To: President Donald Trump
Free Shaker Aamer
Shaker Aamer, a Guantanamo detainee, was born in Saudi Arabia, but is a resident of the United Kingdom. He has a wife and four kids waiting for him back in London. The youngest child has never met his father because he was detained when his wife was still pregnant. He was a charity worker in Afghanistan in 2001, and was arrested under allegations that he was a recruiter, financier, and facilitator for Al-Qaeda. These allegations have been proven wrong and he has been cleared for release in 2007. As he is not a Yemeni, there seems to be no good reason why he hasn't been sent home already. Over a hundred thousand UK citizen's have signed an online petition asking their government to demand the US release him back to the UK. He has been hunger-striking since the 15th of February and reports say that he has lost over 15 kg in that time. He is being kept alive through a force-feeding method that can easily be described as torture.
Over the years there have been a few petitions demanding his release, but they failed to reach the threshold needed for the Obama Administration to at least acknowledge and respond to the petition. Most of the petitions are for the total closure of Guantanamo and that's nice, but we all know what the White House has to say about that. I think that the petitions just for Shaker Aaamer have failed because not enough people know about him personally. The government and media try their best to ignore the personal aspect of the Guantanamo detainees. They tell you about there being 166 people there and over a hundred of them are on hunger-strike, but they refrain from going into any personal details about the individual detainees. So I have decided to create another petition and urge everyone to sign it and share this message.
If the petition fails, expect me to create a new one again... and again. However many petitions it takes until this innocent man gets to meet his 11 year old son for the first time.
This petition is also at whitehouse.gov, please sign that one as well (http://wh.gov/J8Tg).
Over the years there have been a few petitions demanding his release, but they failed to reach the threshold needed for the Obama Administration to at least acknowledge and respond to the petition. Most of the petitions are for the total closure of Guantanamo and that's nice, but we all know what the White House has to say about that. I think that the petitions just for Shaker Aaamer have failed because not enough people know about him personally. The government and media try their best to ignore the personal aspect of the Guantanamo detainees. They tell you about there being 166 people there and over a hundred of them are on hunger-strike, but they refrain from going into any personal details about the individual detainees. So I have decided to create another petition and urge everyone to sign it and share this message.
If the petition fails, expect me to create a new one again... and again. However many petitions it takes until this innocent man gets to meet his 11 year old son for the first time.
This petition is also at whitehouse.gov, please sign that one as well (http://wh.gov/J8Tg).
Why is this important?
It is an old effort, but some of us have not yet forgotten Shaker Aamer, the innocent UK resident still in Guantanamo years after he has been cleared for release. He his on hunger-strike and we should respond by being ever vigilant in demanding his release. He is not attached with Yemen in any way, so President Obama could do it today, but he has yet to tell us one good reason why he is still there.