Guantánamo: the forgotten prisoner
Finally, Binyam Mohamed is coming home. But Shaker Aamer is also a British resident – don't abandon this gentle family man
"Perhaps the most heart-breaking thing a child whose father is in prison will ever have to do is to explain to his – or her – classmates why daddy never comes to collect him from school. The very mention that daddy is in jail will, at least in some cases, elicit the puerile jeering and mockery expected in any school playground. Society – schools included – tells us that people in prison must be bad. That may be the case for those found guilty of heinous crimes. But, how does a seven-year-old – who has never seen his father, except through old photographs his tormented mother shows him – explain to his peers the iniquitous nature of the removal of habeas corpus? How does he argue his father's case when he doesn't even know what a father is? How will he explain all this to his classmates when we cannot even explain it to adults? This – and much more – is what one chid and his three older siblings in London have experienced daily since the incarceration of their father more than seven years ago".
A mixture of law, politics, autobiography and humour. Once described as "The Devilish Advocate" (Guardian), I do have the ability to provoke a response. Sometimes it comes from someone who uses a thought process, and sometimes from jerks usually associated with the knee.
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