Former Guantánamo prisoner urges UK inquiry into abuses

The last British resident held at Guantánamo Bay says former Prime Minister Tony Blair and other senior officials should be granted legal immunity to reveal what they knew about British complicity in abuses during the "war on terrorism."

Shaker Aamer, 48, was freed in October after almost 14 years at the U.S. detention facility in Cuba. He told ITV News that "we need to hear the truth" from Blair and others but that "you are not going to get the truth from these people if they are scared."

In the interview, broadcast Monday, Aamer said he wanted an inquiry to find out the truth but said "nobody should be prosecuted because of what happened in the past." He says he was tortured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Guantánamo and that British intelligence agents knew of the abuse.

The British government says it opposes torture in all circumstances.

In a separate interview, he told the BBC that he did not plan to sue the British government over his detention.

Aamer, a Saudi citizen who married a British woman and moved to London in the mid-1990s, says he moved to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan because he wanted to live in a Muslim country. In the chaos that followed the 2001 U.S.-led invasion, he was captured by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance and turned over to U.S. forces. He was sent to Guantánamo in February 2002.

The U.S. Defense Department has said he shared an apartment in the late 1990s with Zacarias Moussaoui, who was convicted of taking part in the Sept. 11 conspiracy, and that Aamer received a stipend from Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Aamer was never charged and was freed after a task force appointed by President Barack Obama conducted a comprehensive review of his case.

Aamer said he did not know Moussaoui and had falsely confessed under torture to knowing bin Laden. "I told them what they want so I can be left alone," he told ITV.

He likened Guantánamo to Azkaban, the prison in the "Harry Potter" stories, "where there's no happiness."

"They just suck all your feeling out of you," he told the BBC. "Truly, that's how I felt all the time."

Wire services