Saturday, May 03, 2008

Sami al-Haj is Free

Sami al-Haj has been freed from Guantanamo and is now in his home country, Sudan. He was a camera man for al-Jazeera who was seized by Pakistani officials and turned over to the U.S. in 2002. al-Haj went through more than 200 interrogations, and was subjected to forced feeding. His family say that the 39 year-old now looks like a man in his 80s.

His interrogators offered al-Haj freedom if he would agree to spy for the U.S. but he always refused, hence the 6 years behind bars. Obviously goodness and nobility have nothing to do with his release. The U.S. government must have seen some advantage in releasing him now.

Sami al-Haj is a living witness to the criminality of the American government. His brother, Asim al-Haj, said it best. "Today, I'd like to urge the United Nations, international human rights organizations and the international press to bring a serious investigation into the case of Sami al-Haj, because we really have no idea what happened to Sami al-Haj while he was at Guantanamo." Asim al-Haj might have added the United States Congress to that list of investigatory bodies. Of course they will never investigate anything because that would mean taking some sort of action, like impeachment.