Britain seeks release of the Guantanamo ‘professor’

The British government is once again seeking the release of a Guantanamo detainee named Shaker Aamer. During a visit to Washington earlier this month, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith explained to reporters, “There is one outstanding [detainee] that we would want returned to the UK.” Smith identified Aamer as that detainee.

According to Reuters, Smith elaborated: “We understand that his particular circumstances are being looked at at the moment, and that the US administration has said they don’t want to return him to the UK.”

This is not the first time that Britain has sought Aamer’s release. Home Secretary Smith approached the Bush administration about Aamer’s case in 2007, but the US government refused to transfer him to British custody.

At the time, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs Sandra Hodgkinson described the intelligence accumulated against Aamer in an interview with the Associated Press. Hodgkinson said that Aamer shared an apartment with Zacarias Moussaoui in London in the 1990s. Moussaoui was later scheduled to take part in either the September 11 attacks, or a similar follow-on plot, at the time of his arrest in August 2001. Aamer had also met with convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid, Hodgkinson said, and received a stipend directly from Osama bin Laden.

Hodgkinson explained, “He has been involved in a lot of significant terrorist plots.” She did not, however, elaborate on what specific role Aamer played in al Qaeda’s plotting.

Documents prepared for Aamer’s hearings at Guantanamo further outline the allegations against him. Aamer “was an advisor to Osama bin Laden and organizer at Tora Bora, Kandahar and Kabul,” a memo produced for Aamer’s first administrative review board hearing reads. Aamer “was very close to Osama bin Laden and would ask him for advice.” He also allegedly acted as a “special interpreter” for bin Laden and knew the terror master’s “former representative in the United Kingdom.” This may be a reference to Abu Qatada, who is currently in British custody and is in the process of being extradited to the US. Qatada has been one of Osama bin Laden’s chief representatives in the UK for years.

US intelligence officials believe that Aamer was a member of an al Qaeda cell in London and that he compiled an extensive dossier of terror.

Aamer allegedly fought in Bosnia during the mid-1990s as part of an al Qaeda brigade. He “taught Arabs how to fight the jihad during the Bosnia-Serb War,” one Guantanamo document reads. Aamer also traveled to Afghanistan for jihad on multiple occasions. He allegedly trained in al Qaeda’s notorious terrorist camps, including top al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah’s Khalden camp. The government claims that at one point during his detention, Aamer “stated he went to Afghanistan in 2000 specifically to be with the Mujahedin on the front lines.” He “ate, slept and carried a gun with the troops on the front line.”

Aamer has made conflicting statements during his time in detention at Guantanamo, according to memos produced by the US government. The US government claims that during some interviews and interrogations, Aamer admitted that he knew Osama bin Laden and had significant ties to senior al Qaeda leadership. One Guantanamo memo notes that Aamer “harbors a great hatred for both the governments of Saudi Arabia and of the United States” and has “referred to himself as a terrorist and stated that the United States would and should fall because it has become an unjust nation.” During other interviews and interrogations, Aamer allegedly denied any significant relationship with al Qaeda altogether.

Unlike the cases of many other Guantanamo detainees, there are no publicly-available transcripts of Aamer’s testimony at either his combatant status review tribunal or his administrative review board hearings. This may indicate that he elected not to participate in any of the sessions. Through his attorney, Aamer has denied most, if not all, of the substantive allegations against him.

But US intelligence, or at least those analysts who wrote Aamer’s unclassified Guantanamo files, do not find his denials credible.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of Aamer’s career is his repeated trips to the US. At least three trips to America are mentioned in the Guantanamo files. The first came in 1989 or 1990, when Aamer “worked in Atlanta, Georgia and Gaithersburg, Maryland” for an unspecified period of time. The government’s files do not allege that Aamer was acting on behalf of al Qaeda at that time, although it is possible that he had already made common cause with jihadist organizations. But by the late 1990s he allegedly was an al Qaeda operative.

