Surprise! Freed Al-Jazeera Terror Suspect Feigns Frailty for Cameras

Media outlets around the globe gushed Thursday when al-Jazeera's own Sami al-Hajj was freed from Guantanamo Bay.

Ever the propagandist, al-Jazeera milked his arrival back in the Sudan for all it was worth.

Seeking to counter video footage of a just-released Guantanamo detainee unable to walk and grimacing in pain as he is loaded off a U.S. military plane in Sudan, the Pentagon is preparing to release its own video that shows Sami al-Hajj appearing healthy as he boarded the plane to leave Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Broadcast images of his arrival in Sudan showed a weakened al-Hajj returning home after six years of detention at Guantanamo.

The Pentagon sees al-Hajj's weakened appearance as the former detainee's latest effort to influence public opinion.

"He's a manipulator and a propagandist," said one of the three Defense Department officials who spoke to ABC News. One of the officials talked about al-Hajj's "constant drumbeat of allegations" about the treatment of Guantanamo detainees, which had apparently become an irritant to his military handlers. One of the officials said that his credibility was called into question because there was "no information to substantiate his allegations that he was mistreated at Guantanamo."

One thing we know for sure is these al Qaeda scum are master manipulators, not that it takes much for a gullible media and leftwingers to be duped.

A Pentagon official familiar with his case said that al-Hajj's airport arrival in Sudan was "very orchestrated. He knew media would be there for the arrival and obviously he was using that to his advantage."

His weakened appearance during his airport arrival also was questioned by another Pentagon official.

"It's interesting to me that he was carried off the plane claiming he couldn't walk or speak," the official said, "and then we see him on al-Jazeera speaking on a cell phone, giving interviews and leaning down to pick up his son. He seemed like a healthy individual to me."

Al-Hajj had been on a hunger strike for 16 months. But one of the Defense Department officials said that he was not malnourished because of the regular forced feedings he had received during that time.

Here's an al-Jazeera report.

The maggot looks fine to me.

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.

Former Guests at Club Gitmo Want Cash and an Apology

These guys should probably hold out until President Rodham is sworn in. She'll probably invite them over to the White House for coffee.

A group of Sudanese released from the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay demanded cash payouts and an apology from the United States on Saturday, for mental and physical torture suffered during years spent in jail there.

"We have asked for compensation and an apology," aid worker Adil Hassan Hamad told a conference in Khartoum, which was organized by local rights groups to demand the release of seven Sudanese still held at Guantanamo Bay.

Hamad, freed just over one month ago, wore orange overalls like those worn by detainees in the U.S. prison camp. He was working with refugees when arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and taken to Afghanistan and then the U.S. camp in Cuba.

Nice of Reuters to simply regurgitate his claims. Nothing like investigative journalism.

He said his U.S. lawyer would seek compensation in the U.S. courts. One of Hamad's daughters died during his detention because his wife could not afford medical treatment. Two other inmates were also seeking compensation, he said.

Washington has designated Guantanamo prisoners, who were mainly seized in Afghanistan after the 2001 U.S. invasion, as "enemy combatants" and denied them prisoner-of-war status that would guarantee them certain rights under international law.

Many attending the Khartoum conference broke down in tears when addressed by the wife of al Jazeera journalist Sami al-Hajj, the most high-profile of the around 300 detainees still in the prison on the Caribbean island.

He has been on hunger strike for 400 days but is force fed twice a day in a manner his lawyer told the conference was tantamount to torture.

OK, so now feeding someone is torture?

Sure.

His wife Aygol Ismailova, who is from Azerbaijan, wept as she told the gathering how Hajj has been urinating blood and was suffering from other health problems.

"His son Mohamed always asks me: 'Where is my father, who took him? What is prison? What do they do there?' And I don't know how to answer him," Ismailova told Reuters.

Maybe you can tell little Mohamed his father is a terrorist posing as a journalist. That would be a start.

"Do people know that I have no way to contact my husband other than letters that reach him late and are censored? For more than six years I've not heard his voice, not seen him," she said. "This is torture."

The tales of woe continue. Shockingly, other means of torture include making someone stand up for a period of time.

