Report: Al Jazeera cameraman freed from Guantanamo (after 6+ years)

[maddezmom]

Source: AP

The Associated Press

CAIRO, Egypt -- Al-Jazeera television reports that cameraman Sami al-Haj has been released from Guantanamo after more than six years in U.S. custody and is en route to his home country Sudan.

Wadah Khanfar, managing director of Al-Jazeera Arabic, confirmed al-Haj was on a plane heading to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, after being released from the U.S. detention center in Cuba earlier on Thursday.

"We are in a state of high expectation and we are overwhelmed with joy," he said.

Khanfar added that al-Haj's wife and child were flying from Doha, Qatar to Khartoum immediately to see him.



Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/world/AP/story/517527.html

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

1. Losing 6 years is one thing. It's 1000 times worse losing them in that shithole. n/t

[EFerrari]

2. This is great news.

Some of us were afraid Sami would die in that hellhole. :cry:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_elizabet_070915_this_is_our_table_an.htm
:cry:

[struggle4progress]

18. Mission accomplished: they stopped his reporting for six years

[katty]

3. great news

[wellst0nev0ter]

4. That Place Couldn't Be Shut Down Fast Enough (n/t)

[uppityperson]

5. k&r

[The Stranger]

6. A journalist held six years and never charged -- Stalin's Soviet Union? Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge?

Kim Jong-Il's North Korea? Augusto Pinochet's Chile?

None of the above.

[leftchick]

7. bush/cheney fascist ameriKa

:grr:

[leftchick]

8. Sami Al-Hajj's web page

http://www.prisoner345.net/sami-al-haj



Sami Al-Hajj, prisoner 345 at the United States Detainment Centre in Guantanamo Bay Cuba, has been on hunger strike since 7th January, 2007.

Sami was arrested in Pakistan in December 2001 whilst travelling with a legitimate visa to work in Afghanistan as a cameraman for Al Jazeera. But he is being held as an ‘enemy combatant’.

prisoner345.net is dedicated to empowering Sami’s family, friends and colleagues, together with all supporters of human rights around the world, in the campaign to set him free.




Finally!

[micraphone]

9. So a camerman is a threat to "national security"

"The U.S. administration has never had any reason for holding Mr. Al-Haj, and has, instead, spent six years shamelessly attempting to turn him against his employers at Al-Jazeera"

Shame is heaped on shame in the eyes of the whole world.

Shut it down. Now.

[Kaleko]

10. God doesn't have to damn America when humanity as a whole already does.

And still no end in sight to the atrocities committed in our name...

[libodem]

11. this is the type of thing

that can bring me to tears in front of my keyboard. Thank God he's free. I wonder how much permanent damage to his psyche has taken place? I just don't understand why this has been allowed to go on? I hope he will be able to tell his story.

[Zodiak]

12. This man is going to need extensive psychiatric counseling

I really wouldn't be surprised if his mind is twisted in knots.

Shut it down. Arrest the architects of it.

[RufusTFirefly]

13. My thoughts exactly

Reminds me of a Hitchcock movie where an innocent man is falsely imprisoned and the experience drives his wife over the edge to the point where she has to be institutionalized.

When the man is finally freed, he goes to the institution to bring his wife the good news and she responds to him in an utterly emotionless monotone:

MANNY: I'm free now, Rose. They caught the real criminal. We can go back home now.
ROSE: That's fine for you -- fine.
MANNY: Doesn't it help you, too?
ROSE: No.
MANNY: Have I done something wrong?
ROSE: No. It's nothing you've done. Nothing can help me. No one. You can go now.
MANNY: Don't you want to come with me?
ROSE: It doesn't matter where I am. Or where anybody is. It's fine for you. You can go now.

As wonderful as the news of Sami al-Haj's release is, I fear the damage has already been irreparably done -- to Mr. al-Haj and to his family. Just the thought of it makes me profoundly bitter and angry. I do hope that al-Haj and his family can rise above this and recover. I don't honestly know whether I could.

[ShockediSay]

14. Fhugettaboutit

This guy will never be right

[unkachuck]

15. "...rise above this and recover."

....I doubt it....I wonder how many times he confessed to things he didn't do....or made up stories they wanted to hear?

....although, I can think of a few American 'journalists' that would make good candidates for such treatment....

[bemildred]

16. Cameraman Is Released From Guantánamo

---

“It is yet another case where the U.S. has held someone for years and years and years on the flimsiest of evidence” without filing charges, one of the lawyers, Zachary Katznelson, said Thursday.

Mr. Hajj, 38, was sent with at least two other detainees to his native Sudan on a military aircraft, the lawyers said. The Pentagon declined to comment.

Military officials have insisted that Mr. Hajj was courier of terrorism money and said all detainees were treated humanely at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The case did not draw the attention among American journalists that some of them said it deserved, in part because Mr. Hajj’s full life story was not known. As with most Guantánamo detainees, the Pentagon’s evidence against him was largely secret.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/us/nationalspecial3/02gitmo.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin

[bemildred]

17. Sami al-Hajj arrives in Sudan

Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj has been released from the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay and has arrived in Sudan.

Al-Hajj, who arrived at the airport in the capital Khartoum early on Friday from more than six years in captivity, was carried off the aircraft in a stretcher.

He appeared too weak to talk and was immediately taken to hospital where his wife and son were on their way to meet him.

Sudan's justice minister told Al Jazeera that al-Hajj was a free man and would not be arrested.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C59237D2-5E9B-430D-88D3-0596D969FD39.htm

[PaulaFarrell]

19. hope they didn't just send him home to die n/t

[EFerrari]

23. He asked to be taken directly to a hospital.

:(

[bemildred]

20. Sami al-Hajj hits out at US captors

Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj has hit out at the US treatment of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay military prison where he was held for nearly six and a half years.

Saying that "rats are treated with more humanity", al-Hajj said inmates' "human dignity was violated".

Al-Hajj, who arrived in Sudan early on Friday, was carried off the US air force jet on a stretcher and immediately taken to hospital.

Later, he had an emotional reunion with his wife and son.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/04F88FBD-BFA5-42D9-A9C4-D8E0979C79D6.htm

[Disturbed]

21. He was freed because it was feared that he might die in

that shameful Hell Hole. No charges after six years? Why not?

[EFerrari]

22. I think God that he left alive.

That was by no means assured.

[bemildred]

24. Al-Hajj says US wanted him to spy

A celebration has been held in Sudan after the release of Sami al-Hajj, an Al Jazeera cameraman, from Guantanamo Bay, with hundreds of well-wishers in attendance.

Civil society groups and the Al Jazeera television network organised the gathering in the capital, Khartoum, on Monday to mark his freedom.

He addressed the rally and said that his US captors had hoped to turn him into a spy.

"I was subjugated to more than 130 interrogations, 95 of them were about my work and Al Jazeera," he told the crowd, which included Wadah Khanfar, the network's director general.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/EF87B669-02D9-4A28-898E-09B2C7FCFBB7.htm