Britain mixed up in more 'wrongdoing' - this time against Shaker Aamer, the last British resident left in Guantánamo Bay

Another day, another crime. That’s how it seems to be going for the British government at the moment. 

Late Tuesday afternoon, two High Court judges found that Britain had been “mixed up in wrongdoing”, and ruled that the government had a legal obligation to sort out another mess it had helped to create.

Again, it seems, the British government is conspiring with our American allies to cover up torture.

The case involves Shaker Aamer, the last acknowledged British resident in Guantánamo Bay. Shaker was cleared for release by the Bush Administration, many moons ago, and nobody cares to explain why he is still there rather than home in London with his wife and four children. His youngest daughter is now eight, but Shaker has never met her.

The British government has learned from past mistakes, in one way at least. Last time they had exculpatory evidence that would help prove that someone had been tortured in U.S. hands and was probably innocent was the case of Binyam Mohamed. Then, the U.K. struck a deal to send the evidence to the U.S. on condition that it was turned over to Binyam’s American legal team, albeit under the shroud of secrecy. 

 Even that proved too open for the Americans, who objected strongly. Independent lawyers (I was one of them) were therefore allowed to see evidence of torture with their own eyes. While we could not describe it in public, the official American line – deny, deny, deny – began to become unsustainable.

So the next time evidence of official criminality arose, the British and Americans wanted to cobble together a more effective cover up. In Shaker’s case, the British conceded in court yesterday that they sent the material over to their American allies with a strict proviso that it should not be made available to Shaker’s lawyers.

Again, I represent Shaker in the U.S. courts. I (perhaps like you) find the British position hard to understand on a moral level – although their motives seem plain enough. We are simply told to trust the American to do the right thing, without the intervention of pesky lawyers, let alone public scrutiny.

After eight years of detention without trial, Shaker still does not have the right to a fair trial. Rather than complaining, the British government seems to have gone over to the dark side. Well, they seem to be saying, we may as well do away with the judicial system altogether. What good was the Magna Carta anyway?

This article also appeared in The Guardian.