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
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