A reproduction of Sami al-Hajj's drawing from his series Sketches of My Nightmare Sami al-Hajj had been working as a cameraman for Al Jazeera when he was arrested on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2001. Since then he has spent six years in the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Al-Hajj had been sent to the area to cover the US war against the Taliban and held a legitimate work visa. He was arrested after suspicions that he had links with al-Qaeda when his name and passport number came up on a list from Pakistan intelligence. The passport number that the Pakistanis had was for an old document that al-Hajj had previously reported as having been lost in Sudan two years earlier. He was kept prisoner in Afghanistan and Pakistan for five months before being handed over to US forces and taken to Guantanamo Bay as an "enemy combatant". For the past seven years he has been prisoner 345. He is the only journalist to be detained at Guantanamo Bay without being charged. Accusations but no charge Last October the US accused him of working for Al Jazeera to facilitate "terrorist acts". Many protests have been held in an attempt to get al-Hajj released Clive Stafford Smith, a British human rights lawyer who took on al-Hajj's case in 2005, said that in a 2007 review of his case the US alleged that al-Hajj had received terrorist training. Yet the review merely stated that "the detainee was trained by Al Jazeera in the use of cameras". Al-Hajj had previously been accused of filming Osama bin Laden and others with links to al-Qaeda. His captors also allege that he funded Chechen rebels and that he bought Stinger missiles and shipped them to Chechnya. Stafford Smith has called the accusations baseless and reported that US interrogators focused almost exclusively on obtaining intelligence on Al Jazeera. Violent interrogations According to Stafford Smith, Hajj says he has been beaten and interrogated about 130 times. Like every other prisoner in Guantanamo, al-Hajj faced regular interrogations. He continued to face a wide range of accusations - all unproven. Al-Hajj was one of about 20 prisoners who carried out hunger strikes in protest at their imprisonment and treatment. Up to his release al-Hajj was on hunger strike, started on January 7, 2007. Ould Sidi Mohammed, a Mauritanian released last year, said al-Hajj was losing weight, had a kidney infection and was receiving inadequate medical treatment. His lawyer also said he was suffering from throat cancer. Twice a day he was force fed liquid through a tube inserted into one nostril. Last September, Hugh Richards and DL Crisson, two psychiatrists, said that al-Hajj was suffering from a form of depression known as "passive suicide" where an individual loses the will to live. The pair said in a letter that al-Hajj was in a constant state of fear and anxiety and felt that he was being pursued and could be killed. They called for his immediate treatment from specialists. This year the US banned the publication of cartoons drawn by al-Hajj which illustrated his time at Guantanamo. Drawings entitled Sketches of My Nightmare and Scream for Freedom depicted faceless skeletons in shackles and al-Hajj being force fed in a "Torture Chair'. Detailed descriptions of the sketches were allowed through the censorship process and Lewis Peake, a British political cartoonist, was able to recreate them. Calls for release Al Jazeera's bureaux have held several protests in an attempt to get al-Hajj released. Alan Johnston, a BBC reporter held for months in Gaza, appealed for the right of al-Hajj to a fair trial. Several organisations such as The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Reporters Without Borders and Amnesty International urged for al-Hajj's release. Farouq Abu Issa, a Sudanese member of parliament, also took up the case. Last year he asked the Sudanese foreign ministry to say what measures were being taken to release al-Hajj. Abu Issa, a representative of the National Democratic Alliance bloc, asked Sudan's foreign ministry to outline what arrangements his office had made for the "immediate release of Guantanamo prisoners in general, and Sudanese prisoners in particular". Al-Hajj was born in Khartoum, Sudan, in 1969. He grew up in central Sudan, the second eldest of six children. With the help of his uncle, al-Hajj studied English at a university in India before leaving in the early 1990s to take a job at a beverage company in the United Arab Emirates. He had long been interested in journalism and took up photography in his youth, said his brother Asim Al-Hajj. Sami al-Hajj is married to Asma Ismailov and is the father of a seven-year-old boy who he has not seen since he was a toddler. Source: Al Jazeera and agencies Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger .yahoo.com
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