Sami Al Hajj, 37 years old, father of a young son, Sudanese national, al-Jazeera photojournalist, has been illegally imprisoned at the Guantanamo prison camp for over four years now. As of today, Sami has been on hunger strike for 114 days.
"Aside from the fact that Guantanamo Bay is a legal and humanitarian scandal, the Americans seem to be holding Al-Hajj simply because they have it in for Al-Jazeera. How else can you explain the fact that he has been held for four years without being charged while other journalists have been cleared and released in no time at all?" (Reporters Without Borders)
Mr. Hajj's hunger strike is in protest of:
- The right for detainees to practice their religion freely and without duress;
- Applying the Geneva Convention to the treatment of Guantanamo detainees;
- Releasing a number of prisoners from isolation confinement, and in particular one Shakir Amer that has been in continued isolation since September 2005;
- Conducting a full and fair investigation into the deaths of three prisoners who died in June 2006;
- His release or trial by a federal US court.
From The Beginning
Sami al Hajj was a journalist working for the television station al-Jazeera. He was visiting his brother and sister in Damascus when the station called him to ask him to go on his second ever assignment. It was around 22 September 2001, less than two weeks after the attacks on the US mainland on 11 September, and he was being asked to cover the international conflict in Afghanistan.
His brother told Amnesty International that Sami al Hajj was reluctant and nervous about going to the conflict zone, but decided that it would not be his best career interests to turn down such a prestigious assignment.
Sami al Hajj travelled with a film crew to Afghanistan, via Pakistan. After 18 days covering the conflict he returned to Pakistan, thinking his assignment over. In December 2001 he was asked by the television station to return to Afghanistan to cover the inauguration of the new government there. Before he and his crew managed to reach the border, they were stopped by Pakistani police. Sami al-Hajj was the only one of his crew taken into custody.
Sami al Hajj was held in Pakistani custody from 15 December 2001 to 7 January 2002. He had his passport taken off him, his visa to travel to Afghanistan and his press card. On 7 January he was transferred to US custody and taken to Bagram air base in Afghanistan.
Sami al Hajj has described the 16 days he spent in detention in Bagram air base as "the worst in my life". He states that he was severely physically tortured and had dogs set upon him, that he was held in a cage a freezing aircraft hangar and was given insufficient, often frozen food.
He was then transferred to Kandahar, where his abuse continued. Sami al Hajj alleges that:
- He was subjected to sexual abuse by US soldiers, including being threatened with rape
- He was forced into stress positions, being forced to kneel for long periods on concrete floors
- He was beaten regularly by guards
- He had all the hairs on his beard plucked out one by one
- He was not allowed to wash for over 100 days, and he was covered with lice.
Guantanamo
Sami al Hajj was transferred to Guantánamo Bay on 13 June 2002. Hooded and shackled and gagged for the duration of the flight, if he fell asleep the US soldiers would strike him on the head to wake him up.
After his transfer to Guantánamo, Sami al Hajj says that he was constantly interrogated about any possible links between his employers and Islamist extremists. He also alleges that the first time he was interrogated in Guantánamo he had been deprived of sleep for over two days. He says that "for more than three years, most of my interrogation has been focussed on getting me to say that there is a relationship between al-Jazeera and al Qa'ida". He alleges that he has been subjected to a range of ill-treatment and has been denied access to adequate health care:
- Guards at the camp shattered his knee cap by stamping on his leg
- He has been beaten on the soles of his feet
- Military dogs were used to intimidate him on his arrival in Guantánamo
- He has been subjected to racist abuse and has been given less time for recreation because he is black
- Prior to being allowed to see Sudanese intelligence agents who had come to Guantánamo to interview him, he alleges that he was shackled and pepper sprayed
After witnessing the desecration of the Qu'ran in 2003 - US soldiers had reportedly written obscenities and had stamped on a copy of the Qu'ran - Sami al Hajj and a number of other prisoners went on hunger strike. The retaliation of the camp authorities was swift and brutal. Sami al Hajj has said he was beaten severely, and thrown down a set of stairs. His face was reportedly badly was gashed in this incident- a cut which a doctor said needed stitches, but would only be administered without pain medication. He was then placed in isolation before being taken to Camp V, the harshest of the camps in the detention facility, where he was held for eight months. During his time in Camp V, he was classified at security level 4, which ensures the harshest treatment and the fewest privileges.
