Shaker Abd al-Rahim Muhammad Aamer (Arabic: شاكر عبد الرحيم محمد عامر; born 21 December 1966)[2] is a Saudi citizen who was held by the United States in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba for more than thirteen years without charge.

[2][3] Aamer was seized in Afghanistan by bounty hunters, who handed him over to US forces in December 2001 during the United States military operation in the country.

[8][9] Aamer denies involvement in terrorist activity and his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, said the leaked documents would not stand up in court.

[17] Aamer has suffered decline in his mental and physical health over the years, as he participated in hunger strikes to protest his detention conditions, and was held in solitary confinement for much of the time.

[24] He moved to the United Kingdom in 1996 where he met Zin Siddique, a British woman; they married in 1997 and he established legal residency in Britain.

In his spare time, Aamer helped refugees find accommodation and offered them advice on their struggles with the Home Office.

According to Joint Task Force Guantanamo assessments from 1 November 2007, the US military believed that Aamer was a "recruiter, financier, and facilitator" for al-Qaeda, based partly on evidence given by the informant Yasim Muhammed Basardah, a fellow detainee.

[12] The leaked documents alleged that Aamer had confessed to interrogators that he was in Tora Bora with Osama bin Laden at the time of the US bombing.

Other assessments contained conclusions that were stated categorically even though derived from uncorroborated statements or raw intelligence reporting of undetermined or questionable reliability.

Conversely, in a few cases, the Task Force discovered reliable information indicating that a detainee posed a greater threat in some respects than prior assessments suggested.

[31] Aamer denies being involved in terrorist activity[32] and his attorney, Clive Stafford Smith of Reprieve, said the evidence against his client "would not stand up in court."

He pointed out that part of the evidence comes from Yasim Muhammed Basardah, whom American judges found to be "utterly incredible" and who was tortured and "promised all sorts of things.

Aamer said that close to a dozen men had beaten him, including interrogators who represented themselves as officers of MI5, the United Kingdom's internal counter-terrorism agency.

[33] Aamer says that the "MI5" interrogators told him he had two choices: (1) agree to spy on suspected jihadists in the United Kingdom; or (2) remain in US custody.

"[21][23][43][44] Given the time involved, the lengthy spells in solitary confinement and the torture allegedly used against him, Shaker Aamer's plight has been one of the worst of all the detainees held at Guantanamo.

[46] The motion alleges that Aamer had been held in solitary confinement for 360 days at the time of filing, and was tortured by beatings, exposure to temperature extremes, and sleep deprivation, which together caused him to suffer to the point of becoming mentally unbalanced.

[48] Security officials wanted to send him to Saudi Arabia, his country of citizenship, but his attorneys argued for him to be transferred to Great Britain, where he had been resident and had family.

[51]In an article published in 2010, Aamer said that he was beaten for hours and subjected to interrogation methods that included asphyxiation on 9 June 2006, the same day that three fellow prisoners died in Guantanamo.

[52] Describing his treatment, Aamer said that he was strapped to a chair, fully restrained at the head, arms and legs, while MPs pressed on pressure points all over his body: his temples, just under his jawline, in the hollow beneath his ears.

The law professor Scott Horton published an award-winning article on the 2006 deaths in Harper's Magazine in 2010, suggesting that these were cases of homicide caused by extended torture, rather than suicide.

They argued that his various health problems could not be treated in Guantanamo and "even if he receives the intensive medical and therapeutic treatment his condition requires, Mr Aamer will take many years, if not a lifetime, to achieve any significant recovery".

In August 2007, Foreign Secretary David Miliband requested the release of Aamer and four other men, based on their having been granted refugee status, or similar leave, to remain in Britain as residents prior to their capture by US forces.

On a visit to the United States on 13 March 2009, when asked about Guantánamo captives, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said that the US administration has said they do not want to return Aamer to the UK.

[15] In January 2012, The Independent revealed that the British government has spent £274,345 fighting in court including preventing Aamer's lawyers gaining access to evidence which might have proved his innocence.

[18] The newspaper reported that Aamer had several serious medical complaints from years of "inhumane" detention conditions, and that the UK gave false hope to his family.

He also called upon jihadis to "get the hell out" of Britain, stating that civilian killings were "not allowed" in Islam, and went on to say that "you cannot just go in the street and get a knife and start stabbing people", in apparent reference to the murder of Lee Rigby.