As the hunger strike in Guantanamo enters its sixth week, two British politicians explained to RT why the camp is a blot on America’s human rights record and what should be done to free the last remaining British inmates in the camp.

Shaker Aamer is the last remaining British inmate in Guantanamo, although in theory he has been cleared for release.

George Galloway, an independent UK MP for the Respect Party, explained to RT that none of the Gitmo detainees were ever given the help they deserved from the UK government and that in some cases the UK intelligence services were complicit with the US authorities in Guantanamo.  

Half of the internees in Guantanamo have been cleared for removal but are still there, but the main thing that sticks out, Galloway said, is the lack of importance the story is given in the western media.

“If this was happening in Russia, if people had disappeared into a legal black hole in Russia, and were facing indefinite, illegal incarceration without trial, without charge and without access of attorneys we’d never hear the end of it. The western media would be full of it. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International would be screaming it from the rooftops of Westminster, but because it’s an American crime, their allowed to get away with it, because the people who control the mainstream media are fully onside.”
 

A protestor holds up a sign calling for the release of Shaker Aamer from the Guantanamo prison during a demonstration in central London, on January 11, 2010. (AFP Photo / Leon Neal)

Jean Lambert, a UK MP for the Green Party, who has been campaigning for the release of Aamer told RT that it was extremely unclear why the UK government has not pushed harder for his release.

She said she believes there are two barriers preventing him from being returned to the UK. One is a US law, which says that anyone released from Guantanamo must commit to not committing a crime in the future, “which is a totally unrealistic commitment for any human being to make ,” she said.

She also believes the UK government is keen to avoid him telling the UK press that he was tortured in Gitmo and immediately after his arrest in Bagram military base in Afghanistan.  

“We have not seen any steps to speed up the process [of his release], pressure could be put on other EU countries to take some of the Guantanamo inmates who have been cleared for release. Nobody else is offering any additional help at the moment. So the US is left with no solution as to where these people can go and they appear to have given up trying to find a real solution for these people, which is horrendous and a real blot on the human rights record of the United States."

Lambert continued that she believes Obama had not reckoned on the opposition from his own congress and senate that refused to allow inmates to be moved to the US mainland, for those who needed to face trial.

“For those whom they think there are realistic charges, put them on trial but have an open public trial ,” she said.

Instead the US is set to invest over $40 million in a new facility at Guantanamo. The significance of which, explained George Galloway, is that rather than close it as Obama promised, they intend to “keep it as a legal back hole where so-called illegal combatants are incarcerated , people who have been seized and kidnapped from around the world and taken there drugged and manacled in many cases.” He continued that Guantanamo “

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