Al-Jazeera Cameraman Still at Guantanamo (AP)

[Eugene]

Al-Jazeera Cameraman Still at Guantanamo
No end in sight to Al-Jazeera cameraman's imprisonment at Guantanamo

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba, Feb. 23, 2007
By BEN FOX and ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU Associated Press Writers

(AP) A TV cameraman is getting an inside view of life at Guantanamo Bay prison
_ only he is unable to get out and tell the story.

Sami al-Hajj, of the Al-Jazeera TV network, was stopped at the Afghanistan border
by Pakistani authorities in December 2001, turned over to U.S. forces and hauled
in chains six months later to Guantanamo, where about 390 men are held on suspicion
of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban.

-snip-

Colleagues from al-Hajj's Qatar-based network and the Sudanese government want
to know why he is being held, but the U.S. government is saying little. The military
did not even publicly acknowledge holding al-Hajj until last April, when it released
a list of Guantanamo detainees in response to a Freedom of Information Act request
filed by The Associated Press.

But military documents sketch at least a partial outline of al-Hajj's experiences at
Guantanamo and the U.S. grounds for holding him _ that he transported money between
1996 and 2000 for a defunct charity that allegedly provided money to militant groups,
and that he met a "senior al-Qaida lieutenant."

-snip-

His colleagues at Al-Jazeera claim his detention is American harassment of an Arabic
TV network whose coverage has long angered U.S. officials.

-snip-

Full article: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/02/23/ap/world/mainD8NFHUEO0.shtml

Related: Journalist Took Risks to Prove Himself - AP

[PDJane]

1. I suspect his colleagues

are quite correct. The US is getting a nasty reputation for targetting journalists in the occupied zones.