In our cosseted country we assume Shaker’s guilt because the alternative is too terrifying – that we have been complicit in detaining and torturing an harmless manBut he must have done something erroneous,” he responds when I recount him what has happened to Shaker Aamer. “That couldn’t happen to an harmless British person.”I am talking to Stephen, an imaginary composite of a few people I have talked to approximately Shaker since I was made aware of the last British man held in Guantánamo Bay. Stephen isn’t an idiot; he appears rational, and his trousers are correctly fastened and he thinks of himself as “satisfactory” or “kind”. Stephen’s disbelief is natural – if he accepts that a normal,non-evil man like himself can be kidnapped, tortured and imprisoned indefinitely without evidence or trial, or then the world is not as he thought. No one could be safe in a world where justice was side-steppable; it would be too terrifying. Surely,the guy must have done something?”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com