Aamer’s second trip to the US came in 1998. One Guantanamo memo notes: “In 1998, [Shaker Aamer] visited al Qaeda cells in New York City and upstate New York. This trip was financed by the leader of the London, England al Qaeda cell.”

There is no indication in the government’s files who Aamer met with or why he visited the US in 1998. We do know, however, that the US Intelligence Community (“IC” ) began receiving a steady stream of intelligence reporting on al Qaeda’s intention to attack targets inside the US and specifically New York that same year. These reports are documented in Congress’s “Report of the Joint Inquiry into the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.”

The so-called “Joint Inquiry” report, which was published in December 2002, notes that in June 1998 “the Intelligence Community obtained information from several sources that Osama bin Laden was considering attacks in the United States, including against Washington, DC and New York.” In August 1998, the IC learned that a “group of unidentified Arabs planned to crash an explosive-laden pane from a foreign country into the World Trade Center.” In September 1998, the IC “obtained information” suggesting that bin Laden wanted his operatives to fly an aircraft “loaded with explosives into a US airport.”

Then: “In October 1998, the Intelligence Community obtained information that al Qaeda was trying to establish an operative cell within the United States, and that there might be an effort underway to recruit US citizen-Islamists and US-based expatriates from the Middle East and North Africa.”

It is not publicly known if Aamer played any part in these early attempts by al Qaeda to establish cells on US soil or al Qaeda’s pre-9/11 plotting against the American homeland. That he was allegedly in the US as early as 1989 and then again in 1998 is troubling because American intelligence professionals believe he has consorted with high-level al Qaeda operatives for years. The timing of Aamer’s trip to New York in 1998, allegedly on behalf of an al Qaeda leader in the UK, is especially suspicious. Moreover, one unnamed source cited in the government’s files described Aamer “as an al Qaeda operative with a strong American dialect who loves to work inside the United States.”

In the Guantanamo files, the government notes that Aamer made a third trip to the US in 2000. An unidentified source told US intelligence authorities that Aamer “took another trip to the United States around 2000 and then traveled to London and met with al Qaeda cell leaders.” Again, it is not clear what American intelligence professionals think he was doing in the US at this time.

Aamer then eventually made his way back to Afghanistan. According to the Guantanamo files, Aamer was a fighter in both Bagram and Tora Bora. At the latter location, which was an al Qaeda and Taliban stronghold, Aamer “was in charge of a group of fighters” and was identified as being close to bin Laden “because he was able to speak to bin Laden without requesting permission.” Among the pieces of hard evidence accumulated against Aamer is a stolen passport he used that was found in a cave at Tora Bora.

In December 2001, Aamer was captured in a Jalalabad hospital after fleeing Tora Bora. He was transferred to Guantanamo in early 2002. During his time at Guantanamo, Aamer became an influential leader among his fellow detainees.

In Inside Gitmo, Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Cucullu explains that the authorities in charge of the Guantanamo detention facility attempted to negotiate with Aamer in an effort to pacify his fellow detainees. Aamer extracted concessions, such as a new meal plan, but there is evidence that he was always double dealing in his talks with senior camp officials. For example, at one point Aamer said he had a dream or vision suggesting that three detainees would commit suicide. He did not say which detainees would hang themselves, but his comments certainly suggested that he had foreknowledge of the suicides, which were a major embarrassment for the US government and helped shaped public perceptions of the facility.

Camp officials have noted that Aamer is a smooth-talking manipulator who often has an erudite air about him. His persona has earned him the nickname of “The Professor.”

The British government is seeking Aamer’s release because he was previously a British resident and has a British wife and children. British officials have already secured the release of all other one-time British residents and citizens from Guantanamo. In late February, for example, the US agreed to transfer Binyam Mohamed to Britain after a storm of controversy was generated by reports of his abuse while in detention at other facilities. The US government agreed to this transfer despite the fact that Mohamed was alleged to be involved in al Qaeda’s post-9/11 plotting against America.

It remains to be seen what comes of Guantanamo’s Professor.

Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for FDD's Long War Journal.

Tags: Guantanamo