Guantánamo detainee a hero at home

KHARTOUM, Sudan — He's all but unknown in the United States, the country of his jailers, but in his homeland of Sudan, Sami al Hajj is a national hero. The president has spoken out about him, demonstrations have been held in his name, and a bakery in Khartoum has printed his picture on its packaging.

A 38-year-old cameraman for the Arabic news network Al-Jazeera, Hajj has been imprisoned as an "enemy combatant" at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for five years, but never charged with a crime. He was arrested by Pakistani police in December 2001 while on his way to a news assignment in Afghanistan, but he's denied having any links to terrorism.

The independent, Qatar-based network earned the wrath of top U.S. officials after the Sept. 11 attacks for airing statements by Osama bin Laden. Hajj has been interrogated approximately 130 times, according to his attorneys, and nearly every question has been about whether the network or its journalists are connected to al-Qaida or other terrorist groups.

Hajj had been with Al-Jazeera for only a few months at the time of his arrest, and he's told military interrogators that he knows nothing about the network's corporate structure or financing. Before he joined the network, he had a succession of low-level jobs with private companies in Sudan and the United Arab Emirates.

Interrogators offered to secure Hajj's release if he agreed to spy on Al-Jazeera, his attorneys say, but Hajj has refused.

Sudanese officials and international human-rights groups and press-freedom groups have demanded that Hajj be tried or released. Neither appears likely. Documents released by the military suggest why Hajj continues to be held: He's alleged to have couriered money in the late 1990s to the Azerbaijan branch of al Haramayn, a Muslim charity that provided support to extremist groups, and to have once met an unnamed "senior al-Qaida lieutenant."

Hajj's attorneys said both allegations, which surfaced in an August 2005 review-board hearing, stemmed from his work as an assistant to the head of a soft-drink distribution company in Dubai.

According to Hajj's attorneys, on his boss' orders Hajj once picked up Mamdouh Mahmoud Salim, the al-Qaida official, at the airport in Dubai, but didn't know he had links to terrorism. As for the funds, Hajj told his lawyers he once brought $220,000 in cash into Azerbaijan on behalf of his boss, but he thought the money was for charitable purposes.

"The money was destined for Chechen rebels and not for humanitarian support as the detainee was told," an unidentified U.S. military officer said, according to a transcript of the hearing.

Zachary Katznelson, one of Hajj's lawyers and senior counsel at the British legal-aid group Reprieve, said that comment indicates that U.S. officials don't have evidence that Hajj knowingly transported funds intended for terrorism.

But military interrogators haven't questioned Hajj about those allegations, Katznelson said. In previous hearings and documents, the military made other allegations — that Hajj was part of an Al-Jazeera crew that interviewed bin Laden, that he tried to sell Stinger missiles to Chechen rebels, that he operated a jihadist Web site — that subsequently were dropped.

Since Jan. 7, he's been on hunger strike. Soldiers force-feed Hajj and other hunger strikers by tying them down with 16 straps, snaking a tube through their noses and down to their stomachs, and pumping water and a vitamin-fortified milkshake into their bodies, according to Hajj's attorneys.

Pentagon spokesman Jeffrey Gordon said there was a "significant amount of evidence, both unclassified and classified" that justifies holding Hajj as an "enemy combatant." Gordon also said Hajj had repeatedly declined to answer "any substantive questions about his alleged ties to terror despite being given ample opportunities over the years."

Al-Jazeera, widely watched in Sudan and throughout the Arab world, regularly reminds viewers of Hajj's case. The network has launched a campaign for his release and produced a documentary — each named for his Guantánamo ID number, Prisoner 345. Hardly a day goes by without a Sudanese newspaper or broadcast station mentioning his story.

He's become Sudan's most famous journalist, even though he was only on his second-ever assignment. In mid-2001, soon after completing an internship program, he was assigned to research a story on Chechnya and met several times in Qatar with the exiled former president of the rebellious Russian republic, who was alleged to have ties with al-Qaida.

Ahmad Ibrahim, a producer for Al-Jazeera's English service, said Hajj was given the assignment because of his experience in the region — his wife is from Azerbaijan — but the project eventually was scrapped.

Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, he was asked to go to Afghanistan. Hajj was on vacation in Damascus, Syria, with his wife and baby son when the call came. Other cameramen had turned down the assignment, and Hajj hesitated.

He finally took the job, family members said, because he wanted to prove himself with his new employers.

In early October 2001, he and four other Al-Jazeera staff members traveled to Pakistan, obtained visas for Afghanistan and crossed into Kandahar. For about 50 days, the team covered the U.S. bombardment of Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold, and lived in guesthouses alongside journalists from CNN and other news organizations.

While in Kandahar, U.S. officials said, Hajj interviewed several officials, including Abu Hafa al Moritani, a bin Laden adviser who was the leader of the al-Qaida cell in the northern African nation of Mauritania.

In December, the team returned to Pakistan, but Hajj soon was asked to go back to Afghanistan to cover Hamid Karzai's newly formed government. At the border, he was stopped by Pakistani authorities when his name appeared on a watch list, according to U.S. officials. After three weeks he was transferred to American authorities and taken to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

According to Amnesty International, Hajj described his 16 days at Bagram as "the worst in my life."

"He states that he was severely physically tortured and had dogs set upon him, that he was held in a cage (in) a freezing aircraft hangar and was given insufficient, often frozen food," Amnesty reported.

He then was taken to Kandahar and, on June 13, 2002, transferred to Guantánamo in chains. Not until this time did Hajj's family learn that he was in U.S. custody, from a letter he wrote to his wife.

His family in Sudan kept the news from his ailing father for several months, but when they finally told him, the news sent him into shock. He died a few days later.