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KHARTOUM, Sudan - Al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj returned home to Sudan on Friday, a day after being released from six years of custody at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp where described conditions as “bad and getting worse.”

Al-Haj, 38, whose detention drew worldwide condemnation, was released from the U.S. military prison along with two other Sudanese. All three arrived at the airport in Sudan’s capital of Khartoum aboard U.S. military plane.

The cameraman, who had been on a hunger strike for the last 16 months to protest conditions at the prison, grimaced as he was carried off the plane by U.S. military personnel.

He was put on a stretcher and taken straight to a hospital.

Al-Jazeera showed footage of al-Haj on a stretcher, looking feeble with his eyes closed but smiling. Some of the men surrounding his stretcher were kissing him on the cheek.

“Thank God…for being free again,” he told Al-Jazeera from his hospital bed. “Our eyes have the right to shed tears after we have spent all those years in prison. … But our joy is not going to be complete until our brothers in Guantanamo Bay are freed.”

“The situation is very bad and getting worse day after day,” he said.

The U.S. military has said it goes to great lengths to respect the religion of detainees, among other things issuing them Qur’ans and enforcing quiet among guards during prayer calls throughout the day.

But al-Haj told his interviewers that Guantanamo guards prevented Muslims from practising their religion and reading the Qur’an.

“Some of our brothers live without clothing,” he added.

Mahjoub Fadul, an adviser to Sudan’s president, said Khartoum would do everything it can to help the released detainees reclaim their dignity.

“Let me state very clearly here that Sami al-Haj and his colleagues will exercise all their rights,” Fadul told a news conference in Khartoum. “We are not taking dictates from any quarters … how we treat our citizens.”

Fadul, the presidential adviser, said the release was part of a “complex file” in U.S.-Sudanese relations. But that it also underscored growing American weariness over this “badly produced saga” in which Guantanamo detainees are held without any grounds, he said.

Al-Haj was the only journalist from a major international news organization held at Guantanamo and many of his supporters saw his detention as punishment for a network whose broadcasts often anger U.S. officials.

The U.S. military alleged he was a courier for a militant Muslim organization, an allegation his lawyers denied.

Al-Haj said he believed he was arrested because of U.S. hostility toward Al-Jazeera and because it was reporting on U.S. rights violations in Afghanistan.

Al-Haj was detained in December 2001 by Pakistani authorities as he tried to enter Afghanistan to cover the U.S.-led invasion. He was turned over to the U.S. military and taken in January 2002 to Guantanamo Bay, where the United States holds some 275 men suspected of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban, most of them without charge.

Reprieve, the British human rights group that represents 35 Guantanamo prisoners including al-Haj, said Pakistani forces apparently seized al-Haj at the behest of the U.S. authorities who suspected he had interviewed Osama bin Laden. But that “supposed intelligence” turned out to be false, Reprieve said in a news release.

Reprieve identified the two other Sudanese Guantanamo detainees who were released with al-Haj as Amir Yacoub al-Amir and Walid Ali.

Hassan Al Mujamar, head of the Sudanese Civic Aid organization that campaigned for years for the release of the Sudanese nationals, said al-Haj was being examined and that doctors said his general condition was “not good.”

Al-Haj’s wife, who addressed reporters at Fudal’s briefing by satellite phone, said his “physical and psychological condition … were worrying indeed.”

Al-Amir also addressed the briefing, saying the detainees were flown to Sudan “handcuffed, chained to their seats, with eyes, ears covered” and that they couldn’t “walk or talk or eat until we were lowered down from the huge plane.”

Al-Amir added they were told only four days ago that they would be released and flown home.

Zachary Katznelson, a Reprieve lawyer who met al-Haj at Guantanamo on April 11, said he was “emaciated” because of his hunger strike and had recently been having problems with his liver and kidneys and had blood in his urine.

“Sami was never alleged to have hurt a soul, and was never proven to have committed any crimes,” Katznelson said. “Yet, he had fewer rights than convicted mass murderers or rapists. What has happened to American justice?”

Al-Jazeera is based in Qatar and is funded by the royal family of the Persian Gulf country. Wadah Khanfar, managing director of Al-Jazeera Arabic, said of al-Haj’s release: “We are overwhelmed with joy.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists also welcomed the release of al-Haj, as did Reporters Without Borders, saying his case was “yet another example of the injustice reigning in Guantanamo.”

May 2nd, 2008 | Category: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", Bush Lies, Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Hunger Strike, Released, Sami al-Haj, Torture, URGENT Health Issue, USA |  Print This Post | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL