FREE SUDANESE JOURNALIST IN GUANTANAMO

I received a mailing from Amnesty International a few days ago, and inside was an information sheet on Sami al-Haii, a Sudanese cameraman for Al-Jazeera. While on assignment in 2001 for Al-Jazeera, Al-Haii was arrested by the Pakistani police in December 2001 and turned over to the U.S. at Bagram air base.

"Sami al-Haii has described the 16 days . . . in 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 inside a freezing aircraft hangar and was given insufficient, often frozen, food. He was then transferred to Kandahar, where his abuse continued. Sami al-Haii alleges that while there he was beaten regularly, as well as subjected to sexual abuse by U.S. soldiers, and forced into stress position.

"Sami al-Haii was transferred to Guantanamo Bay on June 13, 2002, where he remains. He has been constantly interrogated about any possible links between his employers and Islamist extremists."

Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld call the prisoners at Guantanamo the "worst of the worst." Do they mean Sami-al-Haii? His case shows why Guantanamo must be closed and why each internee there must be given a hearing on the merits in Federal court according to the rule of law.