THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

When a prisoner is cleared to be released, it really amounts to torture to delay that release for another 8 years. Even more so when the initial detention had no legitimate reason. Britains last national held in Guantanamo had just that done to him.

During Shaker Aamer’s near decade-and-a-half of incarceration at Guantanamo Bay — which has finally ended, some eight years after he was originally recommended for release — the British resident was never put on trial for any crime, nor was he ever charged.

As such, the 46-year-old — who arrived in the U.K. on Friday after being flown from the controversial detention center — should not feel compelled to clear his name; no evidence has even been presented against him in any court and experts Al Jazeera spoke to believe no such evidence ever existed to warrant his lengthy detention.

Instead, the daunting task in front of him will be to rebuild a life snatched away from him in 2001, and re-familiarize himself with his wife, and children who have had to grow up without him — including one he has never met.

But his release is unlikely to provide a final full stop to his case. Serious questions remain over the circumstances of his detention and why he was for so long denied repatriation to the U.K. despite — if taken at face value — the long protestations of the British government of his imprisonment.

Supporters of Aamer want an inquiry into his case and his release may throw a fresh spotlight on conditions at Guantanamo and CIA torture, in particular claims by Aamer that its use against a Libyan national — in the presence of U.K. secret service agents — resulted in the since discredited information linking Saddam Hussein with Al-Qaeda, used as justification for the Iraq war.

The U.K.’s Metropolitan Police told Al Jazeera that an investigation into allegations of torture is still open, but declined to give details. “There are ongoing inquiries,” a Scotland Yard spokesperson said, adding: “We are not going to confirm who we may or may not be speaking to as part of those inquiries.”

Lawyers for Aamer told Al Jazeera that police officers had visited Guantanamo and met with their client prior to his release. “He complied with a Met [Metropolitan Police] inquiry in Guantanamo and talked about British complicity in torture and he thinks that those involved were low down the chain — Shaker very much doesn’t want to see people go to jail,” said Clive Stafford Smith, Aamer’s lawyer and director of legal rights charity Reprieve.

“He does, however, want a truth and reconciliation inquiry and will push for that,” Stafford Smith added.

His and other detentions on trumped up charges that fail to hold up are an embarrassment to the governments involved. And when governments are embarrassed, people suffer greater harm than when they are merely evil.