Hunger strikes in Guantanamo

This has been a disturbing week for British resident and Guantánamo prisoner Binyam Mohamed, who endured two and a half years of torture at the hands of Pakistani agents, the CIA, and the United States’ proxy torturers in Morocco, before being transferred to Guantánamo in September 2004.
Last Friday, it was revealed that he was to [...]

Sami al-Haj is a journalist, but one unlike any other. For over six years, since December 15, 2001, when he was seized by Pakistani soldiers on the Afghan border, while on assignment as a cameraman for the Qatar-based broadcaster al-Jazeera, he has been in a disturbing but unique position: a trained journalist held as an [...]

Today, Reprieve, the charity that provides frontline investigation and legal representation for prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, released the first of four pictures based on censored drawings made by imprisoned al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj.

The first of Lewis Peake’s four pictures based on drawings by Sami al-Haj, which were censored by the US military.
The pictures were created [...]

Today, the Associated Press reports on a letter from Guantánamo written by al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj. The letter is dated December 27, 2007, and has just been declassified by the Pentagon’s censors. It was translated from the Arabic by his lawyers at the London-based legal charity Reprieve, which represents dozens of the Guantánamo detainees.

Mr. al-Haj [...]

Whether through a desire to impress the Supreme Court with its sense of justice prior to next month’s showdown over the detainees’ rights, or, as is more probable, through a placatory deal with the Saudi government following the death of a third Saudi detainee in Guantánamo in May this year, the US administration released another [...]