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Shaker Aamer claims 'threats to rape his daughter' were the worst of all the torture he endured at Guantanamo Bay

'It was worse than the beating as well, worse than everything, just thinking of my daughter and I just sat there silent completely'

Emma Henderson
Monday 14 December 2015 11:04 GMT
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Shaker Aamer was released from Guantanamo Bay in October after being held for 14 years
Shaker Aamer was released from Guantanamo Bay in October after being held for 14 years (AP)

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Shaker Aamer has claimed the worst thing that happened to him while held in Guantanamo Bay was threats to rape his then five-year-old daughter.

Speaking to the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire, the last British citizen to leave Guantanamo Bay alleged his interrogators had said: “If you don’t start talking, we will rape your daughter and you will hear her crying ‘daddy, daddy’.”

“That was the hardest thing, the hardest thing that I ever hear. That was completely inhumane. It was worse than the beating as well, worse than everything, just thinking of my daughter and I just sat there silent completely," he said.

As well as threats of rape, Mr Aamer, who was released from Guantanamo Bay on October 30 after almost 14 years, said that he was forced to stay awake for nine days, denied food, doused in freezing water and made to stand on concrete in the winter for 16 hours a day.

He was held without trial after he was suspected to be an associate of Osama Bin Laden’s and to have had led a Taliban unit.

Mr Aamer was transferred to Guantanamo Bay in February 2002 and says he was told the prisoners were going to have protection under the Geneva Convention and thought “nobody can do anything wrong to you because now you are in an American facility.”

He also explained in the BBC interview that “the only thing I would like to happen is for Tony Blair and for whoever in the government at that time is to tell the truth, just like I’m telling the truth to the world.

“The only goal I have at this time is to stop what is happening, which is still happening, which is Guantanamo.”

Mr Aamer said he did admit attending talks given by radical preacher Abu Qatada in London before moving to Afghanistan, where he felt he was accepted for being Muslim.

But he denies being an associate of Osama bin Laden and other terror related allegations against him.

Dominic Casciani, the BBC’s home affairs correspondent said: “MI5 investigated Shaker Aamer in the late 1990s. Today, he is not under criminal investigation – and in fact Scotland Yard offered to investigate the abuse he has since reported suffering.”

In another interview with the Mail on Sunday, Mr Aamer said that Muslims who support terror attacks have no right to live in this country, and demanded jihadis “get the hell out”.

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