THERE was a time when a British passport guaranteed the bearer’s safety anywhere in the civilised world.

Today, an innocent British citizen still languishes in a foreign prison after suffering thirteen years of illegal detention in Guantanamo Bay; an institution of frightening brutality (Daily Echo, February 14, 2015).

Yet all the British government can do is “lobby” for his release.

How pathetic.

Is this, or is it not, the same nation that, at first, stood alone against the might of the Nazi war machine, while the USA prevaricated on the side-line?

Do the lives of those who died defending freedom and justice for all mean nothing to our current administration?

Until Shaker Aamer and his fellow detainees are released, and Guantanamo Bay closed for good, the stance of western powers as the guardians of human rights will never ring true in the Islamic world.

FA FORD

Elphinstone Road

Highcliffe