Should Shaker Aamer, the recently released last British resident of Guantanamo Bay held without charge or trial for 14 years, be in line for a £1 million payout from the British taxpayer ?
Who arrested him us or the USA and i think he's from Saudi arabia not a GB citizen? also whats he doing in a war zone not shopping i think,
Bounty hunters arrested him in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan and turned him over to the US. He claimed to be doing humanitarian work.
Humanitarian work :Shifty: and i go church every Sunday, Wonder who's been paying the up keep for his family all this time, Not a pennie if i had my way but i would let him keep the orange boiler suit,
The BBC has flooded it's news today on this, like we should all be celebrating - as usual you get the one-sided bias about what a great guy he is and how he was digging wells/building schools rather than commanding a bunch of terrorists. Funny, but I can't see any street parties in my neck of the woods....
Trouble is we just don’t know what happened, or what he was doing in Afghanistan. And we never will. It does worry me that the news keeps saying the he was never charged but that does not mean that he didn’t do it (whatever ‘it’ was). Whatever the truth is I hope we do not end up paying him compensation because innocent or not he put himself in harm’s way and should accept the consequences
The guy has denied wrongdoing and made claims about what innocent activities he was up to in Afghanistan in 2001. Those denials and claims may be true or false, obviously. They have never been tested in a trial - which is kind of the point of the story here. You seem to be objecting to the BBC reporting his denials and claims. Why? Even if someone is charged with serious criminal offences which they deny, the media including the BBC are not usually forbidden to report those denials. Aamer, of course, has never been charged with anything. That doesn't prove his innocence, but surely his protestations of innocence are reportable.
I agree that the protestations are reportable, but it must be a slow news day, when such a story dominates BBC coverage to the extent of even filming the chartered plane landing in the UK
Would Whoever provided the private plane mind flying my family to Italy next year to moto gp ? I do pay my taxes after all. This all boils my piss. Is he a uk citizen?
You're right, it is a slow news day today. There is a distinct lack of wars, elections, disasters, bombings, scandals, and financial crises at the moment. The media are scraping the bottom of the barrel. Ah well, better luck next week no doubt.
It puts the scandal of tax credits on hold so people forget about it The media tends to do this when they are covering something else up behind the scenes Call me cynical
The BBC also reported that several UK based pressure groups and senior politicians from all parties had campaigned vigorously for Aamer's release throughout his incarceration and that as a consequence he had issued a statement to the effect that he felt there was now "a contract" between himself and the UK which obliged him to live in accordance with our laws and customs. A welcome commitment, no doubt, but an oddly stiff and emotionless way to characterise his relationship with the country in which he has chosen to make his home. And it kind of suggests that before his imprisonment he did not consider himself under such an obligation which casts his humanitarian work in Tora Bora, the lawless stronghold of Al Queda, in a rather different light. And in that light you can't help but speculate how the other, nearly 4 million, Muslims in Britain think about their relationship with the country.
