Al-Jazeera Terrorist/Cameraman Freed From Club Gitmo

Banner day for Club Gitmo news. First a former guest goes splodeydope, now another resident, an alleged cameraman from Terror TV, has been freed.

A Sudanese cameraman with the Arab satellite news channel Al-Jazeera was released from six years of detention at Guantanamo US military prison and was due to fly home within hours, Al-Jazeera said Thursday.

"I am now in Khartoum as Sami al-Haj will probably arrive within hours," Al-Jazeera director general Waddah Khanfar told AFP when contacted by telephone from Qatar, where the channel is based.

"Sami al-Haj to arrive overnight in Khartoum after his release from Guantanamo camp," Al-Jazeera subsequently flashed on its screen.

Al-Jazeera's main night bulletin was dominated by the release of its cameraman, whose cause had been championed by several rights groups.

Haj was arrested by the Pakistani army on the Afghan border in December 2001 and had been held without charge at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba since June 2002.

The Pentagon would not immediately comment to AFP about Haj's release, but press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders, which has campaigned for him to be freed, voiced relief.

Reporters Without Borders, of course, is gushing.

The dubious Andy Worthington hyperventilates at the HuffPost.

As a trained journalist, Sami's insights into the horrors of Guantánamo have been unparalleled. Subjected to clearance by the Pentagon's censors, his letters and his conversations with his lawyers at Reprieve have shed light on the abuse of the Koran, suicide attempts, hunger strikes and the number of juveniles held at the prison.

For the last 16 months of his imprisonment, Sami was himself a hunger striker. Although the ethics of the medical profession stipulate that a mentally competent hunger striker cannot be force-fed, the US authorities disagreed. Twice a day, for the last 480 days, Sami was strapped into a restraint chair, secured with 16 separate straps, and force-fed against his will via a tube inserted into his stomach through his nose.

Greeting the news of his release, Clive Stafford Smith said, "This is wonderful news, and long overdue. The US administration has never had any reason for holding Mr. al-Haj, and has, instead, spent six years shamelessly attempting to turn him against his employers at al-Jazeera. We at Reprieve send him our best wishes as he is reunited with his wife and his seven-year old son Mohammed, whom he has not seen since Mohammed was a baby."

Worthington, you may recall, was given a front-page byline in the New York Times back in February, one in a long series of black eyes for the alleged paper of record.