OCTOBER 2007
13 September 2007 21:49
Six Years Into Detention, Al-Jazeera Journalist 'close to death' at Guantanamo Bay
By Robert Verkaik, Law Editor
Published: 13 September 2007
Free Sami Al-Haj This link goes to a petition - only 385 have signed so far.PLEASE SIGN
An al-Jazeera journalist captured in Afghanistan six years ago and
sent to Guantanamo Bay is close to becoming the fifth detainee at the
US naval base to take his own life, according to a medical report
written by a team of British and American psychiatrists.
Sami al-Haj, a Sudanese national, is 250 days into a hunger strike
which he began in protest over his detention without charge or trial
in January 2002. But British and American doctors, who have been
given exclusive access to his interview notes, say there is very
strong evidence that he has given up his fight for life, experiencing
what doctors recognise as "passive suicide", a condition suffered by
female victims of Darfur.
Dr Dan Creson, a US psychiatrist who has worked with the United
Nations in Darfur, said Mr Haj was suffering from severe depression
and may be deteriorating to the point of imminent death.
He said the detainee's condition was similar to that of Darfuri women
in Sudan whose mind suddenly experiences an irreversible decline
after enduring months of starvation and abuse. He said: "In the midst
of rape, slow starvation, and abject humiliation, they did whatever
they could to survive and save their children; then, suddenly,
something happened in their psyche, and, without warning, they would
just sit down with their small children beneath the first small area
of available shade and with no apparent emotion wait for death."
In June this year a Saudi man became the fourth prisoner to take his
own life at Guantanamo Bay. Guards found him dead in his cell. Two
Saudis and a Yemeni prisoner were found hanged in an apparent suicide
at Guantanamo in June last year. A senior US officer caused outrage
at the time by describing the suicides of three men as an act of
asymmetric warfare and a good PR move on the part of terrorist
suspects.
Mr Haj, 38, was sent on assignment by al-Jazeera television station
to cover the war in Afghanistan in October 2001. The following month,
after the fall of Kabul, Mr Haj left Afghanistan for Pakistan with
the rest of his crew.
In early December, the crew were given visas to return to
Afghanistan. But when Mr Haj tried to re-enter Afghanistan with his
colleagues, he was arrested by the Pakistani authorities ? apparently
at the request of the US military.
He was imprisoned, handed over to the US authorities in January 2002,
taken to the US military compound in Bagram, Afghanisatan, then
Kandahar, and finally to Guantanamo in June 2002.
His lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, of the human rights charity
Reprieve, said his client had endured months of brutal force-feeding
and lost nearly a fifth of his body weight during the hunger strike.
Mr Stafford Smith said: "The US military is rightly afraid of a fifth
prisoner dying in their custody. But they wrongly respond by treating
prisoners worse. Blankets and clothes are removed in case they are
used to commit suicide. The harshest methods of forced feeding are
deployed ? Sami has suffered the feeding tube being forced down into
his lungs by mistake several times."
The warning about the condition of Mr Haj coincided with the release
of Guantanamo transcripts which describe the hostility between guards
and their prisoners. The transcripts includes details of guards
interrupting detainees at prayer, detainees flinging body waste at
guards and interrogators withholding medicine.
Dr Hugh Rickards, a British psychiatrist, warned in his report that
the level of Mr Haj's mental suffering "appears so acute that it is
my duty as a medical practitioner to put this in writing to ensure
appropriate assessment and treatment".
Dr Mamoun Mobayed, a British psychiatrist based in Northern Ireland,
and a third member of the team who has also been given access to
written notes of recent interviews with the prisoner, said there was
also concern about the mental health of Mr Haj's wife and
seven-year-old son, who was just one when his father went on
assignment to Afghanistan.
© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited
http://news. independent. co.uk/world/ americas/ article2956428. ece[TheBlackList]