Colleagues, Ladies and gentlemen
Good Morning.
For those of you who haven't heard yet, I would like to announce that Guantanamo Detainee no. 345, Sami Hajj, Aljazeera's cameraman, has been released by American military authorities on May 4th . This was of course a welcome development for him personally, his immediate family and those who campaigned on his behalf whether Aljazeera or international human rights organizations.
Setting the 38 years old man free after six years of imprisonment, mostly in the infamous prisoners of war camp, without being charged, focuses the light on his case although it removes the sense of urgency from it. His story has gone largely ignored by North American media despite Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) taking up his cause as a political prisoner.
As told to his lawyer, Clive Stafford-Smith, founder of Reprieve, Sami Hajj claimed he was repeatedly interrogated by US military personnel at Baghram airbase in Afghanistan where he was held before his transfer to Guantanamo, about a Bin Laden interview. The questioning about his career in journalism didn't stop there. "Of all his time in Guantanamo, they've spent years and over 100 interrogations talking only about Aljazeera and trying to persuade him to become an informant against his employers", said Andy Worthington, Reprieve's spokesman and author of the Guantanamo Files. He (Worthington) states clearly that this was "part of the Bush administration's hatred and vilification of Aljazeera", although he admits that Reprieve can't find a way of demonstrating that this was the case, yet the prisoner also claimed that they asked him to confess that there is a direct link between the Channel and Osama Bin Laden. This was an overriding problem. With all the secrecy surrounding his case and no trial in sight it was Sami's word against the US military's classified word.
Now that he is released from the prison camp where he was for over a year on hunger strike which was broken by forced-feeding, what issues does this case raise? What lessons should we in media learn and what can be done to face the fall-out of the "war on terror" because it has been used as pretext for all sorts of abuses of civil liberties and human rights.
The past few years were the most dangerous for journalists who have seen many of their colleagues gunned down or kidnapped for no other reason but because they were doing their job. Shouldn't there be more international safeguards to protect journalists against such abuses as we have seen in Sami's case? Shouldn't there be committing rules and regulations to protect the rights of such prisoners who fall into the hands of the military or executors of martial law? Can detention for many years without charge or trial be allowed in any circumstance? Shouldn't there be a system of compensation for those who have been wronged as in the case of Sami Hajj?
Obviously, when personal and human consequences are taken into consideration, keeping someone, journalist or non-journalist alike, behind bars in despicable conditions, being interrogated by diabolical and condemnable methods amounting to torture, for six years without charge let alone a trial, cannot be compensated for by any means. SIX years cannot be given back!
In a circular letter to staff about the release of their colleague, our Director General, says that he found Sami, upon his release and arrival to his native Sudan "strong, resolute, composed and highly determined despite the unspeakable and terrible ordeal he's been put through." Yet, Sami will spend sometime in hospital and in his home in Khartoum thereafter before he will hopefully resume his work.
I believe that Sami's perseverance is highly commendable as we, the journalists, are facing increasingly dire circumstances in the course of doing what we should do to reveal the truth and make the world we live in a safer place.
Mary Robinson, Yes indeed : Every Human has Rights.
Thank you for listening.
If anyone is interested in this case and its background you can view a documentary prepeared by Aljazeera on Sami Hajj at www.prisoner345.net
Now, Aidan White, Secretary General of the International Federation of Journalists, may have some points to raise about this case also.
Jamil Azar
Aljazeera