Al Jazeera Cameraman Held at Gitmo – for Three Years

We can add a new chapter to the Bush Administration’s war on free speech as it was revealed yesterday that an Al Jazeera cameraman has been in custody for three years at Guantanamo Bay. Al-Hajj, a Sudanese national, was arrested in Afghanistan in 2001 and has remained in prison without being charged for four years.

Yes, the US has unlawfully detained an Al Jazeera cameraman. I wonder who else Rumsfeld has locked away.

Amnesty International, who referred to the prison as “the gulag of our times,” has again been vindicated in its claims by these new charges that Al-Haj “has suffered extreme physical, sexual and religious abuse,” charges that are consistent with other reports that the US is practicing “systematic” abuse of detainees.

Attorney Clive Stafford-Smith, who visited clients at Guantanamo two weeks ago, said, “Sami Al-Hajj had been beaten by his interrogators…. He has been beaten. He had a huge scar on his face when I saw him.” (Al Jazeera)

“He is completely innocent,” said Stafford-Smith. “He is about as much of a terrorist as my granddad. The only reason he has been treated like he has is because he is an Aljazeera journalist. The Americans have tried to make him an informant with the goal of getting him to say that Aljazeera is linked to al-Qaida.“

Emphasis mine.

Mike Whitney’s article, Guantanamo: The New-World Icon via Uruknet also reports on how various Gitmo apologists’ comments stray from the known facts. I shudder to think about how much we still don’t know.