Cameraman Sami-al-Haj arrested for six years now |
With no trial
al-Haj: the right man for the job Al-Jazeera is a well-known satellite television network, broadcasting news for the Arabic world. Reporter Abdelhaq Sadah and cameraman Sami Muhyideen al-Haj were assigned to make a coverage in Afghanistan and Pakistan , a dangerous war-zone, in 2001. Both of them knew it was a risky assignment but both of them have decided to accept it willing to their best. al-Haj's motivation, having entered Al-Jazeera in April 2000, was to prove its value. He truly seemed the right man for the job, despite his lack of experience: 1) he had a strong motivation; 2) a good English language domain that he had learned in India; 3) a medium knowledge of how to work with a video camera; and 4) having born in 1969, he was young enough to respond to the high physical demands of the assignment. By most accounts, al-Haj's big opportunity (to become a cameraman) came after 9/11 and the subsequent U.S.-led assault to unseat the Taliban in Afghanistan. Al-Jazeera, which prized exclusive images from war zones, signed al-Haj to a contract at a time when it needed cameramen, said former station director Muhammad Jasem Ali. "Sami had some training in camera and we trained him in videophone," Ali said, noting that it was difficult to find anyone willing to go to "hot areas" like Afghanistan. Al-Haj was eager to demonstrate his worth. Several Al-Jazeera staffers said he volunteered to go to Afghanistan when there were few takers for the assignment. Al-Bushra said he advised his inexperienced colleague against going, but al-Haj insisted. "I remember saying, 'You are going to a war, not a picnic,'" al-Bushra said. "He said, 'OK, but that will give me an opportunity to prove myself.'" Al-Haj's family was nervous, too. "But after a long discussion Sami said ... he couldn't say no because he was new," said his brother, Asim.
In October 2001, new contract with Al-Jazeera in hand, al-Haj joined a crew headed by reporter Youssef al-Shouly in Taliban-controlled southeastern Afghanistan . The men worked together for nearly two months, often putting in 15-hour days, al-Shouly recalled. Using a handheld camera and videophone, al-Haj documented the civilian fallout from U.S. bombs, a common feature of Al-Jazeera's war reporting, and his shots were some of the only images coming from southeastern Afghanistan at the time. Al-Haj could be moved to tears by the bombing, al-Shouly said. Al-Shouly and al-Haj were briefly detained by Taliban forces for reporting without authorization, according to Al-Jazeera. It was at Chaman, though, that al-Haj's career was put on indefinite hold.
December 15, 2001, dawned overcast at Pakistan's Chaman crossing point into Afghanistan, and Al-Jazeera reporter Abdelhaq Sadah and cameraman Sami Muhyideen al-Haj were anxious to get moving. Just across the border, the Taliban had fled Kandahar, their rule effectively ended by a fierce U.S. air and Afghan ground assault. The pair's assignment was to cover the aftermath. A Pakistani intelligence official identifying himself as Major Nadeem arrived at the border later that day and told the two journalists not to worry. The next morning, Sadah said, the major drove off with al-Haj. "Since that time, I have not seen Sami," Sadah told.
al-Haj's disappearance wasn't made public until September 18, 2002, when Al-Jazeera announced in a press release that its cameraman was being held at Guantanamo.
al-Haj in Gauntanamo since 2001: no trial Al-Haj thus began an odyssey that would take him from Pakistan to Afghanistan and then on to an 8-by-7-foot detention cell at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he remains today with some 450 other detainees the Bush administration has designated "enemy combatants." Championed as a prisoner of conscience on Al-Jazeera though virtually unknown in U.S. media circles, al-Haj is the only confirmed journalist now imprisoned at Guantanamo. The U.S. military alleges that he worked as a financial courier for Chechen rebels, and that he assisted al-Qaeda and extremist figures. In one taped message, Osama bin Laden purportedly called for his release. Yet al-Haj has been held for nearly five years on the basis of secret evidence; he has not been convicted or even charged with a crime. Until this year-when an Associated Press lawsuit prompted the Pentagon to identify the detainees-the military would not acknowledge al-Haj was in custody. Al-Haj's lawyer, who has been barred from attending his client's hearings, has called the allegations baseless and the justice system at Guantanamo a sham. Sami-al-Haj , when he accepted this assignment in 2001, was married to his wife Asma since 1998 and just had a newborn son Muhammad. They all lived in Doha, Qatar.
For further information please visit the Committee to Protect Journalists website.
Diana Soeiro
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Sami-al-Haj , a reporter cameraman, while in Pakistan,
in an assignment, had been allegedly kidnapped in December
2001. Months later he was known to be in Guantanamo prison
(USA). Up until this day no accounts on al-Haj 's
arrest were given and no trial has been made. Here's how it
happened, so you know.