Guantanamo

From Sami al-Haj's attorney:

Sami al-Haj, the Al Jazeera cameraman held in Guantánamo, has been on a hungerstrike for more than 230 days, more than three times as long as the IRA strikers in 1980. Sami was seized when on assignment to Afghanistan, apparently because the US thought he had filmed Al Jazeera’s famous Bin Laden interview. As has so often been the case of late, the US was wrong (though name me a journalist who would turn down a Bin Laden scoop).

[...]

Sami began his strike when his patience finally ran out on 7 January of this year, the fifth anniversary of his incarceration without trial.

[...]

Now Sami is being force-fed with a 110cm tube shoved down his nose. The military is doing it in a way that is calculated to be painful – or, to borrow General Craddock’s offensive euphemism, to make it “inconvenient” for Sami and others to continue their peaceful protest. Instead of leaving the tube in – which would be bad enough – they insert it and pull it out again with each feeding. I tried experimenting with this on myself one time and it is excruciating.

[...]

Sami has already told me what I have to say to his seven-year-old son, Mohammed, if he does not make it out of his prison cell alive.

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Doctors from the US, UK and Middle East all agree that there are urgent concerns about Sami’s health, and that he needs independent medical intervention. He won’t get it, no matter what I do.

CagePrisoners

Update: From the comments section:

The American Committee to Free Sami Al-Haj has just launched an online petiton to the U.S. Congress demanding his release and an investigation into the Bush Administration's campaign against Al Jazeera.

http://www.petitiononline.com/freesami/petition.html