The political tidbits I read in my paper today paled in comparison to this story I found taking up 3/4 of the front page of the Perspective section. I felt compelled to share it with you.
This is the story of Sami al-Haj, a cameraman for al-Jazeera. He has been at Guantanamo enjoying his 'two types of fruit' for 6 years - he is not currently charged with a crime. A year ago, he began a hunger strike, because he believes that "everythings else has been taken away from him, but the right to protest his life." Ensure is forced down his throat twice daily.
I know prisoner #345By MEG LAUGHLIN, Times Staff Writer
Published February 3, 2008
It would be seven months before the Pentagon allowed the International Committee of the Red Cross to send a letter out from Sami to his al-Jazeera colleagues and his family. It began, "I am in Guantanamo. I don't know why."
<snip>
In June 2002, he arrived at Guantanamo in shackles, an orange jumpsuit, a hood, goggles and earphones. He was put in an isolation cell and labeled "Prisoner 345." Two years later, he would first learn the charges against him - that there were "inconsistencies in his travel documents" having to do with a passport he'd reported lost years before, that he'd "traveled extensively through the Middle East, Balkans and USSR" and that he was peddling Stinger missiles between Afghanistan and Chechnya. These charges were dropped by 2005. But new ones appeared, only to be dropped by 2006.
<snip>
Al-Haj is no longer charged with doing anything illegal. But neither is he being freed. Jeffrey Gordon, spokesman for the defense secretary, said that detention at Guantanamo is not about what's legal or illegal. "It's based on the law of war construct," he said. Translation: Authorities are keeping him in custody because they can.
On Tuesday, when I was talking to Yasser al-Haj, he asked me to relay this message "to the American people": "Even though there has been great injustice, we have faith in you. Please act quickly."
If anyone here has a chance - please ask our candidates what they intend to do with these prisoners, because I think they have waited long enough for our leaders to act.
In his own words:
"I am alive and will listen if you call. But there will soon be no life for us who you call. And if you blew at the embers now they would light up. But wait and you will find that you blow into ashes."
"those who remain die every second of every day that we are here. All of this happens and the world remains silent." - Sami al-Haj
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