Sami al Hajj also alleges that he was "ERF'd"- subject to brutal cell extractions by guards in riot gear called the Emergency or Extreme Response Force - six times in ten days.
Defense attorney Clive Stafford Smith:
On his return from visits to Guantanamo Bay and Qatar (where Al-Jazeera has its headquarters), Stafford-Smith told a Reporters Without Borders representative in London on 11 April: "Sami is very depressed. He even spoke of suicide for the first time in my presence. Furthermore, he still needs treatment for his throat cancer which the US authorities refuse to give him. He also has trouble with a knee."
Stafford-Smith said Al-Haj was recently moved to Guantanamo Bay's Camp 4 "for good conduct" but conditions there were still bad and anyway his stay in Camp 4 could be quite brief. "Supposedly there is a plan to transfer all the detainees to Camp 6, a high-security facility," he said. "This would be a disaster for Sami because it would signify a deterioration in the conditions in which he is being held. The transfer could be in September."
And Sami, in the interim, has been transferred to "maximum security" Camp 6.
"Life In A Tube"
The second scene was from Guantanamo. You know Gitmo Bay, your seaside resort. 380 "prisoners" are still with no trial. Many of them are on hunger strike. One of the lawyers in charge of Sami's "case" gave a demonstration of how Sami and others are force fed by the democratic american authorities there. They take the "detainee", strap him with leather belts to a sturdy wooden chair. Tie his arms, feet and head, paralyzing any movement.
A 1 meter long tube is then thrust into the "detainee's" nostrils, with no anesthesia of course, past his larynx, through his oesophagus right into his stomach and the food is thus forcefully ingested. This "procedure" is repeated twice a day. Sami Al-Hajj has been undergoing this tubal "nourishment" twice a day for 100 days.
Zahra and Sami have much in common. They are Arab "speaking", muslims, brown skinned and share the same "tube" destiny. In fact they were both caught in the american dark, tight, tunnel of torture with no end in sight...as if trying to live through an interminable tube... Yes that's it, "Life" in a tube.
Source: Uruknet.
Reporters Without Borders added: "At the same time, his lawyer says he has throat cancer and is not getting appropriate treatment. The US authorities must release him, even if it is only on humanitarian grounds."
This is the legacy of Bush's War on Terror. I don't know how history will record these events, or if the stories of the kidnapped, imprisoned and tortured will ever be told in history textbooks. A great many people will never forget the deeply shameful "secrets" revealed from Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and the ghost planes of rendition. The secrets are not the alleged crimes of any single prisoner. Those are few and far between and we tend to hear every detail echoed by the Bush administration and right wing media, even if alleged or suspected. It doesn't have to be true to be repetitive.
The secrets I'm talking about are more sinister, and revealed only incidentally, or as a last resort before a "leak" of intelligence by a defense lawyer, a whistleblower, an investigative journalist, like Sami once was.
Clive Stafford Smith: 'At nine o'clock in the morning they force feed him and he is strapped to a chair. They force a tube up his nose. It is excruciatingly painful. That lasts about an hour,' said Stafford Smith. 'Three times so far, according to what Sami has told me, they have put the tube in his lung ... and that is effectively drowning him.'
Secrets and lies of the most aborrhently cruel administration the United States has ever known. If you know it, own it. In the blood-spattered tube forced down Sami's throat, in the screams and the forced silences, in the helpless and sickened hearts of Americans who haven't forgotten, Bush has indeed forced us to own too much, to bear the burdens of despair for our fellow human beings.