children, to undertake projects to support a girls' school and build wells. Shortly after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, Aamer, it is believed, like hundreds of others, was sold for a bounty of $5,000 by tribal warlords eager to receive the lucrative rewards offered for foreign Muslims by the US military. His family managed to return safely to the UK, but Aamer was sent to a series of secret prisons and eventually to Guantánamo Bay.

Guantánamo has become a major embarrassment for the US administration, and President Barack Obama's call to close the place – along with the CIA detention sites – is welcome. We have already seen how the torture meted out before and during our incarceration in Guantánamo has become a source of altercation and unease between two of the world's closest allies, especially through the case of Binyam Mohamed, who is now finally being returned to his place of residence in the UK. Having been subjected to some truly horrific torture, Mohamed undoubtedly deserves to be afforded the dignity of rehabilitation and reintegration into normal life. If this is true in the case of Mohamed, then it is even more so in the case of Aamer and his family.

Aamer was a very well-known and liked person among his community; he left an indelible impression on most of the people who met and conversed with him. He is faithful, brave, charismatic, kind, polite and full of life. All of us in Guantánamo knew his qualities, including the men guarding us.

Terry Holdbrooks, one of Aamer's guards, serving in a military police unit from 2003-04 in Guantánamo, said about him: "He's a wonderful character – unbelievably intelligent, very polite, very well-mannered, great etiquette … no matter whom the guard was he was working with – whether it was a very ignorant uncaring American with no recognition for his situation or me … He was a wonderful person – I absolutely enjoyed spending time with him."

There has been some confusion as to where Aamer should be sent to since he was cleared for release and transfer over a year ago. The Americans wanted to send him to Saudi Arabia, since he is a citizen of that country, but he has leave to remain in the UK and his family are all here. His UK lawyer, Gareth Peirce, commented: "He's not charged with anything. Where is the problem? His family's all in the UK and the UK has accepted that it has called for his return here. The new US administration wants to close down Guantánamo. Bringing Aamer home tomorrow wouldn't be soon enough."

Aamer has never been designated for trial by military commission and there is no intention to prosecute him. He has lost more than half his body weight due to several hunger strikes he has participated in, agitating for better conditions and the right to be charged and tried – or released. But ultimately, Aamer is a father and a husband who simply wants to come home. Zachary Katznelson from Reprieve, on organisation that legally represents a large number of the men still in Guantánamo said: "Shaker's primal concern has always been about his family: how he could return to being a father again, how he could return to being a husband again."

Aamer's wife has been hospitalised a number of times due to the terrible strain his absence has placed upon her and her children. Her words haunt all who know his case:

Your disappearance isn't natural

Is that what was written in my fate?

What kind of departure was it?

Your commemoration in my mind

Faaris Aamer, the child who has yet to meet his father, still patiently awaits the day that the man in the photographs he sees holding his older sister and brothers – Juhayna (12), Mish'al (10) and Abdur-Rahman (9) – all those years ago, walks through the door and finally says, "As-salaamu alaikum kids – I'm your father. I'm home."

It is high time Aamer came home.

On behalf of the family of Shaker Aamer and former Guantánamo prisoners: Shafiq Rasul, Ruhel Ahmed, Asif Iqbal, Tarek Dergoul, Jamal al-Harith, Richard Belmar, Martin Mubanga, Feroz Abbassi, Bisher al-Rawi, Jamil Elbanna, Omar Deghayes and Abdenour Sameur

SOURCE: The Guardian
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For an earlier piece at Reprieve: here I can't figure out the date?

You will also find items on al-Marri at Andy Worthington's website

There are some troubling much older items at Wikipedia...however, with Bounty and Torture Interrogations involved...it's extremely hard to know how to sift out fact from fiction??