Sudanese in Guantanamo

Sami al-Haj, the al-Jazeera journalist who was freed from Guantánamo yesterday, after six years and four months in US custody (including 16 months, from January 2007, on a harrowing hunger strike), continued to speak out about his treatment today, and was also reunited with his eight-year old son Mohammed, who was just a baby when [...]

Al-Jazeera has the first interview with Sami al-Haj since his return to the Sudan from Guantánamo late last night. The journalist, seized while on assignment for al-Jazeera in December 2001, had been on hunger strike for the last 16 months of his 76-month imprisonment without charge or trial by the United States, and looked, as [...]

After four and a half months of inexplicable inertia, the US administration has finally seen fit to release another group of prisoners from Guantánamo, including the Sudanese al-Jazeera cameraman and journalist Sami al-Haj. Despite claims from within the administration that it was hoping to scale down the operation at Guantánamo, no prisoners have been released [...]

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 [...]

In a report that I long to have confirmed by other sources, Gulf Times declares that Robert Ménard, the secretary general of Reporters Sans Frontières (Reporters Without Borders), has stated that al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj “is expected to be freed soon,” even though Ménard, who visited Guantánamo a few weeks ago, also stated, “I had [...]

From Sudan, Reuters reports on a conference held in the capital, Khartoum, to demand the release of seven Sudanese detainees still held in Guantánamo. Organized by local human rights groups, the conference’s speakers included the wife of Al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj, who is still held in the much-criticized prison, and several released Sudanese detainees, who [...]

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 [...]

Two years after being cleared for release from Guantánamo by a military review board, Adel Hassan Hamad, a Sudanese hospital administrator who worked for a Saudi charity, and Salim Muhood Adem, who worked with orphans for a Kuwaiti NGO, have been repatriated to the country of their birth, where, as lawyer Clive Stafford Smith explained, [...]

Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison, explains why a new statement by Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, the Guantánamo whistleblower, is more significant than Guantánamo’s leaked operating manual.
The media –- both mainstream outlets and the blogosphere –- have spent the last week consumed by the [...]