Oh, the humanity.

Hamad and another former Guantanamo detainee set up mock prison cells to show those attending the conference the cramped conditions in which they were held.

"Often they'd leave prisoners tied up in very, very cold rooms and refuse to allow them to go to the bathroom so they'd wet themselves."

"I was beaten, made to stand for long periods of time, deprived of sleep for three nights," Hamad said of his treatment by the U.S. army in Afghanistan before he was moved to Cuba.

Of course, he has no evidence of such claims, but why should that deter Reuters from reporting this as fact?

No doubt the left will lap up this nonsense as well.

AP Frets Over Al-Jazeera Inmate at Club Gitmo

He may have been "working" for Al-Jazeera when he was picked up in Pakistan, but there's a reason this guy is residing at Club Gitmo.

Still, the Associated Press shows concern for Sami al-Hajj, who purportedly has been on a hunger strike.

Gitmo Chief: Al - Jazeera Detainee Is Fine

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- The commander of detention operations at Guantanamo Bay denied reports that the physical and mental health of a detained Al-Jazeera cameraman is deteriorating.

A defense attorney earlier this week said Sami al-Hajj, one of the highest-profile detainees at the U.S. naval base in southeastern Cuba, has lost 40 pounds since late last year and developed intestinal problems. Al-Hajj has been on hunger strike, lawyer Clive Stafford Smith said.

But in an e-mail sent late Friday to The Associated Press, U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Mark H. Buzby said al-Hajj is actually 20 pounds heavier than when he arrived at the U.S. military prison in June 2002.

''Contrary to allegations, there have been no indications that he developed intestinal problems and no indications that his mental health has recently deteriorated,'' Buzby said.

Buzby insisted al-Hajj is currently at ''103 percent of his ideal body weight'' and is seen by medical personnel daily at Guantanamo Bay, where the U.S. holds about 355 men on suspicion of terrorism or links to al-Qaida or the Taliban.

Of course, al-Hajj has a history with terror groups and charities going back to the 1990's and doesn't appear to be some hapless innocent who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Al-Hajj was detained by Pakistani forces in December 2001 while attempting to cross the border into Afghanistan to cover the U.S.-led offensive against the Taliban. He was turned over to U.S. forces and taken six months later to Guantanamo.

The U.S. military says that in the 1990s, al-Hajj was an executive assistant at a Qatar-based drink company that provided support to Muslim fighters in Bosnia and Chechnya. The U.S. says he also traveled to Azerbaijan to carry money on behalf of his employer to the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a now defunct charity that authorities say funded militant groups.

It was also during this period that he allegedly ''met'' Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, a senior lieutenant to Osama bin Laden who was arrested in Germany in 1998 and extradited to the United States.

I don't quite understand the use of quotes around the word met.

Gitmo Prisoner Urges Release of BBC Reporter

Reuters eagerly laps up the propaganda from a Gitmo slug. Notice how this poor terror suspect is innocuously referred to as a television cameraman.

A television cameraman held prisoner for years at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has issued an impassioned plea for the release of a fellow journalist kidnapped in Gaza.

In an open letter to the kidnappers of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston, Guantanamo detainee Sami al-Hajj of the al-Jazeera satellite TV network said Muslims should never be responsible for illegal detentions like the one he has endured at the hands of the United States.

"What the Americans are doing to me is very, very wrong," al-Hajj, a native of Sudan, said in the letter, which was made public on Monday by his lawyer.

"Yet this can never mean that a Muslim should similarly hold a British journalist, and put him and his family through similar suffering," he said.

"Please, then, as brothers in one faith, consider this gift that I request of you: That you release Alan Johnston as soon as possible, without conditions. While the United States has kidnapped me and held me for years on end, this is not a lesson that Muslims should copy."

Al-Hajj, 38, has been held at Guantanamo for nearly five years on suspicion of having links to Islamic militant groups. He has been accused of making videos of
Osama bin Laden.

He was picked up in Pakistan in 2001 and said in his letter that he would be on the 140th day of a hunger strike as of this past Sunday.

Poor thing. Must be starving. Still, I don't feel guilty having just consumed a nice steak off the grill.