Reporters Without Borders yesterday reiterated its condemnation of the arbitrary detention of Sudanese assistant cameraman Sami Al-Haj of the pan-Arab TV station Al-Jazeera, who on Monday completed his fourth year in the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Arrested by the Pakistani army on the Afghan border in December 2001, Al-Haj was handed over on 7 January 2002 to the US military, who initially held him in Afghanistan. The fourth anniversary of his transfer to Guantanamo on 13 June 2002 comes as the controversy about the detention centre has been revived by the suicides of three prisoners on 10 June.
According to his British lawyer, Clive A. Stafford-Smith, he has been questioned more than 130 times during the past four years in Guantanamo, in the course of which his interrogators have voiced threats against his family, especially his daughter. The interrogations have for the most part aimed at getting him to say there is link between Al-Jazeera and Al-Qaeda. His detention is targeted at Al-Jazeera and is an expression of the US governments open hostility towards the Qatar-based satellite news station.